[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 23288]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        RISING COLLEGE COSTS AND REPUBLICAN RAID ON STUDENT AID

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Miller) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, this week new reports 
from the College Board showed how much harder it is getting for 
families to pay for college. Since 2001, tuition and fees at a 4-year 
public college have risen by 46 percent. Today the maximum Pell grant 
is worth $900 less when adjusted for inflation than it was in 1975 and 
1976. This year, students attending 2 and 4-year public colleges are 
already $10 billion short for paying for college, even after grants, 
work study, savings, and Federal loans are taken into account. As a 
result, millions of students will be forced to work long hours to take 
on additional debt from other sources or forgo college altogether.
  What has been the Republicans' response? To make American students 
and families who are already struggling to pay for college, pay even 
more.
  In July, during the committee consideration of the Higher Education 
Act, Republicans voted to cut nearly $9 billion from the student aid 
programs and raise interest rates and fees on student borrowers. This 
raid on student aid represents the largest cut to the Federal student 
aid programs ever, ever. As a result of these cuts, the typical 
borrower with $17,500 in loan debt when they graduate will be forced to 
pay an additional $5,800 more for his or her college loans. That is 
$5,800 additional that they will have to pay over the life of those 
loans for the college education that they are seeking.
  While many of the cuts were on excessive subsidies paid to student 
lenders, such as the 9.5 percent loan boondoggle, the Republicans only 
agreed to reduce some of these excessive subsidies to large lending 
institutions after widespread criticism from Democrats, students, and 
editorial writers.
  But instead of reinvesting these dollars into low-interest loans and 
additional grants, the majority plans to use nearly $9 billion in cuts 
for the alleged deficit reduction, or to pay for their tax cuts to the 
wealthiest people in this Nation. They are going to take $9 billion out 
of the student loan account to pay for the tax cuts to the wealthiest 5 
percent of the people in this country. That is their idea of economic 
justice.
  But it gets worse. Next week, the majority plans to cut an additional 
$7.5 billion from the Nation's student aid programs, the second largest 
cuts ever. The first largest cuts were several weeks ago. Now they are 
back. They are back for $7.5 billion to take out of student loans to 
again pay for the $1 trillion in tax cuts that they gave to the top 5 
percent of the people in this country.
  To make matters even worse, the Republican leadership has failed to 
provide real relief for college tuition. In fact, in their higher 
education bill, they would do nothing to make tuition more affordable 
for the first 5 years after it is enacted into law. Even after 5 years, 
the bill only requires colleges and universities with rapidly rising 
tuition to increase their reporting and disclosures.
  Mr. Speaker, the public already knows how much it costs. They 
struggle with it every spring as they try to figure out how to pay for 
their children's education. What the Republicans are doing, it is not 
lowering the cost of tuition, not lowering the rate or the increase in 
the cost of tuitions; they are adding thousands of dollars, thousands 
of dollars in additional costs to students and to their families.
  This is unacceptable. What the Democrats had was a better idea that 
we would cut those outlandish subsidies to the lending institutions, to 
the banks, and to others, and we would take that money and we would 
recycle it into the student loan programs so that we could increase the 
Pell grant by some $500. We could take care of low and middle-income 
students who fall short in being able to finance their education. We 
would lower the cost of that debt to those students. We would make the 
repayment easier.
  But the Republicans did not do that. They chose to take now what is 
almost $16 billion when they are done next week out of the student loan 
program, to raid this student aid and take that and transfer that to 
the wealthiest people in this country through the tax cuts that they 
have already enacted.
  It is a shameful day, and it is a sad day, when we are being told 
that it is more important now than ever that students in America 
complete a college education for the sake of their economic well-being 
and for the sake of the competitiveness of our economy, and the 
Republicans have decided to make it more and more expensive for 
millions of American students and their families. It is a tragic day 
for these students and their families.

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