[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9546-9551]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            MORNING BUSINESS

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will be 
in a period of morning business until 5:30 p.m., with Senators 
permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.
  Mr. REID. Madam President, I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Madam President.


                          Higher Education Act

  Last year something happened in Washington, DC, that most of us in 
the Senate and most Americans would like to see more of. The President 
and the Republican House of Representatives and a bipartisan group here 
in the Senate worked together to reform the student loan program. It is 
a lot of money, and it affects a lot of students.
  Every year the Federal Government loans about $100 billion to 
students who attend colleges and universities around this country. We 
have 6,000 of those higher education institutions. In addition to those 
loans--which, of course, students pay back--the Federal Government 
grants about $33 or $34 billion each year in Pell grants--up to 
$5,645--which students don't pay back.
  Last year we were in this usual pattern that has developed around the 
Congress where student loans become a semi-annual political stunt. 
Every 2 years, before an election, one party or the other would show up 
with a student loan proposal to try to appeal to students, hoping that 
students and others in America would reward them with their votes.
  Last year we changed that for new student loans. The President and 
the Republican House of Representatives and the Democratic Senate in a 
bipartisan way worked together to reform the student loan program by 
applying a market-priced system to the $100 billion or so we loan every 
year, and saying to the students: We will give you the benefit of that. 
You don't have to wait for Congress to engage in its semi-annual 
political stunt to know what your loan is.
  The result was that for loans for undergraduate students, which are 
85 percent of all the loans, we were able to cut in half the interest 
rate on student loans for undergraduate students in America without 
raising taxes and without raising the debt. That resulted from 
overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate. It had strong support of 
the chairman of the Senate education committee, the HELP Committee, 
Senator Harkin and I supported it, as did many others. It worked the 
way the Senate is supposed to work.
  This body is for the purpose of taking an important issue, which 
student loans are, having an extended debate on it until we come to a 
consensus, which we did, and then coming to a result the American 
people could approve. We did that as well.
  Now this week we are seeing something entirely different. Senate 
Democrats would interrupt a serious discussion that is going on in the 
Senate education committee about reauthorizing the Higher Education 
Act, which was first enacted in 1965. Senator Harkin, the Senator from 
Iowa, is our chairman. I am the ranking Republican on that committee. 
We have had 10 hearings. We have been hard at work. We have had 
terrific testimony, some very good ideas about the student loan program 
and about a lot of issues affecting higher education. We are doing what 
we are supposed to do in the Senate: We are trying to come to a 
conclusion so that we can recommend in a bipartisan way to this full 
body what to do about higher education for the next several years, 
including student loans.
  Yet, all of a sudden, we hear that Senate Democrats want to show up 
on the floor with a partisan, political stunt that interrupts the work 
of the Senate education committee, and here is what they would do: They 
would raise individual income taxes, they would raise the debt, and, 
based upon data from the Congressional Research Service, they would 
give some former students with old student loans a $1-a-day Federal 
subsidy to pay off their loans.
  Let me go back over the terms of this proposal just so everybody has 
it in mind. The main issue is $1 a day subsidy. That is the benefit. It 
doesn't do anything for current or new students. For some former 
students--according to the Congressional Budget Office, maybe half the 
loans--the taxpayers will give them $1 a day to help pay off their 
student loans.
  Along with that, we increase the Federal debt by up to $420 billion. 
That debt is out of control to begin with. The Congressional Budget 
Office has estimated that over the next 10 years we are going to go 
from $200 billion to $800 billion just to pay interest on the debt. In 
10 years we will be spending more on interest on our national debt than 
we will on national defense. Yet for this political stunt we are going 
to run that up another $420 billion maybe or close to $\1/2\ trillion.
  That is not all. To pay for all of this, we are going to raise 
individual income taxes by $72 billion. This is a familiar proposal. 
This is the class warfare tax increase the Senate has rejected eight 
times. There is nobody in this Senate who thinks this will pass the 
Senate

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the ninth time it is brought up. It is only being brought up and 
interrupting what we are doing in our committee for a partisan 
political stunt.
  We are going to raise the debt and increase taxes for what? Well, to 
help students pay off their loans. So they get $1 a day to pay off what 
loan? Well, 85 percent of the student loans--and there are a lot of 
them. There is over $1 trillion worth of outstanding student loans 
because we have a lot of students and we are a big country. We have 
6,000 colleges and universities. But 85 percent of loans are for 
undergraduate students and they have $21,600 on average. That is right. 
We are talking about 1 or 2 years for students who go to community 
colleges. Some get a 4-year degree. But for 85 percent of the student 
loans that are undergraduate loans, $21,600 is the average debt. It is 
not $300,000. It is not $200,000. It is not $100,000. It is $21,600. Of 
those undergraduate loans, this is the average debt for a Federal 
student loan.
  If you attend a 4-year college or university, such as the University 
of Tennessee or the University of California or Michigan or wherever 
you are, and you borrowed money to go to school--the average debt is 
$27,300 for students who graduate with a 4-year college degree.
  It is about the same for a new car loan. Sometimes students take out 
a car loan before they take out a student loan. To get a sense of how 
big a burden this loan is for the average graduate with a 4-year 
degree, it is the same as a car loan. I suspect that if we are going to 
have a $1-a-day taxpayer subsidy to pay off a $27,000 student loan, the 
next thing you know the Democrats are going to show up during the 
election year and say: Let's have $1 a day to help people pay off their 
$27,000 car loans. At least we know that the day you drive your car off 
the lot, it starts depreciating.
  What do we know about a college education? If you have a 4-year 
degree, according to the College Board, it is worth $1 million in 
increased earnings during your lifetime. That is according to the 
College Board. No one really contradicts that. I saw a very good 
article by a New York Times economist a couple of weeks ago that had a 
little different number. They were using a net negative of $\1/2\ 
million after you deduct the cost of going to college. A person with a 
college education will have $\1/2\ million to $1 million in increased 
earnings. Can you think of a better investment than $27,000 to earn $1 
million over your lifetime? Well, that is what a college degree does.
  Our friends on the other side of the aisle are saying we need to 
raise the debt and taxes so we can help college graduates--who will be 
earning $1 million more over their lifetime--pay off a $27,000 loan. 
College students don't need a $1-a-day Federal taxpayer subsidy to pay 
off a $27,000 student loan, which is the average loan for a 4-year 
college degree. They need a job, and Republicans are prepared--if this 
comes to the floor--to offer amendments to help create more new good 
jobs. We tried several times to do that, but the majority leader 
doesn't like us to bring up these issues.
  For example, we would like to offer a bill to increase the hours of 
the workweek from 30 to 40 hours under the health care law, which has 
bipartisan support, but it would change the health care law, so we 
can't offer that amendment.
  We would like to offer an amendment to build the Keystone Pipeline. 
Well, that has 60 or so Senators on both sides of the aisle--maybe more 
than that--who voted for it and say they support it, but the majority 
leader doesn't want us to bring up that one.
  We would like to have an amendment to give the President the trade 
promotion authority that President Obama has asked for. President Obama 
sees the world. He sees Asia. He is negotiating a treaty with Asia and 
a trade treaty with Europe. He would like to see more American exports 
go to Europe and Asia, which would increase jobs at home. He stood 
right here at the State of the Union and asked Congress to approve 
that, but the majority leader said: No, we are not going to bring that 
up.
  We have a Workforce Investment Act that we hope will come up this 
week.
  We would like to repeal the ObamaCare individual mandate.
  There are a number of provisions we would like to bring up as far as 
jobs go, but this $1-a-day subsidy is supposed to be the keystone of 
the Democrats' jobs program. We are ready to talk about jobs, and we 
will have amendments when this comes to the floor.
  If the subject is education, we are ready to talk about education. It 
would certainly be a lot better if we considered bills on the floor 
that have actually gone through the education committee.
  I complimented the Senator from Iowa earlier. I have enjoyed working 
with him. I am the ranking member on the Republican side, and he is the 
ranking member on the Democrat side. The Health, Education, Labor and 
Pensions Committee has been the most productive committee in this 
Senate. It has a large jurisdiction. We passed 19 bills out in a 
bipartisan way, and 10 of them have become law. I don't think any other 
committee can say that. We take our work very seriously, just as we are 
doing today on the Higher Education Act and just as we did when we 
tried to fix No Child Left Behind.
  The HELP Committee spent a good deal of time on No Child Left Behind. 
We reported a bill to the Senate floor. Republicans and Democrats 
offered competing proposals. Democrats effectively wanted to double 
down on what I call a national school board and Republicans wanted to 
reverse the trend towards a national school board by sending most 
decisions back to State and local communities.
  We want to fix No Child Left Behind. We have competing visions of how 
to do this, but I committed to bring the Democratic bill to the floor 
so we could have a debate. The House is ready to fix No Child Left 
Behind, and the Senate education committee is ready to fix No Child 
Left Behind. We want to have a debate about education this week. Let's 
bring up a bill that has been considered by the committee--where there 
are competing proposals--and fix No Child Left Behind. Better schools 
means higher college graduation rates, and that means better jobs.
  We are ready to offer our amendments for better jobs. We are ready to 
offer our amendments for better schools.
  In addition to our proposal for reversing the trend toward a national 
school board, I have introduced a proposal to create scholarships for 
kids. Did you know that if you took 80 Federal education programs that 
spend about $24 billion a year and gave States authority to do this, 
they could create $2,100 scholarships that follow 11 million low-income 
children in America to the public or accredited private school of the 
parents' choice? We would not impose a school choice plan on any State. 
We don't believe in mandates. But if a State wanted to use the money to 
follow the low-income student to their school so they can have an 
afterschool program or an extra teacher, a Governor could do that under 
this proposal.
  Senator Scott of South Carolina has offered a similar proposal for 
the six million children with disabilities. His proposal says: If you 
have a child with Down syndrome and find a school that better fits that 
child's needs, why not allow that Federal disability money to follow 
the child to the school they attend? Let the parent make that choice. 
We are ready to offer that amendment.
  We have a quality charter schools proposal. Six percent of the public 
schools in America are charter schools. Charter schools are public 
schools that give parents more choices and teachers more freedom to 
serve the children who are in that school. They began more than 20 
years ago, and they have bipartisan support. President Clinton was in 
Nashville not along ago announcing his support and raising money for a 
charter school.
  I have an amendment to stop the Education Secretary from becoming 
chairman of a national school board. States are struggling with the 
unworkable requirements of No Child Left Behind. There is a provision 
in the law that allows the Secretary of Education to grant waivers to 
states from certain

[[Page 9548]]

provisions of No Child Left Behind, but this Secretary, who is a fine 
man and a great friend, has said: If Oregon or Hawaii or Washington or 
Tennessee wants a waiver, they must agree to do four or five things 
that aren't otherwise required in the law. States have to adopt certain 
standards, implement certain teacher evaluation systems, and set 
performance targets as conditions for receiving a waiver. I don't think 
the Secretary of Education has the authority to place these conditions 
on states. The American people don't want a national school board.
  If they want to talk about education, we are ready with amendments on 
education. If they want to introduce a class warfare tax, we are ready 
to talk about taxes as well. We would like to repeal the medical device 
tax, and we are looking for an opportunity to offer that. If they are 
going to put a tax provision on the floor, let's have a tax debate. 
Let's have a debate about permanent State and local tax deductions. 
Let's prohibit the individual tax mandate in ObamaCare. Let's make the 
expensing of Section 179 permanent. Senator Thune has that proposal, 
and the House is acting on it this week. Let's make the research and 
development tax credit permanent, which has bipartisan support as well. 
If the subject is just higher education, we have amendments about that 
as well.
  The place for these amendments and this discussion is in our Senate 
education committee where we are discussing those ideas today. The way 
to do it this year is the way we did it last year. When the President, 
to his great credit, saw an opportunity to work with the Republicans in 
the House, he came over here to a bipartisan group, and we hammered out 
an agreement on a very big subject that, as I said, nearly cut the 
interest rate in half on undergraduate student loans.
  Why in the world do Senate Democrats want to waste a week on a 
political stunt? We thought we ended that with the student loan bill 
last year. We have veterans standing in lines at clinics, we have 
appropriations bills waiting to be considered that deal with cancer 
research and national defense, and Democrats say: No, let's put that 
aside. Let's have a political stunt on higher education even though we 
know it is not going anywhere. We know it is not going anywhere.
  I am very disappointed by this.
  The $1-a-day taxpayer subsidy to help some former students with loans 
pay off a $27,000 debt is an example of how Democrats hope to get some 
votes. I thought we put that behind us. This is one reason the American 
people lose confidence in the Senate.
  This body is described in a book called ``The American Senate,'' 
written by the late Neil MacNeil and the former Historian of the 
Senate. It is described as the one piece of authentic genius in the 
American constitutional system. Why is that? Because there are 100 of 
us. We operate by unanimous consent. It is a place for extended debate 
on important issues until we reach consensus.
  Our Founders were so wise because they thought they had a complicated 
country, but it was not nearly as complex as it is today. The only way 
to govern a complex country is through consensus, just as we did last 
year on new student loans.
  I would like to see the Senate move back to the place it was a few 
years ago. It was not that long ago. Many of the Members of the Senate 
don't know about it because so many Members are new. Did you know that 
half of the Members of the Senate have been here one term or less? They 
have not really seen the Senate operate the way it is supposed to 
operate.
  The Republican leader said that if Republicans were in charge of the 
Senate, he would like to operate it the way a former Democratic leader 
did, Senator Mike Mansfield, which is, No. 1, let bills go through 
committee the way we do in our education committee, and No. 2, bring 
them to the floor for a robust debate. Let people put up their ideas. 
The idea is that the majority has the right to set the agenda and the 
minority has the right to offer amendments. In the Senate, the idea is 
to have an extended discussion until a consensus is reached, if you 
can.
  I remember Senator Byrd and Senator Baker--I was here as an aide 
then, not as a Senator--would say to a chairman or a ranking member: 
Bring me a bill. Today, they would say to Chairman Harkin: Bring me the 
fix No Child Left Behind bill, if you have the Ranking Members' 
support. I would say in this case: The bill doesn't have my support, 
but I support taking it to the floor. I will stand there, he will stand 
there and we will open it to debate and Republicans will try to amend 
it. We may win, we may lose, but then we will send it to the House. 
Then we have a conference and the bill comes back and we come to a 
consensus. How could we get all that done? The majority leader could 
stand up on Monday and say: We are going to fix No Child Left Behind 
this week, and we are going to finish by Saturday, or we are going to 
finish by 1 week from Saturday. Members may offer all the amendments 
they want, but they are going to be here Saturday and Sunday. So pretty 
soon, by about Thursday, many Senators would say: I have a grandchild's 
soccer game and I might want to go home and it regulates that way.
  It is never perfect. This is a place where we debate big issues, but 
the idea that Senators can't offer amendments on important issues is 
making this Senate into a trivial place instead of a place where it is 
an authentic piece of genius.
  The Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Barrasso, did some interesting 
research. He pointed out that since July, there have only been nine 
amendments offered by Republicans that received a rollcall vote--nine 
amendments offered by Republicans since last July that received a 
rollcall vote. In Tennessee they would say that is akin to being in the 
Grand Ole Opry and not being allowed to sing. We are supposed to have a 
say about student loans, about Iran, about Ukraine, and about all of 
these issues. We might win or lose, but on behalf of our constituents, 
we are supposed to have a say.
  That is not nearly as bad as what the Senator from Wyoming discovered 
when he did a little more research, and this is what he found: While 
Senate Republicans have had nine amendments since last July, guess how 
many amendments Senate Democrats have had--seven. According to the 
Senator from Wyoming, 676 amendments, and the majority leader has 
allowed 7 rollcall votes since last July. How do we explain that when 
we go home?
  How do we explain a political stunt on student loans that everybody 
knows is a political stunt that will not pass? How do we explain to 
veterans standing in lines at clinics and to Appropriations Committee 
members waiting to deal with bills to fund cancer research and national 
defense that a political stunt is more important? This is not the way 
the Senate is supposed to operate.
  Let's go back to this $1-a-day stunt. It is unfair to students, it is 
unfair to taxpayers, and it is unfair to future generations.
  It is unfair to students because it treats former students better 
than it treats current students and new students. This proposal--the 
Senate Democrats' proposal that is being brought to the floor this 
week--doesn't do a single thing for a student if he or she is a current 
student or if they are going to be a student next year or the following 
year. It just helps some former students with old loans, and it treats 
them better than it would treat a new student because it will freeze in 
place an interest rate that 3 years from now will treat former students 
with old loans better than new students whose rate will be determined 
by the market and that rate might be a little higher.
  The Senate Democratic proposal is unfair to taxpayers for two 
reasons. First, it increases individual income taxes by $72 billion. 
That is a big number. It has been rejected by the Senate eight times. 
It is a class warfare tax focused on a few people.
  Second, my colleagues may have heard that the government profits off 
of students under the student loan program. In fact, the reverse is 
true. When we use the accounting system the Congressional Budget Office 
says we ought to use, the student loan program actually costs taxpayers 
$88 billion over the

[[Page 9549]]

next 10 years. Let me repeat that. We will hear it said by the 
advocates of the $1-a-day subsidy to help students pay off student 
loans that the government is profiting from the students but not if we 
use the accounting system the Congressional Budget Office has said we 
should use. What is the difference? The Congressional Budget Office 
says the system we are using doesn't take into account the risk that 
students might not pay back their loans. Today the Congressional Budget 
Office estimates that less than 10 percent of student loan volume is in 
default.
  This proper accounting system is not foreign to the Senate. It was 
used with the Troubled Asset Relief Program--the so-called bailout--
because the idea of assessing the true cost of the program needed to 
fully account for risk.
  The Congressional Budget Office recommends that we use fair value 
accounting. They consider that a better methodology. They say the 
student loan program, as it exists under that accounting system, will 
cost taxpayers $88 billion over the next 10 years. As I said, the main 
reason is that the fair value system takes into account risk--the risk 
that students might not pay off some of their loans.
  For those who might not know about the Congressional Budget Office, 
we pay this group to tell us the truth. They are nonpartisan. They 
don't always tell us what we want to hear, and we usually try to ignore 
it when they don't and say, well, we heard a different point of view. 
But here is what they said `` . . . under the fair-value approach, 
estimates are based on market values--market prices when those prices 
are available or approximations of market prices when directly 
comparable figures are unavailable--which more fully account for the 
cost of the risk the government takes on. In particular, the fair-value 
approach accounts for the cost of the market risk,'' which the other 
accounting method we currently use does not.
  The Congressional Budget Office continues in a May 2014 report:

       The government is exposed to market risk when the economy 
     is weak because borrowers default on their debt obligations 
     more frequently and recoveries from borrowers are lower.

  That makes sense.

       When the government extends credit, the associated market 
     risk of those obligations is effectively passed along to 
     taxpayers, who, as investors, would view that risk as having 
     a cost. Therefore, the fair-value approach offers a much more 
     comprehensive estimate of Federal costs.

  Last year, when the President worked in a bipartisan way with 
Senators and with the Republican House, we came to a conclusion that 
didn't raise taxes, that didn't raise the debt, and that still cut 
rates nearly in half for undergraduates.
  Finally, the Senate Democratic proposal is unfair to future 
generations because it could add as much as $420 billion to an already 
out-of-control national debt. It does this by allowing private loans to 
be turned into public loans--private debt becomes the government's 
debt. Recently, as I said, the Congressional Budget Office warned that 
interest on the debt in the next 10 years will rise from $227 billion 
to $876 billion, an amount greater than the entire cost of our Nation's 
national defense.
  So this $1-a-day subsidy does not justify this unfairness to other 
students, to taxpayers, and to future generations.
  Let me conclude by talking about the real problem and the real 
solutions with student loans. Today the President held a press 
conference in which he proposed issuing a regulation by Executive order 
that would extend an income based repayment plan to millions more 
students. We have some questions about this. We don't know what it will 
cost and apparently neither does he. We know it doesn't take effect for 
another year or so because it will take some time to figure it out. I 
have had a hard time figuring out, reading the law, where the President 
has the authority to do this. It is based upon the health care law in 
2010 which included provisions about student loans and included an 
income based repayment plan that affects loans issued after July 1, 
2014. But the President, both with the Executive order today and his 
2011 Executive order on the same subject, includes loans issued before 
July 1, 2014. So we don't know the cost and it has questionable 
authority.
  So here we have a press conference at the White House and a political 
stunt on the Senate floor dealing with loans. We know better than that. 
The President knows he could sit down with those of us in the Senate 
who are working on student loans--and in the House--and say: Here, I 
have some ideas about income based repayment. We would say: Mr. 
President, No. 1, we respect what you did last year and would like to 
work with you again; and, No. 2, you are on the right subject.
  There are two big problems--real problems--with student loans. One is 
the complexity of the income based repayment plans. The truth is the 
Obama administration itself is guilty of causing most of the complexity 
because the first income based repayment plan was created by law in 
2007 and then it was amended in 2010 and then the President issued a 
regulation expanding the program in 2011 and now there is another 
regulation to do the same. Basically, it started out that if a student 
has a student loan to pay back but they are not making much money, then 
they don't have to pay more than 15 percent of their discretionary 
income. That is not even total income; it is just part of a person's 
income. If they can't pay it off over 25 years, the government will 
forgive it. What the bill did in 2010 was lower the amount to 10 
percent of income for borrowers, and if the loan isn't paid off in 20 
years, the government will forgive it. Income based repayment plans are 
available today for students.
  Let's talk about what is already on the books, even if the 
President's Order today doesn't go into effect for students. For 
students who want lower monthly payments on their student loans, there 
are already provisions in Federal law that allow the typical 
undergraduate borrower to lower his or her payment by $60 more per 
month than the $1-a-day plan from Senate Democrats. For the typical 
graduate student, the existing repayment plans could lower monthly 
payments by $300 a month more than the Senate Democratic plan. Under 
current law, as I said, if the loan isn't paid off in 20 or 25 years, 
the government forgives it.
  So here is what we have in America today. There are $100 billion in 
student loans every year, $33 billion in Federal grants, all going out 
to students at a very low rate. Most of the students don't have any 
credit history, and they don't need it to get the money.
  We hear a lot of talk about the expense of a college education, and 
at some colleges it is very expensive. When I went to school, I had two 
or three jobs and a couple of scholarships. That is how I was able to 
go to Vanderbilt University. But for students today who want a less 
expensive college education, it is important for them to know that the 
average cost of tuition and fees at a 2-year public college--and there 
are some excellent ones all over our country--is $3,200. The average 
cost of tuition and fees at a public 4-year institution--and some of 
the best 4-year institutions in America are public 4-year institutions, 
including California, Tennessee, Hawaii, and Washington State; these 
are very good universities--is $8,900. Three out of four college 
students go to 2-year public colleges where the tuition and fees is 
$3,200 or to a 4-year public college where tuition and fees is just 
under $9,000.
  In addition, 40 percent of those same students--the three out of four 
who go to public colleges and universities--40 percent of them have a 
grant which they don't have to pay back. It is called a Pell grant, and 
it may be as much as $5,645. So the truth is that for millions of 
college students going to college today, it is free. Do the math. If a 
community college is $3,200 and a student gets a $5,645 Pell grant, 
that student has some extra money, and he or she can still get a loan 
if they want to and then they have even more extra money.
  That leads to the other real problem with student loans that we would 
like to work with the President on; that is, over borrowing. The first 
real problem

[[Page 9550]]

is the complexity of the income based repayment plans, and we can 
change that. Just as we did last year with many of the new loans, we 
could make the income based repayment plans, working together, much 
simpler and make it easier for students to take advantage of.
  But what about overborrowing? We read in the paper about huge student 
loan debt. It seems as though everybody we read about has a $300,000 
loan or a $150,000 loan they will never be able to pay back. I guess a 
few people do. But according to Mark Kantrowitz, who is a financial aid 
expert and has studied student debt, more than 90 percent of students 
who graduate with loans of more than $100,000 are graduate students. 
Let me say that again. If you read about a student loan that is more 
than $100,000, more than 90 percent of those are for graduate students.
  I said a moment ago that undergraduate students can earn more than $1 
million more in their lifetime with their 4-year degree. Doctors, 
lawyers, and other graduate students can earn a lot more than that with 
their advanced degrees in many cases.
  But those graduate students with more-than-$100,000 loans are only 6 
percent of all graduate students, and that is only 2 percent of all 
student loans. So 2 percent of all federal student loans in the country 
are more than $100,000. The average undergraduate loan for a 4-year 
degree is $27,000, and the average for all undergraduate loans, which 
are 85 percent of loans, is $21,000.
  There is some overborrowing even among undergraduates. Young people 
are--and maybe they are not all young--borrowing more than they can 
afford to pay back. In our committee, we are considering a number of 
proposals to deal with this for both graduate and undergraduate loans.
  For example, we would like to simplify the student loan program so 
more students can take advantage of it and take advantage of the 
repayment options that exist in the law today. But we need to know how 
much that costs the taxpayers.
  No. 2, we have been talking about eliminating the graduate PLUS 
Program that provides virtually unlimited loans to graduate students 
regardless of their credit history. That may be how they took out these 
loans we occasionally read about of $150,000, $200,000. We want to 
prohibit part-time students from taking out the same amount of loans 
that full-time students can. Let's say you are taking a half-time load 
at a 4-year institution and you take out a full-time loan to pay for 
that. That means you have some extra money for living expenses or for a 
car. I am not sure as a matter of national policy that money for 
expenses other than for education and costs associated with education 
should be allowed.
  We would like to give colleges and universities the ability to 
require additional counseling for students. Did you know that under 
current law a college is prohibited from requiring additional 
counseling to an entering student at Vanderbilt or the University of 
Tennessee who says: Give me my loan. I am entitled to it? I am 18 or 19 
years old. I have no credit history, maybe not much experience with 
money, and the college that hands me the money is prohibited--by 
federal law--from requiring additional counseling.
  We may want to limit the amount a student can borrow. We may want to 
allow colleges to have a role in doing that. We may even--and this has 
been suggested--require higher education institutions in some instances 
to have skin in the game to ensure that graduate students and 
undergraduate students repay their loans. In other words, the higher 
education institution would share the risk. These are some of the ideas 
that are being considered today in the Senate education committee.
  Every Senator has a right to bring on this floor whatever she or he 
wants. It is up to the majority leader to decide what we focus our 
precious time on. I am here today to suggest that a $1-a-day subsidy 
for college graduates to help them pay off a $27,000 loan--which is the 
average loan for a 4-year college graduate, which is almost exactly the 
same as the average car loan--is not a worthy subject for our 
discussion this week when we have veterans standing in lines at clinics 
and appropriations bills dealing with cancer, and national military 
defense waiting to come to the floor.
  That is especially true when we have a President of the United States 
who has proved he can work with Congress on student debt. He did that 
last year. He did a good job. He was very helpful with the final 
result. The Republicans in the House said that, the Senate said that in 
a bipartisan way, and I think most students who are enjoying the 
benefit of that would agree with that.
  So we thought last year we had stopped the political stunts on 
student loans. We put a market price system on all new loans, at no new 
cost to the taxpayers, no new debt, so this would not become an 
election-year football; but apparently it has, at least for a week. So 
we are going to have to endure going on to the floor and talking about 
a proposal that every single Senator knows has no chance not only of 
getting to the House, which will not touch it, but even passing the 
Senate--no chance whatsoever. Why? Because over in the Senate education 
committee we are discussing this subject in a bipartisan way and the 
way we are supposed to do it.
  So if it comes to the floor we are ready to amend it. We have our 
proposals for more good jobs. College graduates do not need a $1-a-day 
subsidy to help pay off a $27,000 loan. They need a good, decent job, 
and we are ready to help them get one. With the Keystone Pipeline, with 
the trade authority the President wants, with lower taxes, with changes 
in ObamaCare, with going from a 30- to a 40-hour workweek, we have a 
lot of ideas about jobs. If we want to bring up taxes, which this 
proposal does, we have some taxes we would like to bring up as well; 
and that includes repealing the medical device tax, which ought to have 
a good, bipartisan vote here in the Senate. It has before.
  On education, we have our ideas too, and so do the Democrats, by the 
way. Some have been through the HELP committee. They have been hashed 
out. They are ready for the floor. There is a competing vision. 
Democrats want a national school board. Republicans want to reverse the 
trend towards a national school board. So on this bill, if we want to 
talk about education, I would like to have a chance to offer my 
amendment that says no national school board. Let's send those 
decisions back to State and local communities. I think there are lots 
of Senators on both sides of the aisle who would like to vote for that.
  But what I would really like to see is the President accept our 
invitation to work with him. That is what we would like to do. We did 
that last year. We produced a good result. He has put his focus in the 
right place. I might say respectfully, maybe he is in the right church 
but the wrong pew. He is talking about income based repayment plans. We 
think that is one of the big problems left to solve, and we will work 
with him to simplify and reform the various plans. But we want to make 
sure the government has clear legislative authority to do it, and we 
want to know what it costs. Then we would like to work with him on 
excessive overborrowing. I would suspect he would like to do that too.
  So why don't we do that? Why don't we send this $1-a-day proposal 
back to the Senate education committee--actually it never was there--
but let's send it to the Senate education committee and put it in with 
all the other ideas we are discussing. Let's continue our bipartisan 
work in the committee to see if we can this year present to the Senate 
a proposal for reauthorizing the Higher Education Act, and let's use 
this time for the veterans standing in line or the appropriations 
bills, which deal with so many issues and which we have not had a 
chance to consider for the last few years.
  I am disappointed with today's press conference at the White House 
and the political stunt that is headed toward the Senate floor. But I 
am hoping the President will take a look at what he did last year and 
feel a good deal of satisfaction about it and say: Let me sit down with 
those same men and women whom I worked with last year and see if we 
cannot do something

[[Page 9551]]

about simplifying income based repayment so more students can take 
advantage of it, and dealing with excessive borrowing and some of the 
other issues we are working on in higher education.
  I think we can do that 2 years in a row, and I think the American 
people would appreciate it if we tried.
  I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HEINRICH. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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