[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 1687-1688]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       THE NEXT AMERICAN CENTURY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Brendan F. Boyle) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BRENDAN F. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak 
briefly about two aspects of the President's budget that really struck 
me and a number of my constituents in Philadelphia and Montgomery 
County as so important.
  As a new Member, it has been a special honor to be serving in this 
Chamber, and I have had a few incredibly special moments that all 
Americans can identify with. One is the swearing-in of a new Congress, 
something that dates back to right after our First Congress was sworn 
in right after the U.S. Constitution was signed in Philadelphia. One of 
those other moments--a constitutionally mandated moment--is when the 
President comes to Congress to give a report on the state of the Union 
from time to time, as the Constitution says.
  Sitting right here in this Chamber and hearing President Obama speak 
about the state of our Union would be exciting in any year, in any 
circumstance, but it was especially this year because, for the first 
time in 6 years--after the deepest and darkest recession in almost a 
century--we have turned the page. After 6 rather difficult years of 
digging our way out of a ditch, we now can build a foundation to move 
forward. With that, there were two areas specifically that the 
President focused on.
  One was a universal college education. As the first of my family to 
go to college, I know I wouldn't have had the opportunities that I have 
had in life without having a higher education.

[[Page 1688]]

I needed a combination of scholarships and student loans and every sort 
of work-study job imaginable to get there, as well as help from parents 
and even grandparents. That is a story similar to so many working and 
middle class Americans, but for too many Americans today the cost of a 
higher education is simply unaffordable.
  The question is: Do you go without it at all even though two-thirds 
of the jobs by the end of this decade will require some form of a 
higher education? Do you just forgo a higher education altogether, or 
do you take on tens of thousands in student loans and then be burdened 
with paying back that debt upon graduation? Either scenario is far from 
ideal.
  What the President said--and I completely agree--is let's make 2 
years of community college universal and free in this country. Now, 
that may be unthinkable today. 100 years ago, it was unthinkable that a 
free, fully funded high school education would be universal. Yet, for 
us, that is the reality today. It would be unthinkable for Americans of 
my age and even of an older age to imagine a time in which high school 
was not universal. Let's get there with 2 years of a college education.
  The second area the President focused on was the child care tax 
credit. For so many working families and young families, affording 
child care is simply unaffordable. We have an opportunity through this 
budget to change that, to build on the successes of the last 6 years 
and to finally prepare to make this century the second American 
Century. Ensuring that we have good, high-quality, affordable child 
care is vital to this middle class.
  The reason the last century was the American Century was that we had 
the largest and most productive middle class in the world. Access to 
higher education and access to child care are two necessary ingredients 
in making sure we have a strong and vibrant middle class in the 21st 
century.

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