[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 109 (Wednesday, June 25, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3528-S3529]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Unanimous Consent Request--S. 1220
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, when I was in grade school, my dad, the
mechanic, would point to the schoolhouse doors and say: Son, if you go
through those doors and you work hard, you can do almost anything
because we are so fortunate to live here in the United States.
He was a big fan of public schools giving an opportunity for every
child to thrive. I took his advice to heart and went through those
doors and studied hard and loved the vision of opportunity for every
child in America.
But the fact is that many careers require more than a K-through-12
education, and the cost of college has exploded.
When I was graduating from high school, if you worked a summer job at
minimum wage, which was about $3 an hour, you could save enough money,
living at home, to pay your tuition at any of the public universities
in the State of Oregon. Well, try paying your tuition today, a year of
tuition, based on minimum wage working the summer.
We are in a situation where college is so much more important now
than it was decades ago to so many parts of our society, and yet it is
so much more expensive. It is a huge barrier to opportunity for every
child.
My children are 29 and 27. Not so long ago, they were in grade school
in my neighborhood--my blue-collar neighborhood--and people would say
to me: Jeff, I am not sure I should encourage my son or my daughter to
go to college because I am afraid they are going to end up with a
mountain of debt, and that debt is going to be a millstone around their
neck--instead of creating opportunity, obstructing opportunity.
Indeed, we have seen the challenge in which, because of the cost of
college, our sons and daughters are marrying later. Because of debt
from college, our sons and daughters are finding it much more difficult
to be able to buy a home, which has been the primary source of family
wealth for middle-class Americans.
So we should do something about this. But, unfortunately, my
Republican colleagues want to make college more expensive.
I wish you could come to my blue-collar community, get out of your
gated communities where you live with people affluent enough to just
pay their son's and daughter's education, and understand how expensive
college is as a barrier to opportunity here in the United States of
America.
Specifically, they want to make it harder for children to afford
college by eliminating income-driven repayment plans for borrowers.
Income-driven repayment plans help folks responsibly pay off their
student loans by basing a borrower's monthly payments on their income
and their family size. It sounds like common sense to me.
One of these income-driven repayment plans is the Saving on a
Valuable Education, or SAVE plan, which more than 8 million Americans
are enrolled in. But in the reconciliation bill--the proposed bill that
we will be voting on later this week--it is slashed, and Senate HELP
Committee Republicans are attempting to slash these loans in their
portion of the reconciliation bill as well.
As a result of these cuts, the Student Borrower Protection Center
calculates that a typical borrower with a college degree will pay about
$250 more per month. Now, if you are coming from affluence, maybe you
are like: $250 a month. Oh, less than 10 bucks a day, not a problem.
But you know it is a massive problem for children across America, for
our young adults across America, for our families who are not among
those millionaires and billionaires who so often inhabit this Senate
Chamber.
Why do Republicans want to get rid of programs that help individuals
and working families, help lift them up and responsibly pay back what
they owe and instead want working families to believe that perhaps
college is not a possibility because of the mountain of debt it will
create on their children?
It is a ``families lose, billionaires win,'' this attack on
affordable ways to pay for college. It is another example of the ``Big
Beautiful Betrayal,'' the way this reconciliation bill puts families
down and helps the rich get richer.
Families lose, and billionaires win--that is not a good theme for
America. It is not good policy. It is not even good politics. How about
we work together on families thrive and billionaires pay their fair
share?
I have introduced the Savings Opportunity and Affordable Repayment
Act, or the SOAR Act, with Senator Kaine, with Leader Schumer, and with
Senator Sanders to codify and expand the SAVE plan and help borrowers
in four important ways:
First, it will allow more low-income borrowers to qualify for income-
driven repayment plans, increasing the number of students who will be
able to responsibly pay back their loans.
Second, it protects borrowers from runaway interests.
Third, it incentivizes former students to keep paying their loans
rather than default by shortening the timeline for loan forgiveness
from a maximum of 25 years to 15 years.
CBO did a report on this back in 2020, and what they found is that
those who participate in an income-driven repayment plan are half as
likely to default as people who don't. So it becomes a win-win. More
money gets paid back to the Treasury, not less.
Finally, it will help many more borrowers by making them eligible for
these programs by including Parent PLUS borrowers and borrowers with
Federal family education loans.
We know that the SAVE plan and other income-driven repayment plans
work. They increase repayment rates; they reduce default rates; they
lower costs for families; and they create a vision for our young folks
that, yes, you can afford to go to college here in the United States of
America; no, it won't create a mountain of debt that will be a
millstone around your neck.
Don't we want to send that message of opportunity to all of our young
folks so they can aspire to their dreams, so they can reach their
highest potential, so they can return their success by helping their
entire community and our entire Nation thrive? Yes, of course, we do.
So, colleagues on both sides of the aisle, let's join together in the
vision of families thrive and billionaires pay their fair share, and
let's do that by passing the SOAR Act.
So, Mr. President, I propose that the Senate proceed to the
consideration of the SOAR Act. And to give you the precise technical
language for that, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding
rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration
of S. 1220 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration;
further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and
that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the
table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Justice). Is there objection?
The Senator from Louisiana.
Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I rise to
object to S. 1220, a bill seeking to transfer the burden of $230
billion in student debt to the 87 percent of Americans who chose not to
go to college or already responsibly paid off their loans.
To be clear, this legislation does not differentiate between those
trapped with overwhelming debt and those who could easily pay back
their loans. If this bill is enacted, a majority of those who borrowed
money to get a bachelor's degree would not have to pay back even the
principal on their loans, and 91 percent of their student debt would be
eligible for reduced payments. And it would be subsidized by everybody
watching on C-SPAN right now.
There is no free lunch. These policies are as unfair as they are
irresponsible. Where is the relief for the Louisiana truckdriver who
took out a loan to buy a truck? What about the hard-working mom who
paid off her student loans
[[Page S3529]]
but now struggles to afford her mortgage? Would this legislation give
those Americans relief? No, it gives them a greater burden. The
truckdriver and that mom, they are on the hook for those who decided to
go to college to get a degree to make more money. They would be on the
hook for that, as well as their own cost of living.
Now, I am sure my Democratic colleagues will argue that some of those
students are trapped with overwhelming debt, and this legislation will
help them get out of it. But this bill does nothing to address the
broken higher education system that created the overwhelming debt in
the first place. It doesn't address the rising costs at colleges and
universities. And let's point out that, in the last 30 years, tuition
and fees at private nonprofit colleges have risen by 75 percent. At
public 4-year institutions, they have increased by 102 percent.
Meanwhile, according to a nonpartisan analysis, 23 percent of
bachelor's degree programs and 43 percent of master's degree programs
had a negative return on investment. What does that mean? It means you
spend a lot of money to get your degree, but you don't actually
increase your ability to earn more money because of that degree and,
along the way, you get into student loan debt.
We need real solutions to fix this broken system, and Republicans
provide these solutions. As chair of the Senate Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions Committee, I am leading my committee's portion of
the One Big Beautiful Bill, legislation that will make transformative
changes to the higher education system.
First, it reforms student loan repayment plans that cost American
taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. This includes fixing our
income-driven repayment program that is targeted to help struggling
Americans.
Second, it increases the affordability of higher education by
eliminating inflationary loan programs that evidence shows drive higher
tuition prices and cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
Third, it restores accountability so that universities are not
receiving Federal loan dollars for programs that leave students worse
off than if they had never entered that program.
And, lastly, this legislation increases access to career or technical
education through establishing Workforce Pell. A young person from
Louisiana who wants to be a master welder doesn't need to attend a 4-
year university, but they can now use their Pell grant to attend a
technical school, giving them the skills for a successful career. That
is a wise investment of Federal student loan dollars.
Unlike S. 1220, the legislation before us today, Senate Republicans
are putting forth real solutions to address the root causes of the
student loan crisis.
I look forward to working with my colleagues to get the One Big
Beautiful Bill across the finish line so we can fix the broken higher
education system and ensure that every American can succeed.
Mr. President, the Democrats' legislation is unfair to the hundreds
of millions of taxpaying Americans who will be forced to bear the
burden of paying off someone else's student debt. It would make our
higher education problems worse, not better. And for those reasons, I
object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I enjoy working with my colleague from
Louisiana, and he has made several points worth noting.
He has noted that this strategy of enabling people to pay back their
loan according to their income doesn't solve the large issue of why our
colleges cost so much, and he has noted that it doesn't do anything
about predatory college programs that charge a lot and deliver little.
Now, I was here when Tom Harkin led the effort to shut down the for-
profit programs that often weren't even accredited but were signing up
veterans like crazy and ripping them off, leaving them with massive
debt. And we couldn't get any help from across the aisle to take that
on.
So he is right; it won't solve everything. But the idea is that you
pay according to your income, and as your income goes up, you pay back
more. And the default rate is cut in half. So the Federal Government
actually takes in more money than it would otherwise, and students
believe that they do have an opportunity, despite the high cost of
college--because that is just not going to be fixed overnight.
You know, in Germany, tuition is zero. Germany has said every child
should have the opportunity to thrive. But here in America, we make it
so the rich have that opportunity, and ordinary families in my blue-
collar community are going: We don't think our children can afford to
go to college.
That hurts all of us. It hurts every child whose dreams are crushed
because of these high costs of college.
I am happy to work with my colleague from Louisiana on ideas on how
we lower the cost of college. But we have got a lot of folks going to
college right now. Let's help these students know that they can go
through those doors as a freshman and, if they thrive, they are going
to pay back their loans fast and, if they don't thrive so much in a
higher income job or it is a public service job, they will pay it back
more slowly. But they will never have to default.
I think it is a vision worth continuing to work on because our higher
education system is not working as well as the systems in many other
countries that are saying every child will have an opportunity.
I believe--like my father did, like my mother did--in America as a
land of opportunity for every child, not just the children of the rich.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.