[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9406-9411]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  NOMINATION OF SHARON Y. BOWEN TO BE A COMMISSIONER OF THE COMMODITY 
                 FUTURES TRADING COMMISSION--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the time until 4 
p.m. will be equally divided between the two leaders or their 
designees.
  Who yields time? If neither side yields time, all time will be 
equally charged.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we are not in a quorum call, are we?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Manchin). The Senator is correct.


                                EPA Rule

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, 17 years ago the Senate voted on something 
called a sense-of-the-Senate resolution designed to protect American 
workers and their families from misguided policy with regard to 
CO2 regulations. Of course, CO2, or carbon 
dioxide, is a necessary element of life, and plant life depends on 
CO2 for photosynthesis, which helps make them green. To hear 
some of the psuedoscientists talk about CO2 here in 
Washington, you would think it was poison. Suffice it to say, 17 years 
later the Obama administration is trying to enact similar legislation 
that was rejected 17 years ago by the Senate in that sense-of-the-
Senate resolution.
  Back in 1997 Members of the Senate were concerned that the Clinton 
administration might sign a global climate change treaty that imposed 
higher costs on the United States while exempting developing countries 
such as China or India. These concerns turned out to be well-founded. 
The Clinton administration did indeed sign such a treaty known as the 
Kyoto Protocol in December of that year, but it never got around to 
having it ratified here in the Senate largely because of a unanimous 
resolution this Chamber passed several months earlier.
  The sense-of-the-Senate resolution I alluded to a moment ago was 
voted on in July 1997, and it received 95 votes in favor and 0 votes 
opposed. Ninety-five Senators expressed their opposition to any climate 
change agreement that would result in serious harm to the economy of 
the United States. They also rejected any agreement that failed to 
include other countries, and that is for good reasons I will explain in 
a moment.
  The message sent by these 95 Senators--a unanimous vote in the 
Senate--is pretty clear. It makes absolutely no sense for America to 
adopt job-killing carbon regulations while CO2 emissions 
from developing countries continue to skyrocket and are not subjected 
to the same restrictions.
  Don't just take my word for it. Listen to what one of the most 
prominent supporters of the 1997 resolution, Secretary of State John 
Kerry--at the time he was the junior Senator of Massachusetts--had to 
say:

       It's just common sense that if you are really going to do 
     something to effect global climate change, and you are going 
     to do it in a fair-minded way . . . we need to have an 
     agreement that does not leave enormous components of the 
     world's contributors and future contributors of this problem 
     out of the solution.

  In effect, what he was saying was: Why would America do this to 
itself and throw a wet blanket on job creation and economic growth when 
other countries were going to continue to produce CO2 
unabated?
  One of the cosponsors of this resolution was the late Democratic 
Senator Robert Byrd. The Presiding Officer knows Senator Byrd and his 
legacy very well. While explaining his opposition to the Kyoto-style 
climate deals, Senator Byrd said:

       I don't think the Senate should support a treaty that 
     requires only half of the world . . . to endure the economic 
     costs of reducing emissions while developing countries are 
     free to pollute the atmosphere, and in so doing, siphon off 
     American industries.

  Another cosponsor was Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who was then 
the junior Senator from Nebraska. He described the likely consequences 
of Kyoto-style agreements in these terms:

       As industries flee the United States and other 
     industrialized countries, they would re-establish themselves 
     in developing countries that have much weaker environmental 
     standards than our own.

  I have just one more point about the Kyoto Protocol, which was 
unanimously voted down, in essence, 17 years ago.
  A year after that, in 1998, there was a then-unknown Illinois State 
senator who voted on legislation that denounced Kyoto and prohibited 
State regulation of greenhouse gases in Illinois. If you guessed it was 
Barack Obama, you would be right.
  One of the State senators voting in favor of the bill, condemning 
Kyoto,

[[Page 9407]]

and banning State regulations of greenhouse gases in Illinois was 
Barack Obama. President Obama voted for legislation that explicitly 
rejected the type of CO2 regulations that he is now trying 
to impose on the entire U.S. economy.
  Yesterday I discussed some of the costs of those regulations, how 
enormous they would be, and how they would disproportionately fall on 
the poor and middle class in our country. The truth is most of the 
burden of higher energy costs would fall on retired people, seniors, 
and people on a fixed income.
  In my State our electricity capacity is regularly strained due to the 
hot August summers. People in my State depend on their air conditioners 
for safety. The threat of limited access to electricity, or higher 
costs that people can't afford, literally threatens their health and 
safety, and certainly their welfare. Lost jobs, lost wages, higher 
utility rates, and tighter family budgets are the inevitable 
consequences of this proposed EPA rule that was announced late last 
week.
  For that matter, the EPA has also proposed another rule on new 
powerplants that would impede technological innovation. Several of my 
Democratic colleagues expressed their deep concern about the additional 
EPA rule in a recent letter to the President. These seven Democrats 
noted that ``American technology providers would be incentivized to 
stop research and innovation in coal combustion, further delaying 
domestic development of pioneering new technologies that could be 
exported to improve plants around the world.''
  Earlier today one of these Democrats who signed the letter, and 
happens to be the Presiding Officer at this time, said the Obama 
administration was ``working against us'' on CO2 
regulations, and he described the EPA proposals as ``unreasonable and 
unacceptable.'' This is obviously not a partisan issue by any means.
  Any regulation that is this costly is almost impossible to justify 
unless it was to have clear benefits that outweighed those costs. 
President Obama's EPA rule can't lay claim to having enormous benefits 
in spite of these huge costs.
  Even if you agree with my friends about the long-term risks posed by 
rising CO2 emissions, and that this sort of regulation is 
justified, the projected growth of global emissions over the coming 
decades has almost nothing to do with America and almost everything to 
do with developing countries such as China and India.
  Indeed, our emissions have gone down over recent history. Some of 
that has been due to the renaissance of natural gas, which burns 
cleaner. But the fact is that anything we would do would be confined to 
the United States and our economy and would have no impact whatsoever 
on developing countries such as China and India. Indeed, China--by a 
very wide margin--is already the planet's largest CO2 
emitter. The U.S. Government estimates that China alone will account 
for nearly half of all growth in worldwide emissions between 2010 and 
2040.
  In short, nothing America does by itself or to itself will stop 
global emissions from rising. In fact, even if we could magically 
reduce our own emissions to zero over the next quarter century, 
worldwide emissions would still increase significantly without major 
reductions in China, India, and other developing countries.
  Yet, despite all these costs to American workers and American 
families--literally a threat due to the lack of grid capacity in places 
such as Texas because of high-priced energy--President Obama is moving 
ahead with this massive new energy tax that is effectively, in the 
words of our colleague from Louisiana, all pain and no gain, and he is 
right.
  To put this in context, I think it is important that anyone who 
happens to be listening understands a few points.
  No. 1, regardless of what the President calls it, the proposed EPA 
rule is indeed a massive new national energy tax, one that will affect 
all workers, all consumers, and all families in America.
  No. 2, the reason it is being enacted via the regulatory process is 
because Members of the Senate rejected it 4 years ago at a time when 
even our Democratic colleagues had a supermajority. In other words, 
they could have done it when they wanted to when the Senate controlled 
the White House and both Chambers of Congress, but they chose not to do 
it then.
  No. 3, it fits with a broader and deeply disturbing matter. Time and 
time again, the President has used unelected bureaucrats to skirt the 
normal legislative progress and override the will of Congress and avoid 
any kind of electoral accountability.
  The point is this: When the President, who is not going to stand for 
election again, gets the Environmental Protection Agency to issue 
regulations, those bureaucrats don't run for election. The American 
people--my constituents in Texas and the Presiding Officer's 
constituents in West Virginia--can't vote the rascals out of office, so 
there is no accountability in the system. That is what the President 
was bragging about when he said: I have a phone, and I have a pen. He 
was effectively saying he was going to do it alone, and that is what he 
is trying to do here.
  The result has been a misguided explosion of burdensome and onerous 
regulations, and those have a cost to our economy. The last quarter--
the last 3 months of the year--we learned that instead of the economy 
growing in a way that will create more jobs and reduce unemployment, 
the economy actually contracted. It shrank by a full percentage point. 
One of the reasons why the economy shrank is because of overly 
burdensome regulations where there is no cost-benefit analysis, much 
less any cost-benefit calculus whatsoever.
  According to one estimate, between 2009 and 2013, Federal regulatory 
costs increased by nearly $500 billion--a truly astonishing figure. Not 
only have these regulations proven to be onerous and unwieldy, they 
have been implemented by agencies that are hopelessly incompetent at 
handling even basic responsibilities.
  As my friend the junior Senator from Oklahoma said a few years ago:

       It is absurd to allow an agency as incompetent as the EPA 
     to exercise vast new powers when they can't manage less 
     complex tasks. If the EPA can't train 250,000 contractors to 
     manage lead paint rules . . . why should we expect them to 
     regulate the energy-consuming processes used in every sector 
     of the economy?

  If this competence question of a huge bureaucracy sounds familiar, I 
think we are now learning that when the hubris overcomes the good 
judgment of leaders here in Washington and decides to take over one-
sixth of the economy, which is our health care sector, you get 
ObamaCare and the disaster that has proven to be in terms of its 
implementation.
  None of the essential promises that were made about how it would 
actually work have been kept. In other words, if you like what you 
have, you can keep it, the price would go down $2,500 for a family of 
four, and, yes, you can keep your doctor. None of those promises have 
proven to be true. Yet those were the promises upon which ObamaCare was 
passed. Now we see the administration make additional extravagant 
promises that can only be borne out of hubris based on what we have 
seen as the implementation of ObamaCare.
  Not only have these regulations proved to be onerous, they are not 
going to work the way the administration predicts, except we are pretty 
sure it will kill jobs and reduce economic growth and further extend 
this lengthy recession which has been the slowest economic recovery in 
America since the Great Depression.
  At a time of mass unemployment and historically low levels of labor 
force participation, America needs an energy policy that is projobs and 
proworker and profamily. This new EPA rule is the opposite of that. It 
would destroy jobs, it would hurt workers, and it would hurt consumers 
because it would raise the cost of living for middle-class families, 
including people on fixed incomes such as seniors. The fact that such a 
regulation is even being considered not in Congress but in the 
executive branch agencies such as the EPA,

[[Page 9408]]

amid the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression, 
illustrates once again how misguided this administration's priorities 
truly are.
  I wish to clarify once again that the debate over President Obama's 
EPA rule is not about the science of climate change; it is a debate 
about whether massive regulations should be forced to pass a simple 
cost-benefit analysis. The EPA rule clearly fails that test.
  For all of those reasons and plenty more, we will be continuing to 
urge President Obama, from this side of the aisle but in a bipartisan 
way, to put jobs and families ahead of politics and ideology.
  I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. PORTMAN. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 9 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Burwell Nomination

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the Presiding Officer 
allowing me to speak this afternoon. I am speaking in the context of a 
nomination we are likely to consider on the floor this week. I am told 
on Thursday we are going to be asked to confirm the President's 
nomination of Sylvia Burwell to be the next Secretary of Health and 
Human Services.
  This is a very important job for a number of reasons. One reason is 
it is the job in charge of implementing the Affordable Care Act, 
otherwise known as ObamaCare. Therefore, I think it is an appropriate 
time to talk about the urgent need for us to address some of the 
continuing problems we have had with implementation.
  This whole subject of ObamaCare of course has divided this Chamber 
pretty sharply over the last few years. Part of the reason is it was 
forced through the Congress without a single bipartisan vote; in other 
words, all Democratic votes and not a single Republican vote. Also, it 
was pushed through quickly, so it resulted in a lot of problems. We 
have seen that in terms of the implementation of ObamaCare generally, 
including some of the computer problems and some of the concerns people 
have about having their health care canceled and so on.
  I wish to speak about a specific issue with regard to implementation, 
one on which I hope we could be together, that this issue would unite 
us as Republicans and Democrats--that we would take forceful action to 
deal with it. It is an issue I think all of us agree on because it has 
to do with the taxpayers. It has to do with money that might be going 
out under ObamaCare that is not appropriate. It is ensuring that the 
subsidy payments in ObamaCare are going to the people who actually 
qualify for them.
  As this Chamber knows, the subsidies started to flow on January 1. 
ObamaCare provides subsidies to health care premiums for low- and 
middle-income Americans who don't qualify for Medicaid. They are not 
under the poverty line but are above the poverty line; actually, above 
133 percent of the poverty line. In fact, people who earn up to 400 
percent of the poverty line are eligible for these subsidies. Recently, 
the Kaiser Foundation estimated the number of people who can legally 
qualify for these funds and receive them is about 6.6 million 
Americans. These subsidies can be fairly large. They can exceed $10,000 
a year, for instance, for a family of four. So we are talking about 
billions of dollars of taxpayer money. The question is, Are they going 
to the right people? I think, because there is so much money involved, 
the American people should be able to rightly expect that the 
government has in place a system to ensure that the people who are 
supposed to get it are getting it and to ensure that those who are 
claiming the subsidies and receiving the taxpayer dollars are eligible 
for them.
  In January of this year, in response to a requirement actually 
attached to legislation that passed the Senate called the Ryan-Murray 
budget--in response to that legislation where there was a requirement 
that there be some sort of process put in place--the Secretary of 
Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, ensured Congress in a 
letter that HHS had ``implemented numerous systems and processes to 
carry out'' income verification procedures.
  So she sent a letter to the Congress saying: Don't worry about it. We 
have it covered. We have implemented numerous systems and processes to 
carry out income verification procedures.
  Unfortunately, what we are finding out now--and here we are, gosh, 6 
months later--is that a lot of those assurances might not be accurate, 
that it appears as though they have not put in place these processes.
  The Washington Post wrote a recent article that got my attention. It 
got my attention because it reported that, in fact, no permanent system 
has been built that is capable of verifying those eligible to receive 
the subsidies. In fact, according to internal reports that were 
obtained by the Washington Post, since no computer capability for 
verifying eligibility yet exists, Health and Human Services will begin 
sorting through all these applications by hand at some indefinite date 
in the future.
  So this is concerning. These internal reports are not reports we have 
here in Congress. They are not reports my constituents have. The 
American people have not been able to see these reports. But the 
Washington Post got hold of some that showed, in fact, they have not 
put in this permanent system or an automated system of any kind that 
you would normally expect with this kind of money going out the door.
  So here we are in 2014 and the U.S. Government is going to comb 
through, I guess by hand, literally millions of documents of people who 
are claiming subsidies--by hand--and try to figure out how to deal with 
it. It is like something out of a bad movie, but it is not a laughing 
matter because the consequences are significant.
  The Washington Post reports that the government may already be paying 
incorrect subsidies to more than 1 million people, although that is 
just a best guess. These fraudulent payments--if that is accurate--of 
course, would then be costing the American taxpayers millions, maybe 
billions of dollars.
  When news broke about this problem last month through this story in 
the Washington Post, I wrote a letter to Secretary Sebelius at the 
Health and Human Services agency. I also wrote it to the IRS 
Commissioner because the obvious thing to do would be to check the 
information that is given with the IRS records to see whether the 1040 
matches up with what you are saying your income is.
  In the letter, I said: Can you give us the answers about these very 
serious questions that have been raised, and can you tell us what the 
Department of Health and Human Services is doing about this?
  I asked for a response by June 1. It is now past June 1 and I have 
received nothing but silence in response. That is why I have come to 
the floor today to say, look, I do not think anybody on either side of 
the aisle in the Senate thinks this is acceptable. Some on the other 
side might say: Well, we are more concerned about people who are not 
getting the subsidies they are eligible for because the verification is 
not in place to help them. That is fine. The point is that the 
subsidies ought to go to the people who are eligible. Whether they are 
overstating or understating their income and therefore made eligible or 
not eligible, there ought to be a system in place. That is a minimum 
requirement, I would think, that we would all want to have in place to 
be able to, again, save these payments from going out in a fraudulent 
way, to the tune of what could be billions of dollars. I cannot imagine 
anyone thinks the current situation is acceptable.
  So we are going to see if HHS gets its act together and gets serious 
about enforcing these rules. I think it is going to require new 
leadership. That is why I am hoping that with the nomination and debate 
this week of Sylvia Burwell

[[Page 9409]]

to be the next Secretary of HHS, we can have a discussion about this 
issue and that she can provide some of that new leadership from the top 
to ensure that indeed we do have accountability through the system and 
we can figure out whether this situation will be resolved.
  Unfortunately, I think it is also going to require leadership from 
the top-top, meaning from the White House as well. This is not an 
isolated incident, unfortunately, of incompetence, I would say, on 
behalf of our Federal Government in implementing in this case a very 
complicated law. We have seen this recently with the scandal that has 
involved the VA--the VA health system--another big complicated system 
that is obviously not working to take care of the needs of our 
veterans, who should be at the front of the line receiving the best 
care and too often we find out are at the back of the line or maybe are 
not on the list at all, as we saw with regard to the Phoenix VA center, 
where 1,700 people were just taken off the list altogether. We have 
seen it with regard to the IRS scandal, where you have the Internal 
Revenue Service actually going after Americans because of their 
political beliefs. Nothing could be more wrong in terms of building 
faith and trust in our Federal system than to think that the tax 
collector is going after folks because of their political beliefs.
  So all these recent issues that have come up of incompetence and of 
the government not keeping the trust are bad. It is bad even in good 
times. Today is not good times because already that faith in the 
Federal Government is at record lows. The faith in this institution is 
at a record low, they say.
  It should be our responsibility to begin to rebuild that faith by 
doing what makes sense. What is going on at HHS does not make sense. 
Everyone knows there needs to be a system in place and a permanent 
automated system to deal with this; the same with the VA, the same with 
the IRS. I hope we see that kind of leadership. I hope we can do that 
because it is the right thing to do for taxpayers, but it also rebuilds 
trust in the American Government system. To do that is going to require 
some serious and immediate action.
  In the case of HHS, I call on the administration today to make good 
on the promise they made in January where they said: No problem. We 
have it covered. We have a system in place to ensure that there are not 
mispayments going out, that only folks who are eligible are going to 
get these payments.
  In the process of Sylvia Burwell's nomination, let's raise this 
issue. Let's encourage her to show leadership at HHS to be able to deal 
with this issue. Let's ensure that subsidies are going to the right 
people and that taxpayers are being protected.
  I thank the Presiding Officer for the time.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Student Loan Debt

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, during this last break I went back to 
Illinois and visited a lot of college campuses. I went to Augustana 
College, which is in the Quad Cities, and then went to Illinois State 
University in Normal, IL, and then down to the University of Illinois.
  At each one of those campuses I had a press conference about student 
debt. Student debt today has reached a point where we have to pay close 
attention to it--and we should. The vast majority of Americans ask a 
very basic question: Senator, is there anything you are doing today 
that really is going to help my family? For 44 million Americans 
currently paying on student loans in America, legislation that is going 
to be introduced tomorrow can make a big difference.
  I am cosponsoring a bill with Elizabeth Warren, the Senator from the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a very bright lady who was on the 
faculty of the Harvard Law School and who understands these issues 
better than almost anyone I have ever met. She is leading the way on a 
college student loan refinancing bill.
  Here is what we are trying to do. We are trying to get those students 
who are trapped in big debts with high interest rates a chance to 
refinance their loans. How significant could it be? Well, when I met 
these students at different schools, they told me their stories. As a 
former college borrower myself, as a father raising three kids who went 
through college, it was sad. It was really sad to hear their stories 
because the amount of debt that students are running into now is 
dramatically higher than anything those of us who were in the early 
stages of college loans ever experienced.
  I will not even tell you how much I borrowed because it makes me 
sound ancient. But it scared me to death when I borrowed that money to 
go through college and law school for fear I would never pay it back. 
It turns out I did as I was supposed to. But students today many times 
find themselves so deeply in debt they just cannot get out from under 
it.
  Now, I am going to set over here on this side a whole category of 
speeches on institutions known as for-profit colleges and universities. 
They are in a special place in my thinking. For-profit colleges and 
universities, who are they? The biggest one is the University of 
Phoenix. Apollo Group owns a series of universities. You have seen 
their advertising, I will bet.
  They, at one point, had over 450,000 students in this University of 
Phoenix network of schools across the country. The second biggest is 
DeVry, another for-profit university out of my State of Illinois. 
Kaplan is the third largest. I am going to set them over here because 
they are in a special category. They are in a category of colleges and 
universities that we ought to be doing something about.
  Three numbers tell the story about the for-profit colleges and 
universities. Ten percent of high school graduates go to for-profit 
colleges and universities. Ten percent of America's high school 
graduates go to these schools. These schools receive 20 percent of all 
Federal aid to education--10 percent of the students, 20 percent of the 
Federal aid.
  These for-profit colleges and universities receive over $32 billion a 
year in Federal aid. Why is it so much if they only have 10 percent of 
the students? Because they charge so much when it comes to tuition. But 
here is the number: 46. Forty-six percent of all student loan defaults 
are students out of for-profit colleges and universities.
  Why? Worthless diplomas, too much debt, and the students cannot find 
work to pay off their debts. Now, what if you have a college loan? 
There is something you ought to know about it. You probably heard it. 
It bears repeating. There are only a handful of debts in America that 
you can incur as an American citizen that cannot be discharged in 
bankruptcy: taxes--you have to pay those--child support, alimony, and 
college student loans.
  No matter what happens to you financially, there is virtually no way 
out. The loan you take out to go to college is with you for a lifetime. 
Even in bankruptcy you cannot discharge it. At the end of bankruptcy, 
it is still sitting there. Unfortunately, the interest is growing.
  That is why we have to take a look at it. Let's move aside from the 
for-profit college world, which I think is a separate issue, but a very 
important one, and look at the big picture. For too many Americans the 
promise of a fair shot at an affordable college education has become a 
long shot. Average tuition and fees at 4-year public colleges has more 
than tripled in the last 30 years. I can guarantee you that income for 
American families has not tripled in that same period.
  Tuition has outpaced inflation for 32 straight years. The cost of 
education at all colleges and universities has been going up 
dramatically. No other major

[[Page 9410]]

consumer expenditure, including health care, can make that claim. It is 
not just low-income students who feel the impact of these rising costs. 
It is middle-income students and their families as well. Since 2003 the 
amount of student loan debt in America has quadrupled. Nationally there 
are now almost 40 million borrowers with more than $1 trillion in debt. 
There is more student loan debt in America today than the combined sum 
total of all credit card debt. That is more than there is in auto 
loans. Only mortgages would be a higher category of debt in terms of 
its total cost.
  The average student loan debt increased by 49 percent between 2005 
and 2012 to $27,850. On average, Illinois graduates in the class of 
2012 left with a little over $28,000 in debt, but their individual 
debts, as you might guess, are much higher; and 1.7 million Illinoisans 
have outstanding student loan debt out of a population of about 12.5 
million.
  What effect does $1 trillion in student loan debt have on the 
American economy. The Federal Reserve warns us that it is threatening 
current and future economic growth. The student loan debt crisis has 
been compared to the mortgage crisis we went through 8 or 9 years ago. 
It is ingrained in American culture that each successive generation 
wants to do better than the previous one. But student loan debt is 
crippling middle-class growth for younger generations.
  Currently the median household wealth of people my age, in the 55-to-
65 bracket, is 44 times the net worth of the median household of people 
younger than 35. People under the age of 35 are struggling. This is 
historically unprecedented and has a lot to do with the student loan 
debt.
  I have heard from so many people in my State about this issue. They 
say student loan debt is preventing them from buying a car, borrowing 
any more money to finish their education, having their own place to 
live, getting married and, once married, having children. I have met 
couples who have said: We made a family decision; no kids until we pay 
off the student loans; I am not sure we will be able to pay them off in 
time to make that decision.
  Think about that for a second. They cannot even start a family 
because of the student debts and the fear that they are going to 
default on them. I heard it firsthand back in Illinois last week. One 
student I met, Mabinty Tarawallie, is struggling with student loan debt 
even though she has done everything right. She immigrated to the United 
States from Africa when she was 11 years old. Her family was very poor 
but they told her: You have to have an education.
  She graduated from high school, went to a local community college--a 
good place to start--and completed her undergraduate degree in 
sociology at the University of Illinois.
  She told me she wanted to help others pick themselves up out of 
poverty as she did, so she went to graduate school for a master's 
degree in social work. She recently graduated from a program at the 
University of Illinois. Although she was able to get through her 
undergraduate years without much debt, she spread out her graduate 
studies over 3 years as she was raising her family of three kids.
  She had one graduate assistantship, but she had to pay for the rest 
with loans. To compound this problem, her husband, another University 
of Illinois graduate student in education, also has student loans. 
Together, Mabinty and her husband, now that they have completed their 
degrees, have a debt of $150,000. One wants be a social worker and the 
other wants to be a teacher.
  Now she worries about how her family is going to be able to cope, 
with debt three times the annual salary she might receive as a social 
worker. The irony is even as a college degree becomes harder to afford 
for the middle class, it is more important than ever that people get 
educated, trained, and skilled for better jobs. Only college-educated 
workers have had wage gains in the past 30 years. If you don't go the 
college route, your chances of success are diminished dramatically. 
That is why we want to address these serious issues.
  This bill I am talking about, the one we are going to introduce 
tomorrow, will give students with college student loan debt who are 
current on their loans an opportunity to refinance.
  I talked to Mabinty and other students. It meant for her that her 
interest rate would come down from 6.8 percent to 3.8 percent. If you 
have ever gone out to get a mortgage or you know somebody who did, they 
will explain to you that 3 percent of your interest rate is a big deal. 
If you can get your interest rate reduced by 3 percent, your chances of 
paying off the principal are going to be a lot better.
  This bill I have cosponsored with Elizabeth Warren, Jack Reed, and 
others is called the Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act. 
It will help millions of current borrowers refinance their Federal or 
private student loans into these lower Federal interest rates. Those 
with Federal loans can refinance into lower rates, the same rates 
available to students who took out new loans this year.
  Under the Warren bill, those with private loans--many of whom have 
sky-high interest rates and are facing collection agencies beating up 
on them--can refinance with Federal loans with lower rates and strong 
consumer protection. Refinancing, incidentally, is fully paid for. This 
is a point I want to make, because this is where we lose the other side 
of the aisle. This is where we can't find bipartisan cosponsorship for 
refinancing college loans.
  Here is how we pay for it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
  Mr. DURBIN. I ask for 2 additional minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Most of us have heard the name Warren Buffett, one of the 
wealthiest men in America. He raised the question a few years ago: Why, 
in America, is my income tax rate as a multimillionaire lower than my 
secretary's income tax rate? There is an explanation in the Tax Code, 
but it isn't a very good one. Warren Buffett said I should be paying 
more than she is paying. So we have come up with something called the 
Buffet rule, which says if you are in the multimillionaire category, 
you are going to pay a higher income tax rate than your secretary.
  What a radical idea that is. I am just kidding. I think it is 
reasonable, and that is how we pay for refinancing college loans.
  The problem is that we go to the other side of the aisle and say: We 
want to refinance college loans. It is going to take some money to do 
it. We will put in the Buffett rule so millionaires pay more in their 
income taxes. They say: We don't want any part of it. We will not 
increase taxes on anybody.
  Well, by taking that position, they are sticking 44 million Americans 
with college loan debt at higher interest rates and all the problems 
they generate.
  Which is better, that millionaires pay a little more so working 
families across America have a fair shot of paying off their college 
loans or saying we are not going to touch the Tax Code for any reason 
whatsoever--and isn't it a darn shame for these students and their 
families.
  Well, it is pretty obvious to me what we should be doing.
  I met Shiann Poshard last week at Illinois State University. She 
graduated with a teaching degree and about $30,000 in student debt. She 
has a job, and she is going to be teaching in public schools in Eureka, 
IL. Even so, on a first-year teaching salary--with an upcoming wedding, 
incidentally--her student loan debt will undoubtedly be a burden. If 
she is allowed to refinance her loan, which she took out at 6.8 
percent, she could cut her interest rate almost in half. That will make 
a big difference.
  Tomorrow, when this legislation is introduced, I hope anyone who has 
a family, where they have borrowed money for college, who has a son or 
daughter deep in debt and wondering how they are going to get out from 
under it, contact your Senator or your Congressman and ask them: Are 
you going to be part of this college student loan refinancing effort?

[[Page 9411]]

  I hope they will say yes. We need bipartisan support to help these 
students out of the debt they are facing today.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will be 2 
minutes of debate prior to the vote on the confirmation of the 
nomination.
  Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent to yield back all time on the 
pending nomination.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the nomination 
of Sharon Y. Bowen, of New York, to be a Commissioner of the Commodity 
Futures Trading Commission for a term expiring April 13, 2018?
  Mr. JOHANNS. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Michigan.
  Mr. LEVIN. On this vote I have a pair with the Senator from New 
Jersey [Mr. Booker]. If he were present and voting, he would vote 
``yea.'' If I were permitted to vote, I would vote ``nay;'' therefore, 
I withhold my vote.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey, (Mr. Booker) 
and the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Udall) are necessarily absent.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the 
Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman), the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. 
Cochran), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. 
Boozman) would have voted ``nay'' and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Lee) 
would have voted ``nay''.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 48, nays 46, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 167 Ex.]

                                YEAS--48

     Baldwin
     Begich
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Boxer
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Donnelly
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Hagan
     Harkin
     Heinrich
     Heitkamp
     Hirono
     Johnson (SD)
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Pryor
     Reed
     Reid
     Rockefeller
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall (NM)
     Walsh
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--46

     Alexander
     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Burr
     Chambliss
     Coats
     Coburn
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Enzi
     Fischer
     Flake
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johanns
     Johnson (WI)
     Kirk
     Landrieu
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Nelson
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rubio
     Sanders
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Thune
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                   PRESENT AND GIVING A LIVE PAIR--1

       
     Levin
       

                             NOT VOTING--5

     Booker
     Boozman
     Cochran
     Lee
     Udall (CO)
  The nomination was confirmed.

                          ____________________