[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9391]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             THE IMPENDING STUDENT LOAN INTEREST RATE HIKE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Reed) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. REED. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about an issue I deeply 
care about, and that issue is the affordability and ability of students 
across America to get a college degree.
  Mr. Speaker, as we face this impending student interest loan cliff on 
July 1, I want to share with you and with the American public a 
personal story.
  I'm the youngest of 12. I have eight older sisters, three older 
brothers, and my mother and father made a commitment to each other that 
each and every one of us would get some sort of college degree or 
advanced degree.
  My father passed when I was 2, and there were six of us left in our 
household that my mother had to raise on her own. I went to college, 
went to law school, and I watched in her eyes the fulfillment of that 
promise that she and my dad made to each and every one of us.

                              {time}  1040

  Now, not all of my siblings went to law school. One got a vocational 
degree cutting hair, who now works in Arizona. I have the law degree, 
and there's a whole mix in between.
  As we deal with the issue of student loan interest, we need to make 
sure that we stand for the students and that we stand for the next 
generation, because a college degree and a higher educational pursuit 
will arm those young men and women for generations and empower them to 
control their own destiny in their own hands.
  So I come today on my side of the aisle and say to my colleagues, 
thank you for joining us in passing a bill in the House that would 
avert the interest rate spike that will be coming up on July 1. I ask 
my colleagues to join me and to demand that the Senate take action.
  As you see, Mr. Speaker, the Senate has failed to pass a piece of 
legislation in the Senate to avert this fiscal cliff to our students 
across America. To me, Mr. Speaker, that's just not right. That's just 
not fair. We need to do better. And what we need to do is to pass a 
reform out of this body and out of this Congress that takes the student 
out of this political theater that has become the student loan interest 
spike every year that we have to deal with.
  The proposal in the House, to me, makes sense. It's a commonsense, 
market-based approach that will lower interest rates on 70 percent of 
the loans that students receive in going to college and advanced 
degrees.
  I ask the Senate and I ask my colleagues to continue to join us to 
put pressure on the Senate to say enough is enough. We care about 
students. Let's address this issue so that they don't see that interest 
rate spike that is coming over the horizon and say to the White House, 
Sign this legislation once and for all that removes the students from 
the political debate that this issue has become.

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