[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Page 9297]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      STUDENT LOAN INTEREST RATES

  Mr. REID. Finally, I see on the floor my friend, the senior Senator 
from Tennessee, who has been a longtime Governor of his State. He has 
been the Secretary of Education. We have an issue coming up soon. If we 
do not work something out in this body before the end of this month, 
student loan interest rates will go up a lot. If we do nothing, they 
will double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. If we do what the House 
wants to do, if we do what Senate Republicans want to do, these student 
loans will be used to reduce the debt. I do not think that is what we 
should be doing with students. While this is not the time to debate 
this issue, everyone should be aware as we deal with immigration over 
the next couple weeks, we also have to keep this matter on the radar 
screen that we are going to have to do something about.
  I have a number of meetings on this today, and I am sure my 
Republican colleagues have meetings throughout the day, and we need to 
have as many as we can to work something out to get this done.

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