[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5419-5422]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1830
                              FUTURE FORUM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Jenkins of West Virginia). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Swalwell) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to 
report back to the Congress on the progress of the House Democratic 
Caucus' newest group, Future Forum.
  Future Forum is made up of 14 Members of Congress who are going 
across the country to talk about issues facing young Americans. We 
launched just last Thursday. We have gone to New York, Boston, and San 
Francisco, and we are just warming up.
  Our goal is to listen to--not talk to--young Americans about issues 
ranging from student loan debt, climate change, access to 
entrepreneurship, and anything that is on their mind or standing in 
their way of achieving their dreams, hopes, and aspirations.
  I encourage anyone watching tonight across America to tweet at me and 
to tweet at Future Forum under #futureforum, so that we can address 
your concerns right here on the House floor and across the country.
  We started Thursday evening in New York City. I was joined by 
Democratic

[[Page 5420]]

Policy and Communications chair Steve Israel; Congresswoman Grace Meng, 
who represents the Queens area; and Congressman Seth Moulton, who 
represents the greater Boston area.
  Our first stop was at the District Cowork space in Manhattan in the 
Flatiron District. You see here in this photo, this was not just any 
rigid, stuffy townhall. We invited young entrepreneurs across Manhattan 
and asked them at District Cowork: What stands in your way from 
achieving your startup success?
  You have in this room these young, energetic entrepreneurs. They are 
ready to risk it all for their big idea. They are all millennials, aged 
anywhere from 18 to 35; and it was a very informal, fluid session.
  What we heard was not surprising, but it was very striking. For too 
many of them, when we asked, How many of you have student loan debt, 
their hands went up. For too many of them, when we asked, How much is 
your student loan debt, their hands stayed up when I said, Is it above 
$25,000 or $50,000 or $100,000?
  Then I asked and my colleagues asked: What would you do with that 
money? What would you spend it on if you weren't spending it every 
month on your student loan debt?
  These young, business-minded people, they didn't say: I would go on a 
vacation, or I would buy a new toy or a boat or have fun for myself.
  They said: I would invest it in my company. I would invest it in my 
company.
  What do we know happens when entrepreneurs invest money in their 
companies? They create jobs. They create growth around their industries 
that put more and more Americans to work.
  Future Forum members learned a lot at this visit, and what we learned 
was that student loan debt is a barrier--not just a barrier, it is a 
tall brick wall that is standing in the way of an entire generation 
realizing their entrepreneurial dreams.
  What we heard at District Cowork in New York was not unique. In San 
Francisco, we went to Hive, and we visited their Impact Hub. Hive 
looked just like District Cowork. You have tall ceilings, nothing on 
the walls--they are barely painted--no carpet on the floor, just a 
building filled with a lot of energy, a lot of good ideas, but a lot of 
challenges standing in their way.
  At Hive, these young entrepreneurs, just like other entrepreneurs 
across the country, they told us student loan debt is standing in their 
way. Forty-one million young Americans have a collective amount of $1.3 
trillion in student loan debt.
  We heard from people at Hive that their debt was not just standing in 
the way of them starting their own business, but we asked the room--and 
at this event, I was joined by Congressman Ruben Gallego of the Phoenix 
area and Congressman Pete Aguilar of the San Bernardino area in 
California and Congressman Derek Kilmer of the Tacoma, Washington, 
area--we asked the room, about 100 people: How many of you own a home? 
Crickets, dead silent.
  How many of you have parents who own a home? Most of their hands went 
up.
  How many of you are renters now? Most of their hands stayed up.
  How many of you fear that you will not be able to ever own a home in 
your life? Again, these young people, full of energy, great ideas, 
great educations, their hands stayed up.
  We asked: What is standing in the way? The hundreds of dollars a 
month they are paying in student loan debt.
  Homeownership, one of the bedrocks of the American Dream, to have 
something to call your own, something that we fought during our 
independence as a country, that right for property, to chart your own 
course, have your own piece of land, now, an entire generation of 
millennial Americans, 80 million of them, have mounting student loan 
debt that is going to delay their ability to buy a home, that is going 
to delay their ability to start and have a family, that is going to 
delay their opportunity to chase their dreams.
  While we were in California, we also visited Chabot College in 
Hayward, California, in the 15th Congressional District, which I am 
proud to represent. At Chabot College, we assembled over 100 community 
college students, and we asked them: How much student debt do you think 
you will have by the time you take your first postcollege job?
  What we learned there, again, was very, very bewildering. Most 
anticipated that they would have $25,000 to $50,000 in student loan 
debt.
  We did it in a very interactive way. We used text polling, so we 
asked the students to text in their answers. We polled the group and 
said: Are you able to take a full load of courses so that you can get 
out of community college as fast as possible and move on to a 4-year 
university and move on into your career field?
  Most of them said that they couldn't. One student told us he worked 
three jobs. The jobs, they were all mostly the same. They weren't jobs 
that were going to put them into the area of industry they would hope 
and aspire to be in. They were retail and restaurant jobs.
  The members of Future Forum could identify with this. Congressman 
Kilmer talked about washing dishes in college, and Congressman Gallego 
talked about working as a restaurant server, and I harkened back to my 
days in this town in Washington, D.C., as an unpaid intern and working 
at Tortilla Coast at the end of the day to make it work.
  Things are different now. Tuition continues to go up. These students 
told us, during our Future Forum visit, that they are taking a number 
of odd jobs just to pay for the rising cost of community college.
  We talked about the President's plan during the State of the Union in 
this very Chamber to offer free community college to anyone who was 
qualified and able and willing. The students were hopeful but not too 
optimistic. They see too many barriers and walls here in Washington to 
get anything done that could help them.
  We also asked the students to participate in a word cloud. A word 
cloud is you text in an answer, and, on the screen behind us, it put 
different words in response to different answers. We asked the 
students: What would you do if you didn't have student debt every 
month? What would your payment money go to?
  Again, no one said they were going to buy a bunch of toys or go on a 
bunch of fancy vacations. They said that they would probably buy a car 
so they didn't have to take the bus or take the BART to class; they 
would hope to buy their first home; they would invest--which would help 
the economy.
  Future Forum was also at San Francisco State University, and a young 
girl at San Francisco State University, as we talked about solutions we 
could offer to address rising tuition rates for current students and 
the debt burden that 41 million Americans carry, one San Francisco 
State student told us that she had a dual challenge in her house.
  She was trying to pay for her own education, make it by not 
qualifying for many student loans, while her mother also had $200,000 
of her own student debt. This is a family matter--this is a family 
matter--not just for that young San Francisco State student, but for 
millions of young people across the country. This debt is beginning to 
pile up and affect multiple generations.
  We had the honor of going to Boston, where we were hosted by 
Congressmen Joe Kennedy and Seth Moulton. We visited Thermo Fisher 
Scientific, and we met with young scientists, people who invested in 
their own future by taking student loans and going to college and 
getting, in many cases, graduate degrees to work in the field of 
science, to work in the field of therapies and devices, hoping that 
they could play a critical role in helping people, making the world a 
better place.
  At Thermo Fisher, these young scientists told us exactly what we 
heard in San Francisco and in New York City. Their student loan debt 
weighs on them. It holds them down like an anchor.
  Something happened at the Thermo Fisher visit that we didn't expect--
because you have a room full of young

[[Page 5421]]

entrepreneurs, young scientists, but there was a mother who showed up. 
She kind of confessed: Well, you know, I know this event was billed as 
a millennial event.
  She told us she was worried about her daughter. Her daughter had gone 
to college, just as we had, as a society, told young people you have to 
do. Her daughter took out a number of student loans, and her daughter 
lives at home and can't find a job.

                              {time}  1845

  What we are seeing for our millennial generation and what was 
expressed by this mother is that we are at risk of becoming a permanent 
boomerang generation. We go out, and we study, and we attain a degree 
or training or technical skills; but because of the rising costs of 
tuition and the debt that our generation is saddled with, we boomerang 
back home. This mother told us it doesn't just weigh on her daughter, 
who has a college degree and is trying to find a job, but that it 
weighs on the entire household.
  With 41 million young people across our country with $1.3 trillion in 
student loan debt, imagine how many families are affected by this. 
These are typically your parents who are just starting to realize their 
golden years.
  They worked so hard; paid into Social Security; hopefully had a 
pension; and they want to retire, maybe travel, maybe take up a hobby, 
maybe join a local club; but their hopes and dreams--their golden 
retirements--are being affected by children who are returning to the 
home and need their support. We heard this all across America on this 
tour. This is a family matter, the student loan debt crisis in our 
country.
  Finally, in the Boston area, we also went to Greentown Labs, a clean 
tech incubator I visited with Congressmen Moulton and Kennedy in 
Somerville, Massachusetts.
  Here, we heard, again, about student loan debt, but we also were 
asked by a number of people at this event: What is standing in the way 
of fixing this problem?
  We actually asked the audience: What do you think? From your 
perspective, what do you think is standing in the way?
  So many of them told us campaign finance laws--a smart, young crowd 
in Somerville at Greentown Labs--campaign finance laws, people in the 
audience told us--young entrepreneurs--and I thought they were just 
focused like a laser on their ideas and on raising money for their 
first and second rounds of funding and on trying to scale up and 
getting their ideas off the ground. No. These young people, they get 
it.
  They told us exactly what the problem was. Because of unlimited 
amounts of money that can be spent in elections today, there is less 
courage in the Congress to do big things, to tackle big problems, and 
to help a whole country of people who need it.
  They asked us about climate change. Now, this was the first 
laboratory we had visited on the tour, and we had met with a number of 
young scientists who were working in the clean tech and clean energy 
areas. They asked us about climate change and what we were doing in 
Congress to address it. I want to just go to some of the people who 
have tweeted in to us about Future Forum this evening and what their 
thoughts are.
  I will first mention Hive, who has tweeted at us in San Francisco 
that they are excited about the ideas presented and the issues raised 
and ``let's get to work.''
  I want to tell you how we are getting to work. This was not just a 
one-way talking-to with millennials. Through #futureforum, through 
medium.com, through the article we wrote and posted there, and through 
the information we have collected across the country, we are actually 
putting the ball in the court of the young entrepreneurs and students 
who are charting this new economy. We told them to help us crowdsource 
ideas that can move America forward, and they gave us some at these 
visits.
  With student loan debt being, probably, the biggest, most pressing 
issue, there was a general consensus that there are two groups affected 
by this. The first group is of the students who are enrolled right now 
and paying tuition and accruing debt. The second group is of the 41 
million young Americans who already have student loan debt.
  The solutions that were thrown at us for the students who are in 
school now or who will be in school was, one, treat public education as 
a public good. Find a way to make sure that any qualified, capable 
person who wants to go to college can do so, and keep the costs as low 
or as next to zero as you can.
  We had people who were so excited about the Future Forum who had 
graduated college 30, 40 years ago who came out and talked to us, and 
they harkened back to a time in California when, in the UC and Cal 
State systems, tuition was essentially free--they even threw in the 
yearbook--yet the return on investment was a whole generation of 
educated individuals who would contribute to the greatest economy in 
the United States: California.
  Their eyes popped out when they saw how much it costs today to go to 
UC Berkeley: $33,000 today is what it costs a year for a student to go 
to UC Berkeley. People who had attended 20, 30 years ago talked about 
when it was almost next to nothing. It is $33,000 a year.
  Congressman Gallego looked at that number--and he went to Harvard. 
Harvard is the Berkeley of the East. Congressman Gallego looked at that 
number, and he said: That is about what I paid when I graduated from 
Harvard in the early 2000s, $33,000 a year.
  Treat education as a public good. Keep interest rates as low as 
possible. The consensus among people who met with us--these current 
students and entrepreneurs--was that the government should make no 
money on interest rates on loans that it gives to students.
  What about the 41 million young Americans who have the $1.3 trillion 
in debt? There was a general consensus that those debtholders should be 
able to refinance their student loans. You can refinance an auto loan. 
You can refinance your home loan, but for the 86 percent of loans that 
are the Federal loans of those 41 million Americans, you can't 
refinance them.
  Congressman Joe Courtney, a colleague of mine from Connecticut, has a 
bill that would allow just that. Our Future Forum members are on that 
bill, and we are hoping that it gets a vote in this Congress because 
this should be a bipartisan issue.
  Those 41 million Americans are not Democrats--they are not all 
Democrats, and they are not all Republicans. They are hopeful, 
aspirational young people who should benefit from the same refinancing 
laws that you can use with your home mortgage or with your auto loan.
  There were other big ideas, and no idea was too big or small for this 
crowd. There was the proposal to have a jubilee for all of the 
federally funded student loans--to take every borrower, return that 
money to those borrowers, to put them at zero, and watch where the 
money would go.
  The hypothesis was, if these students did not have to pay anywhere 
from $100 to $1,000 every month, they are not going to pocket the 
money; they are going to put the money back in the economy, and it 
would essentially be a stimulus.
  I encourage everyone across the country--every young person, every 
parent of a young person, every grandparent of a young person--to give 
us your ideas. Future Forum is just getting started. We already are 
working with our colleague Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, who is excited 
and eager to host us in Michigan, and with other colleagues who want to 
bring us to their States to talk to young people.
  Give us your ideas. You can tweet them at #futureforum. Put it on 
Instagram. You can find us on Facebook. Tweet. Facebook. Instagram. Use 
social media, #futureforum. Give us your ideas because the goal is for 
us to listen to you and then to work here in a bipartisan way to act on 
your behalf.
  This conversation will continue. Our work will go on until we have 
lifted the burden that stands in the way of young, aspirational 
entrepreneurs.

[[Page 5422]]

  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________