the senate will come to order the chaplain dr barry black will lead the senate in prayer let us pray the lord of life to deal with today's challenges purge their hearts of anything that does not honor you remove from them a spirit of division you nineteen them in but common task of doing what is best for our nation and world when they are tempted to doubt steady their faith when they feel despair and fuse them with your hope when they don't know what to do open their mind to a wisdom that can change and shape our times according to your plan replace any cynicism with civility empowering them to trust you more fully live for you more completely and serve you more six sixty nine the education reconciliation measure for ten hours of time remaining for that matter to members were offered yes they won by cinema koski another by senator kennedy will vote on those amendments of around twelve o'clock today in this bill mr president we have two of the most competent managers we could have centers kennedy and anthony and it's really a i think a great picture for the country one senator from the state of massachusetts i've ever worked with you just a wonderful man and i know that the relationship that he and senator kennedy of developed and make it possible we're going to get through this with a minimum amount of strife and i really admire both these men and how they work on this bill managers expect other members of the offered as members are where once all time is expired members can still offer jermain amendments with no debate time and let have them voted on and i'm hopeful that there will not be a vote ramat the end of the time there is no reason we can't complete this bill by sometime this afternoon on homeland security appropriations bill it's hard to comprehend but i had thought cloture on that a bill to fund homeland security for our country was an objection to our moving to that i hoped agreement is reached that we won't we won't have to vote on cloture tomorrow which is set i hope we can complete action on this bill early next week this chap is present i heard on the radio this morning i had read the president's  letter to the finance committee members that he was going to veto the bill statement of policy of vetoing bills that seems to all fit same pattern any time it helps people that aren't capable of helping themselves and the president is anxious to step in but i heard on the radio day he did what he wanted to veto this because it was a he felt it should be all have led private sector which presently would need this legislation and if things were handled by the private sector we have millions of children in america not some other country millions of children in america who have no health care and that's what this chip is about ice i saw appreciate the work being done on a bipartisan basis by senators baucus and hatch and rockefeller senior members of that committee a handle respective subcommittees they've come up with a bipartisan bill it's not a bill that everyone is elated about but it's a good good  bill will help provide health insurance for as many as six million children and it's really too bad that i soon we're going to have to file soldier on that we're going to work on as chip next week i would hope that we could finish homeland security maybe even move to another appropriation bill finance committee is meeting this morning to report out a bipartisan bill we can take to the floor dealing with the health care for millions of american children conference report the nine eleven conference conference report is moving along well they're meeting today the conferees they hope to wrap up this conference quickly so we can finish it next week at six conference still and have the appointment of conferees and trying to figure out some other way to complete that otherwise we'll have the necessary cloture votes to get that to finale was elected last november the culture of corruption was so rampant that this that was one of the things that people focused on while it may not be the number one issue today because of iraq stepping ahead of it is still republicans under the previous order the senate will resume consideration of h r twenty six sixty nine which the clerk will report calendar number two sixty nine h r twenty six sixty nine an act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to section continue the debate and discussion on the legislation that has been reported out of our education committee our human resources committee which has strong strong bipartisan support is sentencing and i are both here ready to discuss and debate and work with any of our colleagues on this legislation but we are very strong believers in this legislation this is the substantial help and assistance and i think all of us when we go home to our states we hear from the families the talk about the the in these costs of school the increase to the situation the increased cost and the bird for going on to college and we're also very much aware of the necessity of getting additional kinds of education opportunities that are so essential for  families so essential for communities so essential for states countries and for the united states and in a world economy education is the equivalent effectively of hope and opportunity for young people of this country and we are making a strong downpayment to help and assist the sons and daughters of working families in my state of massachusetts is blessed with many of the fine as schools and colleges about eighty percent of all of those that go to on to college get some kind of help and assistance over the course of their time that they're in college even communities colleges going on into are fine public colleges or are fine private colleges so when we say that we're providing help and assistance through the scholarship helps or through the pell grants we are really making a difference in terms of opportunity for our fellow citizens here this is the future is education the future of our economy depends upon having a in education opportunities and we're additional kind of focus and attention and terms of enhancing the opportunities for young student to get into areas and math and science and engineering a particular need for again this morning because when we enhanced education opportunity we strengthen our economy we're going to be more effective in terms of dealing with globalization we're going to be more effective in terms of our national security in our military because we're going to have better trained better equipped and better technology for those that serve in our military force so this and we also are going to equip the next generation with the ability to ensure that our democratic institutions at the local levels state and federal level are going to be working more effectively so education is the key that that is the enhanced help and assistance in the pell program the better repayment options that cap borrows monthly payment at fifteen percent of their discretionary income that's means that all of those that are going to be out there working are never going to pay more than fifteen percent of their income and that's a particularly important in terms of what we call the public sector jobs which are starting jobs and where there's an enormous need in this country enormous need in terms of  school teachers to teach in our schools helpers and assistance to work and so many of our with our retirees needs teachers and helpers the whole range  more legal defendants to help our judicial system work and we know with this legislation no individual is going to pay more than fifteen percent of their discretionary income and then the loan forgiveness program for borrowers and public service jobs after they work as a schoolteacher for ten years all and they pay no more than fifteen percent of their income all of their debt all of their debt will be forgiven so these are the outlines of this legislation and we want to try and show mr president what we have attempted to do in terms of trying to ensure that educational opportunity is going to be out there and available to all of our fellow citizens here in america the middle income and particularly the low income those and we know from experience the challenges is a chart here that gives an idea about the increase in the purchasing of the tuitions in terms of public and private colleges and so there's an enormous increase in those total wish and and we have tried to address that with our increase in the help i want to just take a few moments this morning now to talk about the focus that we have given five and sixty four at the time that we passed the higher education act we wanted to make it you available to all americans all americans and we understood that those that had particular financial needs from working families that they had additional kinds of requirements and we did develop under the leadership of senator pal leyburn pal rhode island our leader chairman of the education committee who made a extraordinary whose name will be associated with this program for as long as it's existed and other very worthwhile programs the humanities programs national down for the arts and others so large numbers of individuals in very in moderate income families still can get some benefit but that's where the targeted now we say let's look at this chart here what does it show us that too few low income students are prepared to attend college this is the shows a low income moderate middle income and high income and you see that of those that are good completing the high school in the higher incomes that they are just dependent on  on income you see the higher income are able to are prepared to attend college and forty seven percent lower income our students are projected to be college qualified high school students in two thousand and four i know these are students in two thousand and two thousand and four we know this is two thousand and seven so these are two or three year old figures but the point is still the same and these are the latest figures as a result of the publications just of last year published these figures this shows mr president that we can have college and once they get there mr president we see what happens that only twenty percent of them are going to be able to earn the bachelor degree and why is that twenty percent the reason is twenty percent is because of by and large financial burden a lower income moderate income middle income high income if we are going to be one country with one history and one destiny one nation we have to have at least the opportunity in the areas of education which is so basic i think we need it in health care and other areas public public policy as well but education is such a key if we're starting all in with this kind of model in terms of who is going to be able to get the education and who is going to be left behind primarily because of income we are seeing a divided nation and we are going to have continued division in our nation if we say that we want to give equal opportunity to the citizens of this nation we cannot have this kind of disparity so what have we done now with the with the proposal we have said for those individuals that would be eligible as i mentioned in those first two charts we have increased the pell grant which will directly help those individuals who are going to be unable to fifty three hundred in two thousand and ten eleven it is an important important targeting of resources to those children that are the neediest and need the greatest help but also individuals that have competency and are able to gain admission admission to the schools and colleges they have ability but they don't have the financial ability and this is targeted to try and help in the system now what else are we doing for those individuals we're going to have the loan forgiveness provisions and why how does that work you get individual now that has gotten the grant program and they borrow some money to complete their education and that individual wants to go on be a schoolteacher and where the annual salary in my state of massachusetts is the thirty five thousand dollars and that average loan debt is eighteen thousand that is about the national average that is doubled probably in the last six or seven years and virtually doubled in the last six and seven years so we say we're getting the targeting of these resources of the eighteen billion dollars that we've taken from the lenders we have the billion dollars close to the billion dollars will go for a deficit reduction and we've taken the other seventeen billion dollars and we've used a major proportion to help and assist those students that need who are individuals of ability but  lack the financial help and assistance to go on to the fine schools and colleges we're giving them the bulk of the resources to help and assist them to go to the schools in the colleges and then we say when they graduate they are still going to have a rather sizable this these individuals want to give something back to the community and we find out they want to be a schoolteacher so how does this legislation how can they do that eighteen thousand dollars in debt and how are they going to be able to pay that off so we say if they are going to be starting in what is a public sector area that is this is a school teacher in this case they have eighteen thousand dollars in debt when we put the cap on the amounts that they're going to have to be repaid their debt it's going to save them seven hundred and thirty two dollars a year from what they otherwise would have a seven hundred and thirty two dollars a year if they go into public service that is the amount because of the fifteen percent cap that we put on they are their annual salary that is a big chunk of change seven hundred thirty two dollars is a big chunk of change for students  just out of college and then we say if they do this for ten years that they teach for ten years then we forgive the remaining of their debt which is ten thousand dollars which is forgiven reduced their annual yearly payment by seven hundred dollars and to give their debt by ten thousand dollars these are individuals that are going in to a profession where there is an enormous need we need to have hundreds of thousands of the teachers over the next five or seven years public service i will in just a just a minute or two but this is a lesser did mr president what this legislation does heavy in terms of the targeting in terms of the pell programs the loan forgiveness we've also have the provisions as we've brought out during the debate in the discussion to permit these younger people to earn more when they are in various work study programs are working even if they're going to the universities that used to be if they earn too much that they lose their need based aid because they no longer qualify we give greater flexibility which will encourage younger people they can learn something in addition that will help them buy more books or maybe help them in terms of the computers we permit that to happen we increase the eligibility from twenty to thirty thousand dollars doesn't sound like a great deal but there will mean further opportunities for those in  the that are working families in the two to be able to participate in this pell program so mr president i use this example here of a student in public safety public law enforcement and government education early education child care needs that we have now for teaches it gives these incentivizes people in early childhood education that's a key element  read the great book  sheinkopf from my state of massachusetts that brings together all the academy of sciences valuation of what support for children really in the earliest months of their lives  learning early childhood education we've expanded those op unities in another legislation that senator enzi and i worked on and that is the reauthorization of the head start program so we have the public education early childhood education childcare all of the public health social work public service agencies public services for working with the disabled and the elderly challenges as we get into an older population  now we know the increasing the increasing requirements that so many of our our parents have in terms of being able to live live independently and to live with  dignity so there's individuals that work with the data disabled and the elderly public interest legal services including the prosecutors a public defense we want our judicial system to work and to work fairly for people  give them the kinds of protections but also give them the kinds of defense public school library library sciences other public school based service and providers and also the teaching full time tribal colleges or universit this we find as i'm sure other members do here or you go to the fine schools and colleges across this country i find it in my state of massachusetts the amount of biology over is a that is out there among the young people yeah they many of you can go and in my state they go into the city year program one of the great programs a ballance a resume that we've had that then that city year program is spread in this colleges in the communities we have a wonderful small college stonehill college and they one of their their defining aspects of it as a college is to help the young people start nonprofit agencies and they give them help and assistance out of stock start nonprofit groups and they had for example started eight nonprofit groups to try and relieve the problems of hunger in the southeastern massachusetts well young people want to get involved young people want to make a difference in people's lives young people want to provide service and this legislation will do more to give them the opportunity when we have areas of critical ne anything that we have done in recent time and this is an area that say look you want to work and work in the public you want to give something back to your community local community state you want to do that we're going to give you help and assistance we're going to recognize you recognize it and we're going to make it manageable for you to do it we have the constant illustrations particularly in medical schools where the great majority of young medical students in their first year want to become general practitioners overwhelming overwhelming majority and then by the second year the third year that to group is down to a handful by primarily because of student debt and they know that when they graduate get out of medical school they too often are making judgments and decisions for the areas of the profession that profession that is going to permit them to pay off that that student debt rather than being able to day go into a neighborhood health center and to provide health those that need it so this is the we've made this is why i did as we could in terms of trying to respond to that sense that's out there in our schools and colleges in all parts of our countries in urban areas and rural areas to say look you want to give something back we're going to make it possible we're going to make it a greater opportunity for you to go oh to college particularly if you're from working families in the low income we're going to make it give you a better opportunity to do that have some in my own state of massachusetts and they do a breathtaking job in encouraging people to do it and and then we have in our authorization the extraordinary work sent to  application to permit people that don't have a lot of student advisers and a lot of extra help to be able to use a more simplified form so that they can understand what it is to be able to begin to make the application for school in college we give the great a kind of help and assistance this is all part of the efforts that we've been making in our communities in terms of the early education we're going to make the reforms the changes in the no child left behind we're going to try and tie in the kindergarten programs into the case to twelve we're going to try and have a seamless web for those to go from the twelve into college so that that is going to work more effectively and that those that are going to go to college are going to be  able to have met the initial college requirements we want to try and do that in more effectively all that for another time but we are in this legislation have the higher education we had to bring in the lenders and we weren't really sure going back over the years how much incentive that we could provide to those lenders to make sure they are going to make the system work we find out that they have made it work and there is sufficient resources that are going to continue to give to these the lenders to make them a profitable but they we could take the resources that we have here and to give them and target those resources to the students that had need it to the most we believe very deeply that educational opportunity is really key to individual future but to our country's future and if we're going to be one country  as as i think all of us believe we should be we do not want to have the kinds of divisions that are increasingly putting pressure on the young people of this country at the present time this legislation is doing a very important job in trying  to address that situation and again i want to thank all of our colleagues because this does represent we've been able to as ascendency we can realize in that human resource committee particularly the areas of education we've been able to over the years so right above or beyond the issues of partisanship this goes back we had a wonderful republican chairman send the stafford for a number of years from the state of vermont we have sent a pell state of  rhode island our colleague senator gregg sent to n b c the chairman of those committees and we have areas where we have our our differences although i do must say that i think on our committee  we try and find common ground in areas of difference and in this area of education which is so important across the board we have worked at very closely together and this legislation i think mr president is really represents splendid opportunity an excellent opportunity to make a real difference for families in this country mr president president senator from wyoming express and i want to thank the senator from massachusetts for his outstanding job of explaining a number of the provisions that are in the bill that's before us today this is a reconciliation bill which has to deal with savings in the in the budget and we are hoping that anybody that has amendments to it will bring those down it is a privilege motion which means that there will be a maximum of twenty hours of debate on it we don't have to do the full twenty hours if there aren't twenty hours worth of amendments so i hope that people have them will bring them down so that we can get them debated and get them voted on because there's a very essential part that is not included in reconciliation because it doesn't deal with savings in the mandatory programs and it's actually most of higher education and we need to get to that part to it should be done in conjunction with should be done in conjunction with this reconciliation bill for parliamentary reasons that it's very difficult for that to happen and we weren't able to get to it in the last two years so we definitely need to get to it and this two years we talk about deficit reduction this is not the first time that we've done deficit reduction during the last two years we did a major deficit reduction and what we did was take away subsidies from the corporate law anders and put some of that into deficit reduction and a good chunk of it into help for students now i don't know whether we ought to use the term deficit reduction or not though because for the most part what we what we are doing is spending money and we're spending money that we don't so that's why the deficit reduction piece was put in as a piece of legislation to allow for us to actually grapple with trying to save the federal government money of course on it gets into the area of students it's very hard for us to have any any constraint particularly if it appears that we'd be taking it away from the students we are not we are adding to what the students get just as we did in the last two years when we did deficit reduction we took away from the lender's we gave part to deficit reduction which was decreasing the amount of money that we were spending that we didn't have and continuing to increase some of the programs for students and that's what we're doing again here we're not doing much of the deficit reduction and there are people that are very concerned about that we are making a substantial reduction again in the lender subsidies and at some point and we don't know what that point is lenders subsidies will get to the point where lenders will not be interested in working with students because it does take employees to do that it takes a celebes to do that even risk in doing that and all of those have a cost and when the cost exceeds what they're able to take in they'll no longer be interested in that and without the thousands of people across this nation that are servicing these loans as well as informing people on how to get them and helping them to get them there'll be a lot of people that a lot of students that will not be able to get the kind of help they need to have so we need that we need to be very careful in doing these things and one of the areas that we've had some care is been in instituting a pilot project and that pilot project is to do on a portion of the loans that we have to do an auction program to have people actually bid to see what the real dollar number is that they'd be willing to give up in the way of subsidies in order to have the business at the at those universities and that will give us a better indication a very glad that we're doing it in a pilot project way when you're moving out into that area doing something totally different than you done before it's probably important to start fairly small would be ten percent of the loans  start fairly small so that if it isn't quite right it isn't destroying the whole college program and also it will give us an indication not only of the process that we ought to be using it to make it as fair as possible and to make sure that students are taken care of as well as possible but it will also give us an indication of things that ought to be done differently and so i'm pleased that we were able to to start on a small basis like that instead of a big basis because one of the things that happens when you do a change is that there's an estimate of how much revenue will be saved now there isn't anything really to base that estimate on but there's an estimate of how much will be saved and what we're doing with this bill is we're spending the estimates of what's to be saved we're not spending what actually will be saved we're spending the estimates of what will be saved and as anybody is everybody knows estimates don't always come out the same as reality now sometimes they come out bigger sometimes a come out less unfortunately with the federal government when we're talking about the amount of revenues that will be coming in we're usually under estimating that and but there are over estimating that and then on the spending side we're underestimating which means that we're spending more than we're taking in and compounding it so in all of these programs we have the sense of wanting to do generous things but we also have a responsibility for making sure that we can pay for what we're pay for our generosity our goal of course is to have as many students as possible have access to college and money is one of the problems but there are some other problems too so i do want to speak about the importance of the legislation that's under consideration but i want to reiterate the importance of taking up the higher education act reauthorization and hopefully doing that right after this reconciliation bill that's why encourage people to bring amendments down so maybe we could yield back time because there might be time even today to cover the other part which is actually a bigger part than reconciliation and a more important part than reconciliation the reconciliation bill provides for additional need based grant aid and that's a critical component of increasing access and affordability additionally by increasing the income protection allowance we've increased the ability of working students working students to receive pell grants that change is particularly important and one i've been sensitive to for a long time iraq i worked a lot during junior high junior high in high school so that i could afford to go to college and then that all counted against me when i tried to apply for any kind of aid and wasn't eligible for it and my daughter ran into a similar situation we made sure that all our kids worked for their education and she had saved some money and we always gave a little incentive thing which was that we would match anything that they came up with whether  scholarships or whatever r or and money that they earned and saved in the so the first time that she applied for any any kind of assistance dollar ships anything need based they said you know you've got this money in savings you should have spent that on a car car doesn't count so what are we teaching our kids don't save for college spend your money that that's not right so we've tried to set it up so that working students can grants with increased ability and this change is particularly important is the student population in our colleges becomes more and more nontraditional however it's not only important to ensure that more students enroll in college prepared to learn but that more students have the support they need to complete college with the knowledge and skills necessary to be successful america's ability to compete in the global  on increasing the number of students entering and completing college of the seventy five percent of high school seniors who continue their studies only fifty percent of them receive a degree in five years that's within five years of enrolling in college and only twenty five percent of them receive a bachelor's degree or higher these numbers are even worse for low income families among eighth graders in one thousand nine hundred eight only sixteen percent of them from low income families attained a bachelor's degree by the year two thousand that fact the fact is that over four times as many eighth graders from high income families attain bachelor's degrees as their peers from low income grants are aimed at providing low and middle income undergraduate students with the resources needed to enroll in college and persist through graduation america's competitiveness depends not only on the investment in scientific research and technology but the investment in human capital that's our that's our students two years ago congress invested the savings it achieved through the reconciliation in students by providing nine billion dollars in new spending for student benefits including four billion dollars in additional need based grant aid through academic competitiveness grants and smart grants in addition in addition to the basic pell grant of word for palatable students now for second first and second year undergraduate the academic competitiveness grants are designed pell eligible students who complete a rigorous high school curriculum these grants are important because recent data shows that slightly less than one third thirty one percent of public high school students are prepared for post secondary education as demonstrated by the academic courses they pursued and i repeat that these grants are important because recent data shows a slightly less than one third of all public high school students are prepared for post secondary education and that's demonstrated by the academic courses they pursued they also demonstrated by the number of courses that they have to kind of take over when they get to college that's something we hope to be able to fix in no child left behind concentrating on the high school years so there isn't that that the last c in your year of education and then there aren't the courses that they have to take when they get to college just to get to the beginning level so the academic competitiveness grants program not only provides additional need based grant aid to low and moderate income students but it encourages those students to take the rigorous high school courses that will enable them to enter college not needing remedial education well prepared and well supported students are more likely to persist to degree completion to succeed in obtaining needed knowledge and skills to compete in the twenty first century global economy national science it's a national program for science and mathematics access to retain talent grants that's smart grants science and mathematics access to retain talent are designed for third fourth year undergraduates majoring in physical life or computer sciences mathematics technology engineering or critical foreign language these grants serve a dual purpose and that's to provide needed grant aid and to encourage students to enter in to enter and major in fields where there's a national need the reconciliation bill for us today provides for additional need based  well as through the creation of promise grants the provisions in the bill move us in the right direction low income students who are striving to attend college will know that there is financial aid available to them to access a college or career and and technical education so what's missing from this debate we've got a pretty complete explanation of what's in the bill but consideration of the rest of the higher education act is essential the bill before us today focuses on a very narrow slice of the higher education act it's one p these which is dependent on the other foundational programs that aren't part of the reconciliation we're only seeing a fraction of the higher education picture by debating this bill separately from the larger higher education reauthorization package i can't emphasize enough how essential it is to cover the whole higher education package by discussing only the reconciliation provisions affecting higher education we're leaving behind the financial aid application simplification we've touted that a lot and it needs to be previously for filling out an application for financial aid assistance it was necessary to do both sides of this form using these instructions now does that look for middle believe looks pretty formidable to me and as a result a lot of people who could qualify for financial have not qualified for financial assistance because they didn't do the paperwork and it's easy to understand why they didn't do the paperwork who needs all of that so one of the things that we've done is to simplify that form so that it's one page it's both sides of one page and much easier to answer and the reason we're able to simplify it is that the questions that are asked on it are the ones that really are essential to being able to determine whether the student needs financial aid or  not so much more concise this gathers a lot of information and we couldn't find out who used it so if we don't know who uses it why gather it so we simplify that which should increase the number of students who can do it but if we don't do the higher education other package that won't be done there's also sunshine student loan disclosure requirements year round pell grants right now you're limited to a school year other than year round and a lot of the technical schools go year round which means there's a portion of the year that they can't get it can't cover with our grants or support for nontraditional students it's very important the as as we're talking about a lifetime of employment there are a lot of people training and retraining and they're nontraditional students i didn't just get out of high school they're ready to go back and learn something additional they're usually very motivated people because they understand the importance of what they don't have and what they desperately want also graduate in international education would be covered in the other package financial literacy and better borrower information privacy protection also improvements to the academic competitiveness grants and the smart grants and we always want to be improving those and encouraging that science technology engineering math medical there's also a college cost watch list a little more information for everybody a quality quality teacher preparation  programs we need to be encouraging teachers we're going to lose a lot of them shortly through retirement with the baby boomers and they need to be replaced education really does the basis of it is having quality teachers were once again faced with the possibility of only dealing with the mandatory spending programs and leave it to a comprehensive reauthorization of the higher education act and then i wish we could combine the two i guess we still could but it's not going to happen because reconciliation gets special consideration with the limitation of the twenty hours of debate we were we are cutting the bottom line if we don't deal with the quality and substance of the important programs that i mentioned we have to have the whole package the american success story of higher education is at risk of losing the very qualities that make it great competition innovation an access for all our goal should be to promote innovation and new technologies to keep the cost of college down to expand the availability of information to keep students and parents in a position where they can make more informed decisions and improve financial literacy across the board so that students have a better understanding of how they can manage their loans and monthly payments schools and colleges have to do more to increase accountability and seek efficiencies that bring down the cost of post secondary education when we raise the pell grant amounts it doesn't help the students if the cost of college goes up an equal amount or greater the complexity of the federal student  system has to be tackled right now filling out the free application for federal student aid prevents many students as i mentioned that was never our intent it is time to make that less complicated than filling out our tax forms and for an account to say that it's really something also it's our responsibility to ensure that students and their families have the information they need to make informed decisions about the investment of time and money they're making to secure a college education the cost of college has risen dramatically and at the same time and need for a college education is greater than it's ever been before american students must have the tools they need to complete higher education and to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to become competitive in the twenty first century economy this can be accomplished but it takes both reconciliation andrea three zation to reach that goal i mean again stating for the record that i hope the senate senate democratic leadership will provide us with an opportunity to have a full and open debate on all aspects of the higher education act both pieces are essential to ensuring that students have access to a quality education it's no longer an option whether to pursue college or skill certification that's nationally recognized everyone needs to have all the tools to understand and shape their future they need these options we can't have them with just the reconciliation part of the package the money without capability doesn't do it i look forward to working with chairman kennedy and my colleagues on my side of the aisle so that we don't let amendments one of them this murkowski amendment and we have this interesting process under reconciliation it's supposed to be for deficit reduction and but any time that there is deficit reduction it leaves money hanging out there and that money can be used in the men meant in a number of different ways and it just works on our minds to know that there is money out there that could be spent  we have a couple of amendments here that will use up the money you know and i think there are a lot of people that would prefer that we didn't use up the money especially since we're talking about deficit reduction which means we're spending more than what we have so what we're spending is money that we don't have but we're going to take this estimate the excess revenue that we're saving and and spend it under under both amendments now the first amendments a relatively smart small amount it's the hundred hundred seventy six million over the next two years and it does it does some very important things are not for profit lenders particularly small ones that might not be able to participate in the auction pilot and that's they would lose funding and this will allow them that opportunity to be able to still participate in the college market and conduct outreach and do all of the important things that those nonprofits are already doing for students that they out on the auction and we're talking about money around here hundred seventy six millions a microdot in the budget the other amendment is a promise grant program and it's to spend the outlying money there some money that comes in further down the road and it's actually some pretty big money  five and seven tenth's billion dollars in this spend a good portion of it so the decisions that people will have to make is whether they actually want to save any money or whether they want to take some of the money that we don't have and put it into some new programs i just wanted everybody from the accounting standpoint i just feel compelled to point that out but we do have an important bill before us i hope that we can make it through that bill today and  i know that we can because the requirements require us to do that but if we can finish a little earlier perhaps we can get that second act the one that really has some good stuff in it that has to be done in order to have a complete first package with those comments objection mr president and the name of the bill before us today is the college cost reduction act as it's been called but just as appropriately it might be called restoring the american dream act because that is exactly what's at stake with this critically important bill we all know that higher education is the key to success in today's global economy it's the key to americans success as individuals that's also the key to america's success as a nation but over the last six years the cost of college has rocked skyrocketed forty percent meanwhile the buying power of federal grant aid has fallen and too many young students are being forced to turn to private loans with high interest rates as a result college has become a distant unattainable dream for many americans for millions more who are fortunate to attend college they graduate with two things a college diploma and a mountain of debt with a bill before us today we intend to reverse these negative trends we intend to put a college education and a fair shot at the american dream back within the reach of every american including those of modest means you might think of this bill is restoring the ladder of opportunity for millions of americans the same time i take pride in the fact that college access for all those one of the six priorities that that we enunciated last fall the crisis in college affordability has grown worse year after year and year after year congress failed to act last year we democrats said to the american people you give us the leadership range we'll chart a new course well today we're making good on that promise the bil public service by providing some loan forgiveness for graduates who go into fields like teaching social work and nursing and service as legal aid lawyers and the bill will give protection to borrowers by capping monthly payments at fifteen percent of discretionary income so mr president this bill is a classic win win win it's a win for the government and for students and for taxpayers for years we have been concerned about the widespread abuses and excesses within the private student loan industry what this bill does is cut excess subsidies to the private loan program by eighteen billion dollars and channeled most of those savings into pell grants earlier this year in the fiscal year two thousand and seven joint funding resolution we were able to increase the maximum pell grant by two hundred sixty dollars to a total of forty three hundred ten dollars that was the first increase in pell grants in five years since the last time that democrats had the majority  and i chaired the appropriations subcommittee for education health programs in two thousand and one now with the bill before us today we are pleased to build on that progress by joining with senator kennedy senator enzi to boost the maximum grant to fifty one hundred dollars next year and fifty four hundred dollars by two thousand and eleven i also want to salute senator kennedy for crafting the senate bill in a way that is a big improvement over the house bill now the house bill cuts interest rates on all student loans well that's very expensive and it also provides benefits to many who don't need them like upper income families the senate bill concentrates the savings he's on increasing grant aid to low income students while providing some loan forgiveness for graduates who enter teaching nursing another important but relatively low paying  jobs mr president bear in mind that before the increase earlier this year the value of cal grants had been drastically eroded since two thousand and one i wonder if there are any colleges in america that charge the same amount for tuitions now as they did six years ago i don't think so in fact high school guidance counselors tell me that for the first time they're seeing kids giving up their dream of college because they simply can't afford it even with loans and grants which read i recently received a letter from a constituent from indianola iowa county seat of my home county she told me about her daughter who graduated from college last year let me quote from this mother's letter we faithfully sa for our daughter's education every month from the time i knew i was pregnant even during a six month period when my husband was unemployed sensory and on needed to attend a specialized college our savings for her were not nearly high enough last year in oz monthly loan payments suddenly increased to around seven hundred dollars a month how many families can afford to do this how is this generation of young adults ever to afford the american dream to own a home this is not good for the future of our economy for how will these young people be able to have purchasing power or be able to afford marriage and children college educations must remain a choice for all of our youth in order for our nation to compete in this global economy well mr president this is not an exceptional case we've all heard similar stories and received similar letters today with the college cost reduction act we have an opportunity to address the crisis in college affordability and ways that will make a dramatic difference largest need based student grant program has given millions of low income students the opportunity to attend college many of them the first in their family to do so but over the years the value of the has eroded eroded dramatically just think about this two decades ago the maximum pell grant covered fifty one percent of the cost of tuition fees room and board at a public four year college fifty one percent but by the two thousand and four two thousand and five academic year it covered only thirty five percent of those costs and it is fallen even more over the last couple of years in my state of iowa two decades ago the pell grants covered sixty one percent of the average cost of a public four year college tuition fees room and board sixty one percent today it covers about a third about thirty three percent of those same costs without adequate federal grants students have had to rely increas with very high interest rates more students and their parents are taking out loans and are borrowing a larger and larger amounts today more than sixty percent of undergraduates at four year colleges take out loans and the average student loan debt is more than nineteen thousand dollars indeed i with students at four year colleges and universities graduate with an average of twenty two thousand seven hundred twenty seven dollars in debt the second highest rate in the country i might add mr president make no mistake when students graduate from college with a mountain of debt this has a major impact on their career choices for many heavily indebted graduates pursuing public service careers as teachers or social workers legal aid attorneys or a host of others this becomes out of the question a recent study found that twenty three percent of public college graduates and thirty eight percent of private college graduates would have an unmanageable level of student debt if they tried to live on the starting salary of a well the burden of student debt also has a big impact on major major life decisions the student loan survey has found that the probability of owning a home decreases as the level of student debt increases that make sense and he surveyed thirty percent of respondents said they delayed buying a car because of student loan debt twenty one percent said they delayed having children fourteen percent said they delayed getting married i know of one very talented member of my own staff who even in his mid thirty's was burdened with tens of thousands of dollars in debt he incurred while attending law school now he then got married his wife had a couple  children he felt increasingly burdened by the debt he finally had no choice but to leave is relatively modest paying senate job for a more lucrative position in the private sector if you did that this was the only way he'd ever be able to pay off his college loan debt so he could then start saving for his own colleagues for his own students college education you gotta believe there's more and more young people like that they want to do public service type jobs but with the amount of debt they got they just can't afford to do so mr president the college cost reduction act is a sound bill it's a good bill what's more it won't cost the taxpayers a dime i said the bill saves eighteen billion dollars by cutting wasteful excessive subsidies to private lenders that amount seventeen billion will be used to fund increases in pell grants and income based loan program the remaining one billion dedicated to deficit reduction now predictably the private lenders have mobilized a small army of lobbying lobbyist to argue that reductions in their subsidies would be devastating to their industry well this simply is not true the fact is that it's high time that we eliminated the waste and gross excesses in federal subsidies to some of these private lenders because of those subsidies the student loan industry has reaped huge profits and become one of the most lucrative industries in america take sallie mae for example the nation's largest student lender fantastically profitable thanks to these overly generous subsidies over the past thirty years the corporation now is moving forward plans to sell itself ok this corporation has been loaning money to students now going to go private cell itself with a windfall of some twenty five billion dollars two people and we're wondering why students have such high debts in fact as the washington post reported a short while ago mr lord the sallie mae chairman is currently building his own private golf course on two hundred forty four acres in suburban maryland at a cost of up to fifteen million dollars this is ahead by folks of sallie mae the largest student loan industry in america so we shouldn't shed any tears for the private loan companies and their executives they are doing quite well and quite frankly they're going to continue to receive federal subsidies they're going to new to make loans they're going to continue to make profits but maybe some of the future c e o s in this in their see will just have to forgo the luxury of having their own private golf course mr president the college cost reduction act is one of the most important pieces of legislation we'll consider this year it will make college affordable for our young people especially those of modest means it will go a long way towards ensuring that our young people are not overly burdened with student loan debt after they graduate so that they can afford to pursue careers that not only benefit them make the world a better place in which to live and i will put the american dream and that ladder of opportunity once again within reach of every american i urge my colleagues to support just long overdue and vitally important bill again i want to compliment senator kennedy for so many years of leadership on this issue especially the issue of education and making sure that college is affordable to our lowest income students i thank him i thank senator enzi for working together on this bipartisan bill and hopefully before the day ends at to lay down our we can pass this bill and give more hope and opportunity to a lot of these young people she sitting here on the senate floor and to so many other young people throughout america and again i thank senator kennedy for his outstanding leadership on this issue yes i think lisa i thank the good senator from iowa for all of his work on the on our  education proposal he's been a key member of our committee on education and he's not only worked on it in terms of our committee but also as one of the important leaders on the appropriations to make what we have authorized is actually get funded and the young people in iowa should understand that we certainly understand it and we're very appreciative of it just a very quickly though the senator has outline that says that if young people are going to balance here in terms of public service that they'll pay no more than fifteen percent of their income in return and therefore they'll save a good deal of the amounts that they'd otherwise would have saved and then they'll get the loan forgiveness at the end of the day i'm just list here the various areas of public service the particularly interest would be about half way down since the senator from iowa has also been our great leader dealing with the challenges of disability and also with the elderly public service for individuals that work with the disabled and also with the elderly also with independent living issues there as our population goes over longer so we have public health social work in public service agencies education early education childcare our legal system pub defenders and libraries working even with the in the tribal areas as the senator from iowa found that his travels around iowa in many of the schools and colleges that young people are welcome the opportunity to be a part of a giving something back into the local community and giving something as a teacher or helping with the disabled they're glad to do that in too many instances they can't afford to do it because they've got too big a debt but under this bill they'll be able to do that and at the end of the day a grateful nation can say if you do it for ten years your debt is forgiven and  i just asked of the center would not a agree with me that this is really one of the important provisions in this legislation one of the compelling provisions we've tried to to provide help and assistance to those in the pell program but we're also trying to incentivize and give opportunity to young people that want to give something back to their communities by showing that a grateful nation will forgive their debt i think senator for pointing this out i specially want to just underline what the senator said about the public services for people individual disabilities and the elderly because of the olmsted decisions frame court decision because what's happening now is you know we're moving more and more people out of institutional base settings and into community based settings a lot of these people are going to need some help and assistance personal assistant services to get going in the day so they can go to work they can earn money and pay taxes  i often tell the story of my nephew kelly of course now he was injured in the military so he's always had v a services but he has a nurse comes in he's a paraplegic gets up in the morning nurse comes in getting ready to go he goes to work during the day comes home at night as someone take care if it hadn't been for that he wouldn't be working and paying taxes but now that's thankful to the v a they do that but but for anybody else got disability they don't get that kind of service so more and more we need people that will be working with people with individual individuals disabilities in this sector a lot of young people want to do this they cannot afford to do what i say is that her with a mountain of debt that they got they just can't afford to do this kind of work so this bill i don't see i might just recenter on he said that this is one of the most important aspects i think this is the most important aspect of this bill and and i just might also say the senator that you know i started my life as a legal aid lawyer and so many of our of low income families need assistance just legal assistance with debts housing divorces family problems they can't afford it we need a lot of young people want to become a legal aid attorney they may not stay there all their lives but they'd like to do this for a few years as a public service they get their feet wet right away and a lot of legal work i always tell young people in law school if you really want to figure out what legal work is all about become a legal aid attorney out of law school you'll get the cases no one else want you'll get the cases that people have given up on and not tell you that will make a better lawyer than anything in your lifetime lot of young people want to do this they can't do it with the debt that they've got now senator we just look at this chart here here you mentioned about the public defender annual salary this would be a public defender in indiana he has an average loan debt probably as a public defender probably the average is one hundred thousand for probably fifty one if that person has gone through law school now we save them twenty eight hundred dollars a year in repayment saving twenty eight hundred dollars a year if they do it for ten years years if we do this for ten years i just showed the senator from iowa we do it for ten years they are loan forgiveness of thirty three thousand dollars seven thousand seven hundred twenty seven years are monthly payments under this bill right now the relief will be thirteen forty four year and the amount forgiven sixteen thousand and fifty seven dollars this is going to be great for teachers going into teaching in the state of iowa and we know right now i don't know i can't speak what it's like in massachusetts but in iowa we're losing about words of a third to a half of our teachers in the second or third year because they can't afford to teach and pay back their loans so i again i i think senator kennedy for his great leadership on this as i say this to me is the core of what we're trying to do with this bill this prison the senior senator from wyoming is recognized i would yield such time as the two senators need until eleven forty which i think has been reserved for the leaders is that is that correct president i rise along side my colleague and friend senator burr from north carolina on the issue an issue of great importance for america's middle class and that's the affordability of high higher education and i call to the call of amendment a twenty three thirty seven is there objection to setting aside pending amendments without objection so or effective education the average graduate holds over sixteen thousand dollars in debt as they enter the working world that is the equivalent for many starting out as a near mortgage although they don't own a house for many students across the nation the picture is even bleaker as students graduate with the equivalent of a home mortgage in many instances so over the last ten years the problem has grown worse and average tuition and fees at four year public and private institutions have increased by thirty eight percent the class of two thousand and eight will be the largest high school class in u s history with nearly three point two million high school graduates facing the decision of whether or not they can afford to go to college a key part of that calculation will be the financing options at their disposal including grants federal loans and private financing i applaud senator kennedy for leading the world leading the charge and investing additional federal dollars in pell grants which provide need based aid to five point three million americans each year an estimated ninety percent of pell grant recipients considered to be depended upon their parents had family family income below forty thousand dollars this provides essential support for many under privileged families but only starts to address student needs as loans are often are required to supplement this aids aid and many middle class families who are ineligible for pell gran left searching for financing solutions in a time of mounting challenges for america's middle class i'm urging caution and moderation in cutting funding for the federal family education lo n program known as felt which eight out of ten schools rely on to serve their students financial needs at the present time eight out of ten schools rely on these private financing situations for students financial needs the federal government partners with loan providers to ensure that the student loan marketplace is fully capitalized and students have access to affordable higher education financing options this market based approach has solidified access for student loans preserved attentive this to the needs of borrowers and schools while providing valuable discounts to middle class families that said our amendment preserves significant cuts to the student loan industry however it does so in a tempered and moderate manner which bridges the desires of members on the one hand to increase need based aid for low income families and on the their hand to avoid increasing loan costs for millions of families and doing irreparable significant harm to the public private phelps program in addition our amendment preserves the maximum pell grant levels established in the higher education access act and does not reduce financial aid for students many will come and speak about past revenge says a select  student loan industry have been involved in imus troubled as anyone by these past actions and i applaud the help committee for taking action in the higher education reauthorization bill to make sure that these problems do not occur again that said the federal family education loan program felt has afforded young americans the opportunity to attend college for over forty years and as a critical part of making college a reality for many in the middle class over the life of the loan the felt program delivers on average twenty eight hundred dollars in discounts and savings to middle class americans amazingly often we speak about the magnitude of magnitude of student loan cuts as if they will cost nothing americans rely on the fill program and i encourage members to ask their felt schools how valuable the program is for students in their state our amendment tempers the felt at preserving fifteen thousand six hundred fifteen fifteen point sixty five billion in reductions to lenders reports are circulating that the nelson berger amendment would set aside less money for pell grants what has not been rigor relayed accordingly is that the nelson berger amendment increases grant aid to the exact same funding levels as the higher education this act the amendment does not degrade the amount dedicated to pell grants rather it uses a different baseline from which the c b l cost calculations are made we assume the forty six hundred dollars pell grants appropriation which was accommodated in the budget resolution in the same budget which created these reconciliation instructions this that is less than the house of representatives labor health and human services and education appropriation bill which funds it at forty seven hundred dollars per pell grant maximum our focus is on the end result for students a vote for nelson burr not only assures that the neediest families see the same increases in pell grants but also helps mitigate the damage to competitive student loans that deliver savings to middle class families and students many of whom are in eligible for pell grants and other aid so let me make the point clear one eight out of ten schools rely film program and we must to we must proceed with caution and moderation in making these debts because they will reduce the amount of capital available for student loans for middle class families three these  directly impact students and middle income americans pocketbooks that have to rely on loans for higher education and for our amendment does not reduce student aid or the maximum pell grants that out in this bill as some have said so i urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the nelson berger amendment and i ask that my life colleague senator burr have whatever balance i want to take the opportunity to thank senator kennedy and senator enzi who have played the leadership role and trying to find the balance of what our policies should look like the policies of competition the policies of access the policies of direct government loans it's not easy when there's so much we want to do but we're confined by  how much money we've got to do that and it's my hope as senator enzi said earlier that we don't stop with this reconciliation bill that we quickly reauthorize higher education i believe that is absolutely essential and many things that we have in that make a tremendous difference i think senator nelson has done a wonderful job of laying out for everybody what's at stake and i would suggest to you that what we need to focus on more than does the lone come from the private sector or from the federal government or this or that these students this debate is about students it's about are we going to provide an opportunity for every child in this country that wants to see higher education as part of the tools they possess for their competitiveness in the future are we going to provide that for  regardless of where they come from regardless of their income of their family regardless of the school that they choose senator nelson stated very clearly eighty percent of the schools in the country choose well clones as their number one tool to provide the financing that students need to get their education why well one because they're more competitive in most cases those that provide help eliminate their origination fee they discount the loans in many cases their point or more under what the government ey're spread in for profit fifty that fifty they can live with and they might be right but the fact is that none of us know if one lender drops out of the marketplace we have now constrained the choices in the options that every student has i think what senator nelson and i suggest is let's do thirty five and thirty five let's treat for profit and nonprofit the same way in the case of north carolina i should be fine with where nonprofits are because sixty five percent of all student loans written in north carolina are done with the college foundation of north carolina a not for profit institution and when you look at the added services over and above just the discounted rate and the of doing business with the college fund in north carolina and with the for profits in comparison to the government direct loan which is washington driven it's bureaucratic it's not consumer friendly and it's not responsive to the families or the to the students you realize why eight out of ten schools choose it but more importantly why parents and students choose that as the number one option mr president help has a astri and it's a history that shows tremendous benefits to students and to their parents in most areas of the u economy we find that when we encourage competition the beneficiary of that is the individual that reaches a lower price point where say unless not risk it let's go to where we know nobody's harmed but let's not go further than that let's make sure that we've incorporated into the package for those low income families the grant proposals that senator kennedy and senator  incorporated in their bill but let's not be so punitive to the system going into the unknown that we actually eliminate choices that exist in the marketplace very simply armament focuses on students it uses a servant of the felt program to say that we're going to make sure that the competition that existed up to this point existed well into the future as senator nelson said our management cuts for all endured by fifteen point six five billion dollars over five this president at a time where it's not just a domestic economy it's a global economy and i believe every member of the united states senate more importantly every parent in america understands regardless of their education level  for their kids to have an unlimited future they have to have an opportunity to get the best education that they'd like to pursue so that their opportunities in life are unlimited i think we can safely say it a reduction of fifteen point six five billion dollars we feel fairly confident that we can make that promise to parents across this country that we haven't diminished the opportunity for unlimited opportunities for their children but i think nelson and i and others believe that if you cut further and you dimension the competition in the marketplace you have now diminished the opportunity not just the educational opportunity the economic opportunity of the next generation i don't necessarily agree with the philosophy that if we get it wrong there's a government direct loan program that's there to service them regardless and they will access loans they'll access it through a program that doesn't eliminate the origination fee that doesn't discount the product it's its at least a percentage point or higher because they have no competition it's not user friendly it's not responsive it's application process is not predictable sounds a lot like the visa process in the united states for people on the outside looking in and the reality is today what we need is a system that every student and every parent understand  now is present i've got two children in higher education i can tell you the most difficult thing is for a parent to sit down and try to figure out the application process how to fill it out how to qualify and whether in fact you do qualify alluded to earlier the need for additional reforms and i think we agree in a very bipartisan way that there are other things we need to do but the wrong thing to do would be to hurt students and to hurt parents right from the beginning with their access to affordable education the spirit of where we've gone is right it's just gone a little too far and rather than to go into the unknown and not know what the reactions will be by the for profit market i believe the responsible thing is to roll back the change slightly to treat for profits and not for profits t same way to assure every family that the educational opportunities that we continue to see expand for all americans in fact continue in the future and they're not limited or constrained in a way that families look at and try to find financing senator kennedy has proposed in this bill a number of ways to create incentives for specific individuals and i think in most cases this approach is embraced and as senator senator harkin very passionately displayed probably long overdue in a lot of cases as we focus on how to expand it as we focus on how to be choices that parents and students have to real simple if we want to eliminate the word might and say it doesn't all we have to do is roll back slightly the cut that we've proposed in doing that we still make the investment in low income subsidies through pell and other programs we still give the assurance to every family that there's a way to finance college education we still assure students that once they get that diploma that diploma is the answer to the payback of that student loan because they now have the new the the tools for an unlimited future which brings with it an unlimited earnings opportunity i think the answer is easy and i hope my colleagues will support what i think is a very responsible amendment to a very well intended bill i believe not to do it is to accept the responsibility that some kids will win and some kids will lose that the possibility exists that when you diminish competition you actually raise the cost of education not lower the cost that for some that might have access today but might not have access to mark to anything other than a direct from the government student along with that option may be too expensive it may be too cumbersome it may be too difficult to understand it might not be predictable enough and that period of decision as one completes a senior in high school and potentially makes a decision about not just where they go but whether they go with that one change may influence them t say well you know what twelve years is enough i come from a state mr president that has had i think the largest transformation in our condo me of practically any state in the country twenty years ago traditional manufacturing grove every job that was in north carolina and that was in textiles and furniture and through the changes in trade and through the creation of a global economy i don't need to tell my colleagues where textile and furniture jobs are today but they're not north carolina they wouldn't for higher education in north carolina mr president we wouldn't have reeducate it we trained an older workforce but we also wouldn't have the capabilities without higher education today to take the next generation that's coming through and to give them the educational skills that they need to compete in the twenty first century jobs that we're creating today you see for a state that i felt like we got kicked when we were already knocked down we moved from what was the norm in one thousand nine hundred fifty to today jobs that are being created that are in the next sectors of the economy that are just now creating they go out they demand and require a different level of educational proficiency sure if they don't have it they can fill out the application but if they don't have the educational qualifications then never get invited for the interview does them no good as president we encouraging our colleagues today make sure that every student that fills out the application for that job has the educational qualifications to be invited for the interview because we haven't diminished the tools that they can use to pay for the education there is a lot of stake and clearly this congress this body under the leadership of the chairman and the ranking member have moved the ball well down the road in the right direction senator nelson i might say a little bit too far as it relates to the for profit lenders i hope my colleagues will recognize that i hope that they will keep focused on the students and the parents and if in the future we see that the spread can be rolled even further i'm sure at that point in time we'll find a worthy investment that we can make in students and in parents and in education and i divided and controlled the usual form element in order meant prior to the vote vote with respect to the medicare upon disposition of the kennedy amendment which is covered under a previous unanimous consent agreement to be two minutes of debate equally divided prior to the boat that the second and strong member of our committee and a very much involved in education issues and we always profit from his suggestions and i ideas and senator nelson as well except i hope that the senate well not as much as we profit generally there are certain times when we would not and this happens to be just that one time mr president i have in my hand the  bird paragraph c it's three billion paragraph c is two billion and a paragraph d is three point nine million and then there's is two point eight billion the point i'm making is it's four point two billion dollars less in terms of student aid that's the basic point of this now is there a question about the economic stability of primarily sally ma this chart may be difficult to see but if you look at the bottom of this the chart right here on the bottom right you'll see this is sallie mae's all projections this is sallie mae's own projections and if you look at the mr president all during the period of the ninety's at the time we made some modification and giving students more help and assistance and sallie mae had always indicated that they were going to have more and more trouble if you look at the end here on the blue this is their projected in terms of their revenues and profits going out to two thousand and six this is their document not ours they are going to be financially secure and they're going to be financially secure in terms of the future so the debate really is do we wanted to more for students or more for the the banks final point i'd make here mr president is if you look at what the cuts are going to be this represents a difficult chart for people to see but for every state this would be the effect of the nelson burden amendment reduction reducing health assistance for students my state is fifty nine billion i see the senator from rhode island some sixteen billion dollars but for every state in the country this chart represents the reduction as a result for student help and assistance quite frankly if mr president the economic and financial advisors have indicated that these financial institutions are going to have ample and profits my concern is whether we have really done enough in terms of the of the students not have we done t little and that is why i believe that the students will be best served by resisting the nelson amendment they will benefit the most under our proposal and i believe that if we're going to say finally well we'll leave it up to the appropriators we'll leave this up to the appropriate is what are they going to do they take certain assumptions that the appropriators are going to appropriate more money and therefore it really won't be a loss while at the appropriate is appropriate  another minute if the appropriators of the rope create more money it'll go to the benefit under our proposal so the pell grants will go up and students will benefit even further we provide effectively eight hundred dollars in terms of the senator from north carolina is recognized mr president i just want to make one comment from senator kennedy's remarks one has to look a little further at what you get for the money if you look at the nonprofit world in the for profit world they market student loans they educate parents about what's available to them for any parent that's gone through the process one of the most difficult things is when you look at the pot of savings that you've got a huge scene college escalating cost is that when you realize what the cost to he realize you don't have enough and the likelihood is between grants and loans you're going to have to do both where do you go and part of the beauty of the system of a competitive private sector is they're competing which means their marketing their send an information out there educating the parents and the students but there's another piece to it and by the way marketing is extremely expensive there's another piece to it it's called financial literacy the challenge that every parent every student goes through about what their responsibilities are  what's the choice we're going to leave or we're going to take away so much money that marketing and financial literacy are no longer a benefit a service a tool that lenders provide i guess some would suggest we do for one in one second the solution then is that you let the government entity the direct to the student loan from the government be the education source we've got a long history we don't do that well as a matter of fact we don't do it at all so our expectation is that financial literacy would exist or would improve would not be the reality i'd be happy to yield to my colleague thank you i wanted to follow up if i could just for a moment on the point that was raised by the distinguished senator from massachusetts who has just indicated here that the effect of this amendment on my home state of rhode island would be steen million dollars in fewer student loans available for students in rhode island and i wanted to ask the distinguished senator from north carolina if this is in fact correct and if it is correct where does that sixteen million dollars go that could otherwise be supporting higher education for students in my state well let me respond to my colleague that what senator kennedy displayed was a simple mathematical calculation we raise four billion and if you change less money out of the system and we believe that that's a prudent thing to do based upon the on known as to whether that would reduce competition so we have four billion dollars less to work with and we've got the same challenge and that's how do you invest that in a way that families  students feel the beneficial effects of it i believe that as you look at it and you say that that money is now in the system agnel sort of point to the fact that the competition that exist in the felt program saves the entire system six billion dollars a year so if you eliminate it the four billion dollars savings if it were to knock out all the for profits you've lost it on the competition that exists in that system and the lower prices the elimination of origination fees the discounts set aside the fact that we do marketing and we do financial literacy programs that only the private sector seems to be able to do with  reserve about her time does that mean in fact if the senate would yield for the question that there is in fact with all of that said still at sixteen million dollars less available to rhode island students as a result of this amendment i don't know the calculations that senator kennedy went through but i've never found his charge to be incorrect center first courtesy mr president the i you know what how much center for massachusetts two minutes and fifty seconds then the point that is raised is of well there somehow with these kinds of cuts somehow eliminate the the competition see below see below it said that we could actually have three quarters of one percent and there would still be profitability in the system we didn't take three quarters of this we have taken fifty percent one and thirty five percent in the in the other we haven't reached the three quarters so under the cvo there's going to be competition and if you take mae's own projections in terms of the future there's going to be competition we have included in this legislation as something that's enormously important i think at the trial program to be able to have real competition out there to see who will compete for the lowest possible additional payments and to ensure that we are going to be able to get the benefits takes a look at the charts and recognize the what's going to happen in terms of students in their particular states because under this program there will be important to i think important reductions in much time and center from north carolina has three minutes remaining i think the president and let me i won't use the full time out you'll back what i don't use i want to once again thank senator kennedy senator enzi for the leadership that they've shown on not just the reconciliation but hopefully on passage of a education let me make this point the fact that eighty percent of the students in this country choose the felt program for their student loan is a great indication of the value of this program of the competition that it provides but more importantly the savings that is apparent that this program provides to parents and to students if the government direct program which is the default a bureaucratic washington driven loan program is the default because we have calculated incorrectly then only twenty percent of students are be happy because that's all the choose it today eighty percent are going to be unhappy and the question is how do you influence their decision their senior in high school about the need the wan and the ability to go on to higher education i look at the pages that sit in front of us i understand it's them we're talking about for most of us in the room it's not about our kids because we now aged out of  that the reality is that we've got a next generation that we're responsible to make sure that they have equal to if not better opportunities than we as parents if i have this is the time i'm not willing to risk who's right i'm willing to say let's be cautious let's stand on firm ground this institution we have the ability to eusebio for her against this and when it's advantageous we mention it when it's not we don't i realize that but i just hope that members will use what they know and what they see and what you see in this program is eighty percent of the students in the parent choose it they have confidence in it it brings real value and by the way it saves a student three thousand dollars over the life alone because felt brings that level of competition i think that's where say even and it's worth amendment number twenty three twenty nine offered by the junior senator from alaska this president we change the amount to be authorized in appropriated for the college access partnership grant program which changes from twenty five million to one hundred thirteen million for both fiscal year zero eight and zero nine but the college access partnership grant program does  would make payments available to states to assist them in carrying out the civic activities relating to increasing college access for low income students in the state a currently we've got about sixty four percent are middle and low  to enroll in a in a college degree to get a bachelor's degree well only twenty one percent of our lower income students do so the college access partnership grant program is specifically designed to help the state put together services put together the benefits that are most likely to get more of their low income students to apply for to be accepted and to ultimately succeed in college the amendment is paid for by the hundred seventy six million dollars in  x s deficit reduction fund above those required by the budget resolution what we specifically provide for is outreach information on financing options on promoting financial literacy on assisting the student to have access to these very important programs i would urge support of this amendment  mr president i thank the good senator from alaska for her efforts for not only the state of alaska but for all of our estates and for the the initiation that she has provided for this amendment as she has quite correctly stated one of the great challenges is that where you have many qualified students but they can't work their way or don't have the knowledge or the support to be able to find out the educational opportunities that are out there and there are nonprofit agencies in the respective states this will help the states reach out to various or groups and individuals in their state to talk to help and assist them find the towards education that provisions that are included in this legislation this is very very much needed and it will make a i think an important difference we have more than four hundred thousand students now that are not in college are the qualified to go senators amendment is a positive one i hope will support mr chambliss mrs clinton mr coburn mr cochran mr coleman ms collins mr conrad mr louden berg mr leahy mr leaven mr lieberman mrs lincoln mr l mcconnell mr menendez ms mccall ski island mr reid of nevada mr roberts mr rockefeller mr salazar mr sanders mr schumer mr sessions mr shelby mr smith ms snow mr mr white house mr wyde senators voting in the affirmative and z are koski nelson of florida stabenow tester and whitehouse no senator voted in the negative mr alexander voted in the negative of nebraska mr nelson of nebraska a mr sessions mr sessions no mr lugar mr lugar no there schumer  mr carden and mr  lott no mr bennett  use any center wish to vote to say center was to change his or her vote with seventy three in the affirmative and twenty four in the negative amendment number two three tonight has been agreed to under the previous order there now be two take your conversations outside the chamber please warner center massachusetts could we have or mr president as we know under the budget we considered this legislation for five years but the results of the recommendations that came out of our committee will carry on into the future and this is to make sure at a future congress will make the final judgment but this is to make sure that the additional kinds of resources that will be captured after the five years goes to relieve the student in the student loan program and that this will be obviously we'll have a result there is a should and the senate will make whatever judgment but in the meantime we're going to make sure that that those president so for new hampshire this is a reconciliation bill the purpose of reconciliation is to not radically grow the size of government is to control the size of government under this bill unfortunately the size of government will grow by nine hundred billion dollars the actual savings  the bill is now down to seven hundred fifty million dollars so for every one dollar savings there is now nineteen billion dollars of new spending new spending that's not the purpose of reconciliation what the senator's suggesting now is in the second five years when there's forty billion dollars of new spending that is not the twenty three billion dollars what was two point three billion dollars of deficit reduction which was supposed to occur will be grabbed and also spent this makes no sense at all we're supposed to use reconciliation to reduce the rate of growth of government not to spend and this is just an attempt to increase the spending which is already forty billion dollars in the second five years by another two point three billion dollars which is supposed to go to deficit reduction i would hope people would vote against mr johnson mr kennedy mcconnell which menendez coleman mr coleman i buy mr by  stevenson new new sitter and mr nelson nebraska no center was to change his or her vote with fifty two voting in the affirmative and forty five in the negative the kitty bama number two three three zero has been agreed to one of the previous sort of there will now be two minutes of debate equally divided on  order please with the centers take their conversations out of the chamber please that we get order who else time president center for nebraska as president i rise today to urge support for the nelson burr amendment which is the next in line for voting in a time of mounting challenges for america's middle class families i'm urging caution and moderation in cutting funding for the federal family education loan program which eight out of ten eighty percent of the schools rely on to serve their students financial needs nelson berger amendment does not does preserve significant cuts of fifteen point six five billion to the student loan industry but it this does so in a tempered and moderate manner which bridges the desires of members on the one hand to increase need based aid for low income families and on the other hand to avoid increase the loan costs for millions of families and doing irreparable significant harm to the public private private help program in addition our amendment preserves the maximum pell grant levels established in the higher education access act i want to say that it does preserve there's information that says it is not doing it that way and that that information is incorrect i thank you mr president for her order please order please center from massachusetts mr president all you have to do is pick up the proposal and the ones that have been recommended by the committee and you'll see that there's four billion dollars in cuts those are benefits that are going to go to students the question is are you going to support the students or are you going to support the ba that is the issue that is a question every state will see a reduction in the funding for students under this proposal cvo has indicated in evaluating our proposal that the lenders talking about the industry are going to have profits i can spend the time and will include their report that said that the lenders themselves large and small alike this is whether we are going to support the students that need that help need that assistance that are the future in terms florida mr nelson of nebraska mr obama mr pryor to read word island mr reid of nevada mr roberts mr rockefeller the senators in the chamber wishing to vote or change their vote if not thirty six i sixty one knows address and i hope our members well up a close attention we have been making important progress during this these this last hour or so on some very very important amendments and we are grateful for the interest in the involvement of all of our right colleagues here we have a number of our colleagues that wish to address that the senate on this education legislation will hear from several of them as to this time are very very grateful for all of the support the senator from maryland has given and such time as he he might want on the legislation i'm president from maryland first time president i have eleven unanimous consent requests thank senator kennedy and senator enzi for their extraordinary leadership in bringing forward the higher education access act i think this is one of the most important bits of legislation that we will be considering during this term of congress to me it speaks to one of the highest priorities of our country and that is making education quality education available to all of our families affordability of higher education is a critically important issue affecting families throughout our nation in one nine hundred sixty five we made a commitment in the higher education act that every family every family this country should be able to send their children to college and that the financial considerations should not prevent a family from allowing their children to get the benefits of higher education in america we enacted the pell grants which was a huge program at that time opening up opportunities to many families that never had it before but not a president over the last twenty years we've seen a considerable erosion of the affordability of higher education to families in the united states in the last twenty years college cost of increased threefold and yet the buying power of power grants actually declined during the past twenty years today fifty five years of twenty years ago fifty five percent of the cost of public four year colleges could have been financed through pell grants today that's less than one third of the estimated the four hundred thousand four hundred thousand children in our country each year see the doors of higher education barred to them because they just can't afford to pay the tuition and cost of going to post secondary school this is important to our country when i graduated from college fifteen percent of the new jobs required some form of post secondary education today that number is  excess of sixty percent this is important for the individual in order to benefit the opportunities of america but it's important for our country if we're going to be competitive internationally we need to have an educated workforce so this is a public investment it's not just for the individual it is for our nation so that we can continue to grow economically and our standard of living can increase individuals not only determine what school because the cost does affect many families saying gee i know you could benefit from going to this particular college or university but we just can't afford it so we'll try this college or university and it may work it may not but it's also affecting the careers that graduates choose because they had these huge loans that they have to consider repaying and we have people who are students who would like to become teachers or like to become nurses or go into law enforcement or to go and some to other feel that they feel very talented about are very committed to bail but they take a look at their college loans and they have to opt out to be reap the repay those loans and we an out on the creativity of college graduates it's also affecting when you start a family it's always affected when you buy a home so the cost of higher education truly has affected so much of this nation the type of country that we are and that's why this legislation to me is one of the most important that we will be considering during this term of congress fifteen years ago that half the students in colleges took out loans well today that number over two thirds and the average debt for a college graduate is nineteen thousand dollars we have a chance to do something about it in this legislation i might point out to my colleagues that along with senator snowe i've been reduced the master teachers act of two thousand and seven that provides a federal tax incentive for teachers who go into careers to help under served areas are world areas and those areas where the schools  meeting the expectations of no child left behind i bob are the areas that's an important bill that will help but we have a real opportunity in this legislation to make a major difference on the affordability of higher education the budget i was proud to be a part of the budget committee and i congratulate the leadership of our budget committee senator conrad provided a way in which we could consider this legislation to say that our priority is in higher education and making quality higher education affordable to marry american families senator kennedy and senator enzi has taken up that charge of bipartisan legislation that we have before us it clearly moves us in the right direction to help families in this country and to help our nation become more competitive this legislation provides seventeen billion dollars of additional college aged students the biggest increase since the g i bill tell grants that currently maxed out a little over forty three hundred would be increased to fifty one hundred dollars also increases the income levels making more students qualified to receive pell grants and caps and the monthly loan payment of fifteen percent of discretionary income this is a is a huge improvement on affordability of families a college graduate now knows that they'll be able to live after they graduate and can go into careers that they want to go into knowing that there will be a limit as to how much they have to repay when an annual basis for their discretionary income on their college loans that's a major policy statement that we're making that we want college graduates to go into the fields where they can best contribute to our society and it does a lot more protect working students there aren't penalize because they're working that's an important policy encourages public service a loan forgiveness program for those who go into public service and commit to a ten year requirement i think that's a again a policy that's important for our country the say yes we do want young people to go into public service and it's fiscally responsible with there's offsets th make sure we're not adding to the deficit hold colleges accountable because at the cost of a college exceeds their peers there's ways in which the public can put pressure to keep college costs down this bill is very important helps families of maryland  this bill will provide thirty two million dollars in new grants next year to families in my state of maryland and over the five year period two hundred seventy three million dollars in new grants and for the historically black colleges and universities will provide five million dollars in new grants next year and forty million dollars in new grants over the five years of this legislation bottom line more families and marilyn are going to be able to afford to send their children to college more children will be able to go there first preference as far as what school they want to attend which college and university and will not be prohibited because of the costs will be more opportunities for so many families that have been left out of the american dream in my state of maryland and more marylanders will be able to cruise choose the type of career where they can best add to their own self fulfillment and to help our community  president this is an important bill to me it speaks to the priorities of what this nation should stand for or and i'm proud to urge my colleagues to support this legislation and with that and i would yield before madam president from new york thank you madam president and i'd like to first recognize my friend the senator from massachusetts the senior senator from massachusetts on his efforts to produce this fine bill before us today his efforts to improve higher education affordability and his willingness to make tough reforms in student lending are going to make a major difference to america's students one area in which this bill particularly excels is we all know is an important program i've long supported it i commend my colleagues for making such a meaningful investment in the pell grant program and madam president we all know whether you're middle class or poor or going to college these days is a necessity almost and yet it's harder and harder to afford it and this bill takes care of both the poor and the middle class in a variety of ways and makes it easier to go to college that will make it better for the students and perspective students will be helped that will make it better for their families aloso make it better for america the pell grant program is a critical resource for financially needy college students in the two thousand and five six academic year five point three million of the nation's undergraduates receive pell grants and it makes an enormous difference to students whose family income is very limited most have incomes of less than twenty thousand dollars over one million in new york alone and one of the great things about america is that we provide ladders up we're not going to give you an escalator you're going to have to work to climb but the a ladder knew you going to work hard and succeed in college it will be easier for you go despite the high costs of to issue this aid and improvements to the loan programs or critics are critical in fact the typical student now graduates with seventeen thousand dollars in federal student loan debt that's a mountain of debt for a working adult which is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid it's undeniable that sustaining a talented college educated workforce is essential to our success in the global economy college education has become almost a necessity in the world that our young people are facing and yet it is priced as a luxury yet since two thousand and one two is fees at four year public colleges and universities have risen forty one percent that's after inflation families in new york are certainly struggling with education costs even after financial aid is taken into account thirty three percent of the median family income in new york is needed to pay for just one year in a four year public college the federal student loan programs are critical resource for america's students parents deserve a pat on their back when their kids graduate from college not bills and repayments that may break some families trying to afford a college education need our help whether they be poor working families or families well into the middle class that's why i was proud to author a law that allows students to deduct four thousand dollars from their tuition that's why i'm proud to be a supporter of this legislation which helps students poor students with increased tell grants significantly increased pell grants but also to those who take out stafford loans will limit how much they must pay back to fifteen percent of their disposable income and so that will dramatically help those kids democrats have said we're going to take america in a new direction we said we're committed to strengthening america's middle class this bill does both of those things and i'm happy to support it with working on this important legislation this is especially important i think to most american families because all of us now begin to appreciate how expensive it is to receive a higher education tragic to point out  higher education can mean to more and more americans the quality of life the individual success of our citizenry but the collective wellbeing of our country as well when we have a well educated population i've often quoted this is a quote of the suggesting that a president that was made by thomas jefferson more than two hundred years ago that any nation expects to be ignorant and free expects what never was never possibly can be and certainly as we enter this twenty first century of global competitiveness the children of my state are not just competing with the children  bserve the onset of the presiding officer but also competing with children obviously all over the world from beijing to johannesburg and moscow to delhi everywhere this is going to be a very different world that our children grow up in the twenty first century and extent we provide them with the tools and the preparation necessary to compete and succeed under these very different circumstances than most of all of us have grown up with is going to be extremely important and extremely important work that this body does in preparing ourselves for the education challenges that will face is in the in the twenty first century the cost of education of it it is a major factor here it's vital obviously for children and families in america's long term success according to most recent statistics just to put it very graphic terms a person with a higher education a college education they're earning power jumps by almost a million dollars another that ought to be the sole criteria or whether or not someone gets a higher education at the earning power of an individual is substantially enhanced i think there are other more important issues than just earning power but certainly the issue involved about individuals being able to do better provide for their families via the long term financial security themselves and their families is critically important but they're issues that go beyond how much money you make that have to do with education how strongly we support the institutions we embrace as americans as jefferson was suggesting back to the beginning of the one nine hundred centuries i would argue even more important the subtleties of a bill of rights will depend upon a education i was stunned to learn madam president that even in the last few months the number of young people our country who completed high school except a dire situation and did not go because of the financial barriers i'm told the numbers have around a quarter of a million of young people in this country that is a deeply troubling statistic if we have as many as two hundred to two hundred fifty thousand people in our country who cannot afford to go on to higher education despite having done everything else well in america truly will be paying a price in no time at all the average cost of attending a public university we now know is roughly thirteen thousand dollars the average cost of attending a private university stands at thirty thousand dollars that's average as i said and i know the people here can says seitan numbers and statistics that make that thirteen thousand dollars on average seem small and the thirty thousand dollars for an mc is small but just think of that thirty thousand dollars for one in the vidual to go on to one year of higher education even at a public institution thirteen thousand dollars and then consider where the average family is in their income and whether or not they have more than one child and other obligations obviously as they try to repair their own long term financial security now about health care costs rising premium cost of they have health insurance the mortgage payments on their home with adjustable rate mortgages all of these factors crowding in as families trying to everything possible to see to it that their children can have the benefits of a higher education how many families have planned and spent years and years watching their children maturing grow with a full expectation after all the admonitions work hard do your homework get involved in things learn as much as you can pay attention all of that and arriving at the moment when they do everything have supposed to have done and say now we want to send you on we can't afford to do so or that the loans are so expensive that you'll be left with such debt that the benefits of getting a higher education seem daunting to put it mildly so imagine how daunting these levels are to a single parent or family struggling on a minimum wage for instance we can even forget about a minimum that we must do more to ensure that the skyrocketing tuitions do not put out of reach the dream and the ability of obtaining a higher education as why this bill is so important maybe one of the most important bills we've had long debates on immigration long debates on iraq all vary in point issues but the long term effects of what we do on this legislation may have more to do with the well being of our country than almost anything else we may discuss in the coming days and weeks this bill will help us move toward a society where  opportunity for all is more than just high blown rhetoric we hear too often in public speeches or actually does something to make a difference in the lives of working families there are a number of key provisions that are present this bill which accomplish those goals for example the bill caps puts a cap on the borrowers monthly loan payments at fifteen percent of discretionary income that's a major achievement and that's still costly fifteen percent of the of the discretionary income this  cap if he will will make repayment more manageable and bars will be less likely to default on their loans which are to be important the lending institutions this bill will also increase the auto zero they call it threshold to allow additional low income families to automatically claim zero expected family contribution when filing out financial aid forms allowing students of these families to be eligible for pell grants to offer what we've done with the pell grants as we take in these other factors and it drives a family out of the qualifications when frankly what they do have to contribute to their overall their overall well economic well being is so little that it would amount to almost nothing and yet would disqualify them from receiving the pell grant funding that they need for the more we raise the cap on economic hardship deferment from three years to six years to ensure that students are not financially crushed in times of financial difficulty is also strengthen our commitment to those who provide high quality childcare services as well as all of the public service employees by offering them further opportunities for loan forgiveness mr president one of the items contained in this bill that i am most happy about is the increase in the pell grants that it provides for i have been involved in this for raised to five thousand one hundred dollars that's up from five thousand four hundred dollars to five thousand four hundred seized me by the year two thousand and twelve frankly that's paltry candidly i wish you were much better when you consider what a pell grant used to provide only a few short years ago towards the cost of a public education they used to cover eighty percent mr president the average tuitions to issue these roman ward at a public university today the telegram covers twenty nine percent so even with  grant you're still looking at having to come up with roughly a seventy percent of the additional cost of that higher education you take all the factors in together as a result low and middle income students who attend college are forced to finance their education with ever increasing percentage loans including private loans this increase in the debt burden of students and in some cases keeps them from going to college at all as i mentioned the numbers earlier somewhere close to a quarter of a million students not going on to higher education because of because of financial burdens this year alone is estimated four hundred thousand high school graduates who are very ready to go to a four year college will be unable to go because their families can't afford to that's double the amount it was just a few years is doing that until we reach the goal of eighty percent of students to which i'm being covered by pell grants and other forms of federal aid many students only forced to turn to private and direct consumer and student loans which are also not guaranteed by the federal government  subject to loan limits as the president fact the market for private student loans has grown significantly and is now the fastest growing segment of the eighty five billion dollars student loan industry as traditional sources of student aid have failed to keep pace with both the tremendous demand and the cost of higher education the underwriting for private loans is similar to that use other forms of consumer credit this means that student borrowers are usually have little or no credit history for credit scores or no parental cosigner or whose parents have poor credit history will typically pay higher rates than those with good credit histories or those with parental cosigners with good credit in many regards this model runs counter the longstanding federal purpose of student aid which is targeting low cost financial assistance to students with the greatest needs and those from the humblest of backgrounds one of the great success stories to present our country is how many times we heard the anecdotes repeated hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of time of what a difference it has made throughout our history that we have tried desperately to make sure that no one in this country would be divide deprived the opportunity of a higher education because their families lacked the financial resources to do it or that they did if you had to drive the ambition the determination to get a higher education america stood ready to see to it that pathway was available to you it's only been in the last few years that we've allowed a situation to develop here where too often those those young people in those families are being told that because you're in those circumstances you're not going to be able to get that higher education that you need deserve the mention a moment ago going from two hundred thousand young people who will not go on despite having done everything right to four hundred thousand at a time when we enter a global marketplace where do you have the best prepared generation america's ever produced we seem to be heading in the wrong direction this bill reverses that trend and again i commend my colleagues senator kennedy particularly senator enzi for their work and reversing this trend line and i hope it's the beginning of several steps  making in the coming in the coming years and further alarm as the president by reports uncovered by the congressional state investigators which detail aggressive in question a private loan marketing practices and other unseemly industry practices ranging from conflicts of interest a kickback schemes to consumer fraud i want to particularly commend andrew cuomo the attorney general the state of new york has taken a leadership role in this national in uncovering some of these games and kickbacks and other financial activities that have put these costs at even higher cost to students and i was pleased that we had him testify before the banking committee only a few weeks ago to talk about this and the steps that will be taken to try and correct some of these matters at the appropriate time i also by issues uncovered at a hearing and hearing in fact it is mention mr chairman within the senate banking committee that suggest some lenders may be using as part of their loan underwriting criteria subjective rankings of academic institutions and the students who attend these schools that may be discriminatory and disparate impact the quality and type of loans made available to students based on their race in the us to economic background in effect red line where they're taking entire institutions a base than some data and so far they collected deny individual students within those institutions the lower cost access to financial support that amounts to red lining as we saw it in housing issues only a few years ago if that is the case and we believe that maybe we'll be taking steps to correct that to correct that as well students seeking to finance a higher education should have access to the most competitive and affordable loans available to private student loan market with appropriate consideration given to the credit worthiness of the student at any cost sign and without regard to the type of the institution that student chooses to attend and students should have the full and timely access to all the information they need regarding the terms and conditions of private student loans in order to make a well informed decision regarding the financing of their educational needs mr president given the growth of the of this market and its enormous impact on the education economic futures of student borrowers i view it as imperative that we address these issues as part of the consideration of the higher education act reauthorization we should ensure that the market is well regulated and accessible and affordable as an alternative source of higher education funding for those who need them in our country we can do that my view by prohibiting industry practices like revenue sharing and co branding that present conflicts of interest by providing student borrowers with better more timely disclosure information so that students understand the rates the terms of the conditions of the loans that they're going to receive and we must work to make sure that private stude lending practices are transparent so the public can be confident that students and families are taking the most competitive and affordable student loans with the fairest terms as president i plan on working with my friend and colleague senator shelby of alabama who is the ranking member of the senate banking committee and all members that committee for that matter on this bill were in the plaza doing that now i would say under the circumstances this bill is coming up we'd be prohibited under under senate rules from raising that issue on this particular vehicle i don't in any way suggest that what they're doing here is not the right thing to be doing it is the right thing to be doing but our bill that deals specifically with student financing and lending institutions will present at an appropriate time possibly when the full higher education bill is before us but we're determined on a bipartisan basis to address some of these issues and not all of them that i've raised here briefly this this afternoon indeed this bill before us here provides all students with the tools that make it possible to access and afford it post secondary education if we're serious about leaving no child behind as i know all of us are as a nation that we must reinvigorate our commitment to higher education and to ensure that students have access to a higher education college education if america is to remain the land of opportunity as all of us want to be that we must ensure that college is available to all of our citizenry and i hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this long overdue legislation again as the president often cited that  ninety's was the northwest ordinance my colleague from colorado is more familiar to this than i do given he represents a state of the far west that the old idea being to set aside land for educational purposes the moral act which was adopted here in the mid a thousand nine hundred in fact right in the middle of the civil war center marla vermont offer legislation to grant land to create land grant colleges so even in the midst of this great contest of the term and whether or not we remain one nation one union the congress of the united states and the leadership of abraham lincoln and senator morell of ramana fought to create land grant colleges the university of connecticut is one of those institutions mr president that provided incredible opportunities for young people all across the nation again understanding the value of education to our country so in the eighty's in the one nine hundred centuries and of course in the twentieth century we saw even before world war two was concluded the congress the united states passed the g i bill which provided of course a whole generation of servicemen and women coming back from that war to get an education opportunity that investment in the g i bill has been repaid the united states government tenfold because of the earning power the individuals who went through the g i bill were able to improve their economic opportunities the reason the resource they paid back into our country a dwarf the cost of that legislation today we don't even think about legislation like that given the cost today regrettably i might add because if you consider that four hundred thousand think of that four hundred thousand of our young people in country today are not going to go on to higher education because of cost four hundred thousand who did everything they were asked to do i presume having been accepted on to higher education that all the things they were asked to do four hundred thousand will not get that chance because we don't have the resources or the will to come up with a system to make that possible in the to do so and we talk about being a major competitor nation in the twenty first century i promise you mr president are major competitors around the world are not making that mistake they will create the opportunities for the young people to get that education this bill is a major step to reverse that trend there are other things we need to do such as a financial aid package with private lenders that will be offering shortly that i could not offer today i wish i could  subject at to at least two points of water it's all require sixty vote margin to deal with it and we apparently don't have a number of members here willing to go that far i was going to say that will have to wait for another opportunity in the coming weeks to do so and i'll do that with senator shelby as we work on this together but my hope is you want to have an opportunity to present a legislation that will close up some of these abusive practices that have gone on raising costs in depriving them lees and theirs to their children to have the best possible love deals if you will the best possible mr president yes senator from rhode island thank you mr president may i ask that the quorum call be vitiated jackson mr president many years ago president lyndon johnson said this we have entered in a gym which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others it has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex industrialized society we have truly entered the century of the educated man as a president those are important words to consider as we consider the legislation now before the senate and i think senators kennedy and enzi for their extraordinary leadership on this issue as well as so many others and for the opportunity that i have to speak here today on their bill mr president i'm here to talk about an initiative that revolutionized higher education in america and that is the pell grant here inside this desk at which i stand are the names of senators plotted before me and i can actually open the door take out the stuff that's in the drawer and in the drawer you can see the names of senators who've gone before me at the bottom here is john o pastoring of rhode island who served in this body with great distinction and was my last democratic pre disaster in the senate and it's hard to see because he was not a proud man and wouldn't write it in great big letters but you can see here a very carefully written tell our senator pell of rhode island it is a remarkable thing for me to be here in this context because senator claiborne pell and his wife in a way  lot have long been cherished friends senator pell is both a mentor to me and a constant reminder a constant reminder of the positive impact that an individual person can have through public service now i'm so glad that the senator from colorado was presiding at this particular moment because i want to describe to everybody who was watching a remarkable event that i was privileged to witness a few years ago i was at an event in rhode island as the presiding officer will remember with a number of senators including the presiding officer and during that event senator pell came to the tent that we were all under in his wheelchair as many of our colleagues know he had a truly uses a wheelchair now the group became very quiet  and turned out of the respect that we haven't heard island for this great and dedicated public servant and the senator from colorado senator salazar went over to senator pell and took his hand and shook it and told him i would not have been able to attend college if it had not been for the support of the pell grant program and now you said i'm standing here before you a united states senator thanks to the vision and foresight that you showed years ago your vision that every american should be able to get a college education it was an unforgettable moment then it gives me goosebumps to recount it now and it happened because senator pell understood the difference that higher education could make in the lives of america's young people from the young ken salazar who now serves with such distinction in this great institution today to those across america who will seize the opportunities of higher education in this country for decades to come now today the program that bears senator pelz name is in our hands each spring high school seniors in rhode island and across the country wait anxiously for those acceptance letters to let them know what college they got into i've just been through this experience with my daughter and all of her classmates but for many many american family is just as important as those letters from the admissions office are the letters from the financial aid office that let the families know whether that college education is going to be affordable i've heard from so many families in rhode island who look ahead to the day when their children will go off to college and sees their bright futures but they wonder how they will ever be able to afford it without some form of financial aid either from the institution itself or from the federal government as the cost of higher education stores higher up up thirty five percent in five years mr president students and parents face ever more difficult financial choices many go into debt not only through federal student loan programs but increasingly to private lenders many shoulder enormous burdens of debt that can stay with them throughout their lives but when that high school senior receives a pell grant money that does not have to be paid back the dream of college becomes more of a reality have been a critical form of federal aid that has helped literally millions of young people across this country achieve a level of education that was previously out of their reach unfortunately pell grants now represent only thirty three percent one third of the total cost of a four year public university just twenty years ago a pell grant would have paid sixty percent of that cost as higher education for americans has become more and more important not just to their individual opportunities but also to our national economy and competitiveness remember the words of lyndon johnson so many years ago we have truly entered the century of the educated man we need education to compete actually lost value versus the actual cost of college so the need has been getting higher and higher the benefit to our country continues to increase but the support through the pell grants has slid away over the years until it's now only thirty three percent of the cost of public university so we must recommit ourselves to make college affordable to all students the promise grants created by the higher education access act will guarantee that students who qualify for the maximum pell grant will receive fifty one hundred dollars for the two thousand and eight two thousand and nine academic year and fifty four hundred dollars by two thousand and eleven for us and what i well and this will mean ten million dollars in additional grants funds for rhode island students next year and over the next five years eighty six million dollars and it will also expand family access to pell grants and large ng the number of families who can get access to pell grants better reflecting  today's economic realities mr president senator pell is part of a strong tradition of rhode island senators who have committed themselves to making higher education accessible to all americans this tradition is proudly carried on by sen pelz direct successor in this chamber my friend senator jack reed a champion of higher education access and affordability and i admire his work to provide more aid for students who need it the most those who work and those whose family income is under thirty thousand dollars mr president we see in this chamber and across the country every day every year as in september a new group of students goes off to college the tremendous influence the work of senator pellets had on the fabric of our nation and on the lives of the millions of young americans who have used pell grants to make their dream of higher education a reality i applaud this important legislation today senator kennedy and senator enzi have worked hard together in a wonderful bipartisan spirit to put together legislation that will advance the strength of our country and the opportunity for our young people this is a vital step and an important investment that we must make in the future of america's young people i thank the presiding officer i'm honored that i should have a good portion of be able to deliver these remarks at a time when he was presiding in the chair and i yield the floor this president the senior senator from illinois as president i asked my friend from rhode island to take note of the fact that we are conscious of senator pell's great contributions to america and pell grants have helped a lot of children from young people from unfortunate circumstances a chance to succeed in life it is a wonderful legacy and i know that you see him from time to time and i hope you'll tell him that we haven't forgotten the great contribution he's made to this great nation i will be sure to do that mr president today in the united states senate because of a number of things fortunate to have a good family and friends and role models fortunate to have good luck in politics and fortunate that in one nine hundred fifty seven the soviets launched a satellite one of the reasons i'm standing here today satellite was known as sputnik sputnik was the first satellite launched into outer space and the united states which thought it was the most powerful nation in the world stepped back on its heels couldn't believe it the soviets had launched a satellite and we knew they had nuclear weapons a panic spread across washington d c this capital and the nation the soviets are winning the space race they could conquer the united states if they can find a way to put that nuclear weapon into a satellite we could never knock it down what did congress do it did something that was really breathtaking and unprecedented it decided that the best way to fight the soviets was to make sure that we had a force that could equal the soviets not just a military force we've always had a great military but a force of private citizens with the training and knowledge to compete with the soviet union and every other country that might be our enemy in the future and there was a ups cure congressman who came up with an idea why doesn't the federal government loan money to college students nobody thought of that before it was radical some said it was too big government was getting too involved but he prevailed in the fear of the climate college get educated we need to in america for our future for defense well there were a number of young people who heard that message and i was one of them and so i borrowed money through the national defense education act to go to college and law school at a time when i could never before didn't do it otherwise the terms were very reasonable under the terms of the national defense education act you borrowed money throughout your academic career and then one year after graduation you had to start paying it back so they gave a year to get back on your feet and the interest rate was capped at three percent think about that so i paid it back over ten years even though when i graduated i didn't think it was possible it turned out to be fairly simple because with my law degree in college education i made a little bit more money so i could pay back my student loan now repeat that story millions of times over and you have an explanation of why america is where it is today we decided to invest as a nation in making certain that we had a new generation of college graduates we took higher education which had been fairly elite to that point in our history and democratized it was no longer just the smartest kid and the richest kids and the sons and daughters of alumni who are admitted to colleges and universities now this kid from east st louis illinois whose mother and father went as far as e f grade had his chance and many more like me well i'd like to think as i stand here today that that government program paid off not only for me but for this nation and that story is repeated over and over again but now it's happened what's happened is that the cost of education has gone up dramatically i took a look at what i paid at georgetown university in the early one nine hundred sixty s and i would be embarrassed to tell you the numbers it didn't take much to get through university in those days you could borrow a thousand dollars a year and make it through if you worked during the school year and work during the summer and were careful with your  course not even close to the reality today whether it's a public university or private university the cost is going up substantially and students as good as they are when admitted to those schools understand that if they don't receive a lot of financial assistance they'll have to borrow some money and borrowing that money keeping up that debt means that as they graduate they have a burden they never anticipated not the burden i faced back in one thousand nine hundred sixty nine but a much greater burden today for the cost of higher education and then the scene changed we went for the national defense education act a government program with a fixed rate of interest and decided well let's let the private sector get into this and they did first we had a an organization called sallie mae which was created as kind of a quasar a government operation which was going to be a transition between the private sector and public sector well over the years sallie mae evolved into a completely private corporation it is now one of the not the largest student loan under in america it is also one of the most profitable businesses on the new york stock exchange think of it this lender loaning  children and the next generation of americans is flush with cash they're making a lot of money and they're doing it quite honestly at the expense of these kids a lot of these young people sign up for loans and they have no idea what they're signing up for if you think that i'm being critical of them i will also quickly add that very few of us flip over the monthly credit card statement to read the fine print about what we're getting into we just trust everything's going to work out well for a lot of young students they sign up for loans which dramatically increase in cost for example not unusual for a student to borrow money in his freshman year and then be told don't worry you don't have to pay anything back while you're still in school student breathes a sigh of relief that continues on borrow some money the next year but many times the loans that they're borrowing are increasing in cost each year while they're not making the payments the five thousand dollars you borrowed in your freshman year that you didn't pay back for three or four years turns out to be ten thousand dollars at graduation now multiply that times four and you get an idea of what students are into so the debt that students carry out of universities is much higher today the companies like sallie mae are very very profitable at the expense at the expense of these students now the companies argue like sallie mae can you think of a worse risk than a recent graduate from high school and we're willing to run that risk of loaning money to that high school graduate uncertain as to whether the graduate or ever find a job and so you've got to give us a break i'll concede that point but when you take a look at the actual costs of the loan it's pretty clear that industry is doing more than covering it's risk it's making an awful lot of money senator kennedy's been our leader on the say shoe and this bill that we have is before us today is a bill that will dramatically change the kinds of student loans that will be available and student assistance available to students across america i think it's long overdue we need to make certain that we have money available for young people to go to school under terms where they can afford to repay and that's part of this bill a big part of this bill the average student in america today is graduating with nearly twenty thousand dollars in debt in many places that's more than the downpayment on a home so how do we expect our kids to prosper if they spend the next ten to twenty years digging out of a financial hole the  just referred to are basically scholarships given to the lowest income students it's the right thing to do to give these kids a fighting chance until the changes offered in this bill that we're considering today the grant didn't change for five years what happened to the cost of college education in five years it went up and so students trying to make up the difference had to borrow more money interest rates on a program called the stafford loans went up last year in fact last year president bush signed a bill passed in the republican congress which increased the interest rates on student loans think about that congratulations recent graduate your government's just given you a bigger mortgage to pay in terms of your student loan that's we did we also limited the opportunity of students to consolidate their loans and bargain them into lower interest rates my wife and i own a home  springfield illinois when a good market rate comes along we talk about refinancing our home most people do students under the bill signed by president bush unfortunately were limited as to how and when they could consolidate their loans and look for  lower interest rates even with these pell grants and stafford loans working income and for students lucky enough scholarships many many young people are forced to turn to private student loans to pay for college what about private student loans i had a couple come into my office a few weeks ago there in the private student loan business they said they were just trying to fill in the gaps that the pell grants and the government loans didn't take care of and so i asked him what's the interest rate that you charge on these student loans and she said oh it's about eight percent and i said no is that the highest rate you know the highest rates nineteen percent is quite a difference think about your home mortgage at eight percent as opposed to nineteen percent think about the possibility you'll ever pay that loan off oh and incidentally something happened here on the floor of the senate that people didn't notice senator kennedy didn't remember we had the bankruptcy bill up here you recall what we did in a bankruptcy bill let's go back in history for a minute there was a time when some students who had borrowed money from the government to go to school waited until they graduated and filed bankruptcy discharging their student loans in bankruptcy never paying a back we said wait a minute if the government is going to pay for your education then you have and you have an obligation to pay it back because that money goes to another student is another student  opportunity so we said one of the bankruptcy law that you cannot discharge a government student loan in bankruptcy well in the last bankruptcy bill the people who are in the companies with private student loans put themselves in the same category and so if a student unknowingly signs up for a nineteen percent college loan and then gets out of school and has an illness ends up can't find a job and files bankruptcy is stuck not only with any government loan but these private companies and their loans they'll haut that student to the grain if he can't discharge that loan in bankruptcy under any conditions except the most extreme financial circumstances so i would say that this bill is long overdue according to the college board to ition fees room and board at public four year schools has risen by forty two percent over the past five years from one thousand dollars to twelve almost thirteen thousand dollars and i want to make that point i have thought as senator kennedy has for better terms in student loans larger more direct loans from colleges to students to take the lending institution in the middle man out of the operation and i'll continue to do it but make no mistake we are shoveling against the tide with this legislation if colleges and universities decide well if they're going to loan more money at lower interest rates we'll just raise our cost and they've been doing that year after year after year and so my message in voting for this bill is to colleges and universities that we certainly expect them to use restraint and good judgement in terms of what they're charging students today let me give you one footnote to that twenty five percent of the debt the college students take out of college is because of expenses at the bookstore if you as a student sign up for a course and you're about to take the course you notice there are a handful of textbooks you have to buy you go down to your book store to buy the textbooks and find out that that textbook which is only for sale at this bookstore cost one hundred dollars not unusual well it turns out that in the any given semester a student could end up with hundreds of dollars in debt just for textbooks i made a proposal introduced a bill which will bring up at a later time when higher education and comes before us that basically requires colleges and universities to disclose to students the textbooks and their costs as part of their course offerings textbook publishers scream bloody murder how could you do that how could you require us to disclose the cost of our textbooks before the students sign up for the course and the professor said you know that inhibits academic freedom no it doesn't they can pick any textbook they want and we did something else we also required them to put in what's known as the i s b in code this is like the universal code for a book and why so the students can go shopping on the internet maybe they can find that textbook a lot cheaper i don't think that's a bad idea in this day of internet sales well we don't have it as part of this bill was offered as part of the next bill but colleges and universities which are dedicated to bringing down costs for students ought to take a look not only a tuitions room and board but at the cost in the school bookstores as well i'm pleased that the senate's considering this higher education access act today it's going to help a lot of students many of us have been calling for an increase in a pell grant for years none more vocal even the senator from massachusetts twenty years ago the maximum pell grant for low income working class kids covered about fifty five fifty five percent of the cost of a four year public education today the maximum of four thousand and fifty dollars covers thirty percent almost half of what it covered a few years ago the bill on the floor today will raise the maximum pell grant to fifty one hundred dollars next year fifty four hundred dollars by the year two thousand and eight i'm glad that the senate defeated an earlier amendment which would have reduced that amount i think the senate showed good judgment understanding the pell grant is really absolutely essential for a lot of kids from low income families over the next six years this bill will provide over eight hundred fifty million dollars in new grant aid to students in my state of illinois this will do a great deal to help the neediest students get their college education it caps monthly student loan repayments at fifteen percent of the student's discretionary income you talk to senator kennedy about this earlier and i believe that he is moving in the right direction so that students when they graduate realize that they won't have to pay any more each year than fifteen percent of their discretionary income that's going to give them some relief in terms of their brea payments and give them some opportunities to choose jobs that they really want i run into students mr president now but you have to who really want to be teachers and we need to miss teachers but when they end up with twenty and thirty thousand dollars in student loan debts they take a job which pays a little bit more so that they can have a basic life and still pay off their student loan this bill is going to help students understand they won't have to repay more than fifteen percent of their discretionary income if they work in certain professions that have a public importance to us i can't tell you the number of college graduates have come to me asking for relief from these high monthly student student loan repayments many of them are just starting careers and barely scraping through so i think this is a positive aspect of the bill it will cover teachers it will cover those who go into public defense prosecutors legal aid attorneys many others will accomplish all of this not only to the benefit of the students but to the benefit of america well actually reducing the deficit with this bill i might add through cuts to the already substantial federal subsidies to lenders the lenders are going to name that we've gone too far but a recent study shows that lenders spend less than one tenth of one percent of their subsidy on benefits for borrowers that means the average borrower saves only one hundred eighteen dollars through lender benefits and let's not forget that these are the same lenders who many times have been involved in the scandals we've been right writing about in the newspapers lenders like sally mae whose former c e o albert lord used his generous compensation package to build a private personal eighteen hole golf course in suburban maryland well it's time for mr lord and his ilk to step aside it's time for congress to take control of the situation again it's time to be more sensitive to the students and their families than to the wealthy owners of these lending corporations and investment in education is an investment in our nation the cost of education is a hurdle to many students and we can help them clear that hurdle with this bill if america's going to succeed in the twenty first century if our college graduates will be ready for that challenge we need to make certain they have the best education bright hardworking students deserve the opportunity to receive a college education and we can't afford not to invest it and courage my colleagues to vote for the higher education access act i'd like to say one final word and i say this with the presiding officer very sensitive to this issue as well i don't think it will be possible on this bill but i'm going to look for every bill that i can to introduce a measure known as the dream act today in america we have tens of thousands of high school graduates in undocumented status these are people young people who came to america as children brought here by their parents many of them have never known another country they've grown up here they've graduated high school they want to be part of america's future but because they don't have the legal status in this country there are uncertain as to whether they can go to college and if they graduate whether they can even work here at a time when we are importing tens of thousands of workers into america illegally with visas to supplement our workforce why would we turn these young people away so for the past five years i've been fighting for this dream act i've had the strong bipartisan support of many of my colleagues and i think them for it it's basic if you came to america before the age age of sixteen if you've been here at least five years if you graduate high school and if you're able to complete two years of college or enlist in our military you'll have a path to legalization that's what it boils down to i met a lot of these young people i know the presiding officer has to these are some of the best and brightest most idealistic and energetic people you're ever going to meet these are young people that want to be part of america's future i've talked to the sponsor of this legislation i'm not sure that we can put that amendment on this bill but i want to remind my colleagues that as we speak about college education in the future of america we should understand that there's a group out there yearning for an opportunity to make this a better nation through the dream act this president i knew before and outlined again his strong continuing ongoing us support for the dream act which i welcome the opportunity to support it will work very closely with him to try to achieve this very important legislation  but i listen to him also talk about the division that say in america that we're growing as one country or whether we're finding out that we are really a growing as in as a as a different nations you remember very well in the post war period if you look back at the of the economies the different the lowest income the medium income the highest income all moved along together all alone together and we had a cumulatively over a six year period amounted to a third of the total federal budget that's the kind of priority we had as a nation in terms of education and many believe that it is the princip bad the the dream act and but i've also listened to him talk about of the divisions that exist in our country this is this is a chart here which is really self explanatory which means low income students are far less likely to graduate from college this is what's happening really effectively today as one that is a committed to seeing that to we are going to be one country it with one history and one des does he does it not underline at the point that we have important responsibilities to try and ensure that all of those are going to be up at the top rather than just a  one block being fairly close to the top i'm interested if we're really talking about the divisions that exist in our country we see them so dramatically in the areas of education whether we don't have some real responsibility to try and equalize those that disparities and we do not agree with me if we don't do that we're going to be a nation that's going to continue a divided a country with all of the implications that has in terms of fairness and equality and opportunity for the future i would agree with the senator from massachusetts and when you consider the fact of low income students in america today and minority students are about fifty percent likely to graduate from high school  many of them drop out they're out there they're somewhere in america they're not they haven't reached their full potential they may never and what the senator shows us with this chart is that those that are lucky enough to get started in to earning a college degree in the lower income categories have the toughest time you have to believe as i do that many of those students that don't completely fall back because of financial reasons that these are students that are struggling doing their best i've seen them i can recall a young student in springfield like atlanta community college she was a young woman who had a child when she was in high school but she was determined that she was going to make it through college she used to take her baby with her on a bus to our community college which is not in town it's out on the outskirts and then had to get the last bus back into town every night when i think about the sacrifice she was making to take that baby and catch that bus and make it out there you knew how much she wanted it but you also knew that she was right on the edge financially at any given moment whether she complete her education so what you're doing in this bill in giving these students a helping hand is not only going to mean more college graduates but to the point that you raised is going to result in a fairer society for america more opportunities so that the disparity between income at the highest and lowest levels in america is reduced and i think the senator from that leadership meet with the senator may remember  education and at that time senator kennedy believed that what we ought to have in the higher education is a program that's going to give the assurance to every young person in this country that if they have the ability to gain entrance into any school or college that regardless of their resources they're going to be able to put together a package that will permit them to go where their talent leads them he believes that the country was a lesser country unless we were going to have that opportunity talent was going to be lost in terms of our nation and our people and that was basically the philosophy behind the higher education if you remember that that time the pell grants were up for needy up to seventy seventy five percent of the package and then twenty percent of the loan because that's completely been reversed in recent years with the resulting disparity that we see here does so not agree to me that we ought to at least a set for the goal that that ideal that we had at the passage of the act and that is that any young person who has ability wants to work can put together whatever their family can contribute demonstrate that they're going to be a part of a work study program at their school or college w have twenty eight percent of all the students in my state of massachusetts are part of the work study program they're prepared to work or work study but we ought to as a as a country and as an ideal and as a nation try and move towards that particular goal where we're going to give the assurance to every young person is going to say as a matter of national priority our belief in them our belief in their families and our belief in the future of this country demands that i i was  recovers seven dollars back over the life of that invest it does not the senator agree with me that this is a investment that we should be the we should be involved in as a matter of national priorities and that we ought to be as a country and as a people really leading the way towards having a goal of providing that kind of help and assistance to our country as well as to the individual and i certainly agree and when someone like bill gates of microsoft comes and says you've got to give me the visas so i can bring in foreign trained engineers for my expanding information technology company it really is a challenge to us why aren't we producing the engineers here at home and it comes to this point will there be the kind of support financial support for those promising students to get into math and science and engineering or will they be discouraged in early age and give up on it the same things true and i know the senator from massachusetts well aware of it when it comes to the field of nursing we are just a few years away of being one million nurses short of what we need in america as the baby boomer generation reaches a point where it needs more medical help there'll be fewer medical professionals available we don't want to see that happen it compromises the quality of care and all also puts pressure on the united states to poach to go after medical professionals in developing countries to attract them to the united states so when we talk about this investment in education it means a lot to the high tech industry it means a lot to every american terms of basic health care it means a great deal when it comes to the teachers that we need i just had the university presidents a few several of them from illinois in my office a few weeks ago and they talked about math and science skills that that's the one thing that troubles them as they look ahead that our students aren't keeping up with the world in terms of developing their math and science skills how do they reach that point better classroom teachers which means more young people graduating college going in the teaching profession who can make that call because they're not worried about paying back their debt it all works together and if we start cutting back in terms of higher education arguing we can't afford it will pay for it for decades to come because to just finally this senator remembers that this body passed the compete act which was legislation that came out of our committee senator bingaman from new mexico senator alexander from tennessee that had very strong virtually universal support here that gave focus in terms of encouraging the areas of math and science and engineering and this is something the you do agree that we ought to make sure that we're going to invest it when we pass the g i bill we had over those six years we produce four hundred and sixty thousand engineers four hundred sixty thousand we had three presidents of the united states that took the g i bill to free justices that served on the supreme court of the united  that we're working in there this is investing in the education we know what to do the question is is the will and whether the american people are going to be respond to this challenge and i want to thank of the the senate i think we consent this well i guess parliamentary procedure is i can speak on the bill right that correct senator is correct thank you mr pratt mr president i have out i think the managers the bill for giving me the opportunity to  speak here i simply wanted to say up a few words general words about the student loan program in the in our country the direct loan program the program by which the federal government itself loaned money to college students across our country began when i was the united states education secretary distinguished senator from massachusetts was chairman of the health and education committee then we had a democratic congress and a republican president named bush although it was a different bush and senator kerry will remember the deputy secretary at that time was david kearns who was a very distinguished business leader is a distinguished former business leader former head of xerox bill ford was the chairman of the house education committee and he very much wanted a so called direct loan program you want a government loan the money students and the law that we have today's named after him he made a great contribution to our to our nation's education i thought about the direct loan program at the time and generally speaking i wasn't in favor and there were three reasons for my skepticism this one was it seemed to me that the enormity of the program would mean that the government our federal government would suddenly find itself being a massive bank and ever since andrew jackson the idea of a big national bank has been something our country has and have we've let the private sectors have have the banks the problem with the bank was one that we'd have to borrow a lot of money and add to the federal deficit the second problem was the the size of the student loan program millions and millions of students one half of our college students across america today have a federal grant or a loan to help them pay for college and then they choose among any accredited college we have about six thousand different autonomous institutions that qualified to receive students with these loans so it's a massive administrative challenge and i didn't i couldn't see how the how the federal government the department that i was in charge of then the united states part of education with its personnel as dedicated as they are can do a better job than the private sector on such a big administrative such a big administrative challenge and finally while i didn't know at the time i didn't believe that there was any way that the federal government with its built in efficiencies could do a a a a less expensive job of managing this massive program than the private sector could i was relying on my i got in sync that of which generally is that if you can find it in the yellow pages the government probably ought not to be doing it and so i came down on the side of having a student loan program a generous one got even more generous since then but that was managed by the private sector the government can do a great many things well regulation is one of the things it does well one of the things that generally doesn't do as well with the exception of the military is manage large programs the result of that debate was the creation of the direct loan program and in the end i saw that as an advantage for the country because it at least would give us a way to to measure the the way the government would do it and the way the private now i haven't really changed my view on the so called government program or the direct loan program i believe almost every aspect of our higher education system in our country can be viewed as a success including the student loan program there are roughly thirty two hundred lenders today participating in it the volume of the loans is over fifty billion just for the current year the direct loan program was approximately thirteen point five billion in addition and the total outstanding amount of loans that the government backs for students now approaches after eon dollars about four hundred forty eight million dollars we're talking about and a program that creates great benefits to students all over america now the question is before is is if we have this private sector program out there and we've been debating this in committee and we've had innumerable meetings on it we had a vote on it earlier today is the subsidy for the private lender said at the right le right level that's really the only thing the collinses subsidy obviously we've all agreed to high in the congress agreed it was too high last year the president agreed it was too high this year he made some cuts and now  our committee in the senate is making some additional cuts but that concern is that we're guessing what the subsidy level ought to be we've got our finger in the wind we're making arbitrary judgements i'm very interested in the auction model that has been introduced into this bill i think that's a useful way to find out what the private markets would tell us about what the right level of taxpayer subsidy is so that this program which loans money to students who are at the best credit risk of a level is at about the right level but the last option program was a colossal failure sold at auction program may not may not tell us so much another way we might find out what the proper level of subsidy would be would be to try to develop a body of knowledge in the same way that state utility commission to do in tennessee other other other states tennessee's a little different because we have the tennessee valley authority but in most states a state utility commission regulates the rate set for say telephones or electricity and it allows the private company providing that service a reasonable profit and over the years well there's a lot of politics involved in all of that i can remember that very well over the years there has developed quite a body of knowledge around the idea of what is an adequate level of subsidy for for private companies providing a public service like electricity or like telephones or i would suggest like a student loan that's backed by the government perhaps that's something that we could do more of there was some talk of having that in this bil don't know whether that sort of study ended up in the legislation i hope that it did but there was talk in the committee about asking the general accounting office countability office to to do that and that looking ahead to the next time we reauthorize this or deal with student loans i would like to see us find out if there is a way to set up a an appropriate way to measure what the level of some of the subsidy ought to be for a for a private company so we have first the idea of the option that might teach is something we've got the cost of the direct loan program that can teach you something about wooden propre cause could be perhaps in this legislation before it's through the snow already in there we can ask the general accountability office to help us create some indices which will help legislators make a better judgment than just guessing what an appropriate level of subsidy is we have an indication from the marketplace last understand it they backed out that's a signal that that the levels that we're setting in this bill may make it more difficult to attract a large number of private lenders to the program and in effect turn the student loan program more and more in into a government direct loan program in other words by lowering the rates lower and lower will be driving out of the business the private lenders especially the smaller ones especially the ones that serve students perhaps in rural areas or different areas and we might be reducing retreat reducing the  opportunity students have to be well served by this this program now i know that some of my colleagues would prefer that we just turn the whole thing over to the government i hope we don't do that and i hope we don't do it through the front door or through the back door by squeezing out all the private lenders my concern is not for the lenders my concern is for the students who today get their loans from thirty two hundred lenders i like for students to have those choices i like for universities to have choices and over the last fifteen years generally speaking they preferred the the program that involves private lenders instead of dealing with the record direct loan program that is government the government limits eighty three percent of the schools prefer to use the privately back student loan program and seventy percent six percent of the student loans are originated by those lenders and only thirteen hundred ten schools participated in the direct loan program it's a small proportion of the loan volume and the reason may be that the consumers who like choice and who like like to have different options have looked at both options the program run by the government and the program run by the private lender and they find the universities and the students that the private really operated program is better for the students so i'm here today more to talk about looking ahead not condemning this bill or the effort that's been made here here today also to say that the work of the senate committee here and in the house and in some of the states has uncovered abuses by student lenders some of which have been corrected in the rest of which ought to be there's absolutely no excuse for that but correcting abuses by private student lenders is one thing cutting the rates to such a point that we end up through the backdoor pushing the student loan program into a government run program or largely into a government run program is another thing would be an unwise step for us to take and if we are to consider that i would hope we would do that on a on a careful on a very careful basis so in conclusion my my opinion really hasn't changed based on experience with of over the last fifteen years about the merits of a program largely run by private and nonprofit organizations thirty two hundred of them right now to offer choices to millions and millions of of of students who attend six thousand universities to me almost by definition the government is not a good manager of such a large program in fact if it were a government run program the government would have to contract to that so in general i still support a properly regulated and appropriately subsidized program that allows for the maximum number of student private lenders and student and university choices and second i'm not persuaded that the government run program cost less than the program i know that there are reports and studies which suggest that it might but that's because we count money up here in strange ways and if you just take real dollars and compare them to real dollars i've seen no real evidence that the direct loan program is cheaper for the taxpayers than the program runs through the private lenders and finally i don't i don't like the idea of the federal government suddenly beginning to assume a debt which approaches half trillion dollars and put it on our books at a time when we're trying to reduce the deficit so it doesn't cost less and of it's and of the government is not likely to manage it better and if we don't need another half trillion dollars of debt in the federal government then why would we want to encourage the growth of a government run program over a privately run f so my point today and i appreciate the chairman being here while i'm making these remarks i would look forward to working with him because he has long experience on this program and he has distinct views on and i've heard them i've heard them before but i would like to suggest that one of the most constructive things we could do over the next few years is try to create either through the option suggestion or by listening from the private markets or from the government  some other way something other than a guess about what the private level of subsidy is otherwise we will be doing through the backdoor something that i really don't think we should be doing through the front door i thank the  r from massachusetts and from wyoming for their time and i would ask unanimous consent to include following my remarks some elaboration of those remarks that have to do with the cost comparisons of the federal the private programs the evidence or lack of it that the government can do it better than the private sector and some questions about why the federal government would want to assume more de the pending amendment be set aside and not be allowed to offer two amendments number two three three three and two three four two and block reserves action without objection pointed out and that it utilizes our reconciliation process to instead of containing spending and helping to balance the budget i do actually increased spending substantially on a lot of new programs i want to talk about one of those programs today that i think should not be a part of this legislation so i have asked for this amendment to strike that provision  it is idea that sounds good it's something that i have had at one time or another individuals asked me to support something like this always for their particular business their particular agency of government and i have felt that i couldn't support it one reason was that it i could  about supporting one agency of government over another meant so i guess in one sense this legislation fixes that it covers everybody and more but let me tell you what it does the idea is that if a person pays their loan debt and they're part of a direct government loan program that after ten years you could get a loan part of that debt forgiven well that sounds good but let me discuss with you might think this is bad public policy why it's a new government program we should not start why it's absolutely inevitable that it will grow and cost more and more as time goes along for example let me show you how broad this is it would have a loan student loan forgiveness proposal program that would provide forgiveness of loans to public emergency management employees government employees public safety public law enforcement these could be state county and local law present public hell public education public early childhood education public childcare public social work public services for individuals in public services for the elderly public interest legal services public library services public school library services or other she's a government agency that just covers them all so let me express to you why i think there's some good principled public policy concerns and objections and why i do not think this is a good step for us to take for example there is no limit in this legislation on the total amount of loan forgiveness which creates a discrepancy between the rich and the poor graduates of expensive screw with a lot of debt receive quite a sizable benefit under this program while students who work their way through college go to a community college would receive not if they didn't have any d the national association for college admission counseling reports that the average cost of a community college is less than half of that public college and one tenth of that of a private four year college so who is being helped here half of low income students attend community college while only one in ten high income students attend a community college f the lowest price colleges are two year public colleges in the west for example with average tuition fees of thirteen hundred dollars the highest priced colleges in the country four year private colleges in new england with average tuition fees of twenty eight thousand dollars section for a while and then creates a perverse incentive to take out the maximum amount of student loans rather than encouraging better public policy as a minute that would encourage students to work their way through college and families to help them make their way through college instead of moving in that direction this bill would clearly move us in a direction that you would borrow more money in hopes that an expectation that your government was going help you pay it off at some point later on  and also let me ask why we would single out public service government workers for this can of benefit in their hundreds and hundreds of thousands of millions of government workers and exclude productive citizens working in low income jobs in the private sector they could also benefit from a similar approach why are they left out what principled argument is there for that certainly most people working in private businesses don't have as good a retirement plan or health care as a government employees do now we don't give them a free help and pay their tuition with tax payers money that comes from people in the private sector who are not getting these benefits why should a public employee the elevated to a higher class of treatment and loan forgiveness than those in the private sector those hardworking american taxpayers who aren't lucky enough to have a air conditioned office and a government sector job public service is an honor and public servants as public servants i don't think we need to ask our should think to ask for elevating our  number to a higher status and that of average working americans now there are many hardworking americans in the private sector who contribute to society and who would benefit from the program i could just think about  attorneys need help well what about small town attorneys working hard to start a practice our nurses educators inventors small business employees a cook who gone to college to try to get a finance finance or a business degree so they one day can run a restaurant department store managers who want to be a c e o one day electricians are plumbers who want to establish their own business and and going back to college and working their way through and keeping their debt down paying taxes that benefits our government worker who's got a lifetime job probably making more than they are certain with a lot more security job security than than they would have and can please others around the country by should we benefit one and not the o r and these are people paying taxes to i haven't seen that we have a difficulty getting people to tight government jobs pretty attractive out there the truth be known well somebody goes off big expensive college and gets a big expensive degree and on seventy five a hundred thousand dollars well the government's going to help them pay that back and not help the guy out there on the street corner trying to make a living play it back the same person who's paying the taxes the pay is not only the salary now for the government employee but now they don't pay their education costs on no principled basis that justifies them to be entitled to loan repayment more than would be for someone in the private sector there's no means test for this program so what does it matter under this program if the public employee had millions of dollars in the buying but if you had millions of dollars in a buy and you knew you were going to get a job where the government's going to help you pay back the loan why would you borrow the money to go to college with instead of paying for it yourself this incentivizes people as suggest perversely to borrow money to go to college rather than working their way through are utilizing the millions of dollars they may have and we are already spending billions of dollars each year let me say this i am not against assisting people pay for college education and we are spending billions of dollars on higher education through direct benefits to college and universities loans subsidies and grants total student aid and credit coding grants from all sources plus loans work study and tax benefits from the federal government increased by ninety five percent in inflation adjusted dollars over  about this amendment it creates an on equal footing but trying to direct loan program and the federal family education loan program senator alexander was referring to those programs because the only people to get benefits under this loan repayment program would have to go through the direct loan program the competition between these two programs has been generally held in our senate belie will benefit students and therefore we didn't eliminate the private loan program that is even in this bill that we're passing so allowing loan forgiveness solely for their direct loan program is not a principled basis i think at all it will turn on data bleed give any advantage to the direct loan program as students have no other route through which to receive loan forgiveness than to take it under the direction to the loan program and let me tell you this i didn't realize this until recently eighty two percent of the schools in my home state of alabama do not use a direct loan program but participate in the federal family education loan program students graduating from a small album on huntington college a liberal arts college would not be eligible because having it is not a direct loan school scolds choose f f e l p because the private sector offers the better services they think and save them money and we're going to and nationally this to to stick is around eighty percent so eighty percent of the colleges and universities in our country are not in the direct lo supply and you wouldn't benefit unless you were in it and i say well you could consolidate your loans under the direct loan program and therefore then you could get repayment but isn't that a tilting of a good loan program they get to choose now which i think is best so i don't think that providing this incentive to clearly favor the direct loan program and exclude the other is good public policy i don't even think i'm not aware that those who voted for it understood that it might have done just that studies show that when you extend your loan some tangy end up paying more interest and going on and paying a mom and the director and the federal family education loan program is far more popular than the direct loan program at present  because they have tended to offer lower interest rates and well the service but i think there's some abuses too and hopefully this bill will tighten that  truly colleagues that she should strike fear in the heart of anyone concerned about the expansion and growth of federal spending and federal programs it will create a new federal bureaucracy and next year predict since this bill says you've got to be regular in your payment of your student loan to qualify for this program i would predict that next year we will be providing exceptions to those who have lost their jobs who have had an illness all who had other kind of problems and will be having losses and an administrative hearings over whether or not this or that person qualifies to have part of their loan forgiven by simply on the fact they work for some government a public agency and we want to help public employees let's do it in a more direct manner by should we provide a benefit program that helps those who go to some expensive college who maybe didn't work while i went to college in with a big debt and they both working at the county health department or the n r a and one of them ran up a big debt and the government helps them pay it off and they want to work their way through college and get anything that's not a good way to help people in my it also again as i'm it is bad public policy and because  principled basis to provide this benefit solid to the direct loan program and not to the other loan programs it's a clear tilt and from one side to the other when eighty percent of the american colleges universities are not in the direct federal loan program so much bread and i would say first of all the way it's structured today it will not be a huge c costly program for our country but it's not based on good principles number one number two it's going to be expanded you can be sure in the future it will create another bureaucracy another government program when we already have pell grants and long programs that we're pumping more and more money into every year i suggest if we've got to is about helping people with their loans we focus on the existing loan programs and not create this one that's on try to address this i don't know if we could we could deal with this first issue first and then the if i can if i might try and have it get some we're on the finance committee i'm over and respond to that to the senators question because i think if the alternative meant deals with the alternative minimum tax and the finance committee and i would not trying to delay i'm glad to do i see descended from maryland is here like to never offered a finance related amendment on a bill that had cleared the finance committee teasing a little bit because we all know this bill is open to this kind of amendment i think and that's why i wanted to offer that a m t fix we voted on it before it's something that i think we need to be more educated about and the really the reason i wanted to offer that i would not take this time is spent on the call scare you want to speak on the education amendment but i would hope nt to eliminate the debt forgiveness program for entering public service mr president i can't tell you how happy i am that today to be speaking on legislation helping our young people have access to higher education finally after a very dark week where we were gagged in muscles from trying to deal with this war when then we now can have open debate on how to achieve the american dream this is what i came to the senate to be able to do this is what the voters wanted us to do when our november seventh they held a national referendum and put the democrats back in charge so we can change the tone of the civilized debate likely are but also to change the priorities and change the priorities senator kennedy has fly leading us in a direction where we can expand opportunity for our young people without expanding our deficit whether we're talking the we will not expand our federal deficit while families not expand their family deficit as they try to help their kids achieve higher education and this legislation pending before us today should be passed in a swift expeditious on  way this bill is absolutely a great deal for students and it is a great bill for america it gives our students access to the american dream it gives our young people access to the freedom to achieve to be able to follow their talents and to be able to achieve higher education and whatever field they will be able to serve this country and we do it by expanding and increase in bloated i needed subsidies and today's era of cheap money what we're able to do is put that back into still name so we upped the student a but we don't create more borrowing in order to do it it also has other reform elements to it it reforms the application progress and anybody in here that's a mom or dad or nan barb knows that boy is that process complicated you always have to bend a college in order to apply for student loans to be able to go to college and the other thing to die for is a paper an eye on those colleges and universities way of saying to and senator the n c for being able to do this so this is why i'm so enthusiastic about this bill now as i travel around my own state of maryland and i talk about press the freedom of religion but there is an implicit freedom that our constitution doesn't say what brings people to this country and excites the passions and hopes and dreams and that is the desire and the ability to have the freedom to achieve to take whatever challenge god has given you to fill whatever is the passions in your heart to be able to learn so that you can earn and make a contribution that's what i call the freedom to achieve and the freedom to achieve should never be stifled in this country because of economic your freedom to achieve should never be determined by the city code you live in by the color of your skin or by the size of your family's wallet it should be in a democratic country the access to be able to do that well that means affordable education that means an affordability or opportunity ladder that students and families can count on because we know that a degree is one that no one can ever take away from you when i was a young girl it's a catholic all girls high school my father and mother encouraged me to see kyra education my father's grocery store had a terrible fire but my father and i offered to not go on to higher education to work in our little family grocery store but my father said no bar you've gotta go and your mom and i will find a way because no matter what you do or what i've says will happen to you no one can ever take that agree away from you and if your father who wants to help people and to protect you the best way i can protect you is to make sure you'll be able to earn a living all of your life my father gave me the freedom to achieve what you wish in cost were different in those days opportunity and so one and now though people now rely upon student loans your student assistance we need to continue to do and we also know that when we're helping our young people are not so young people who overturn that higher education doesn't only occur you choosing individual close to the nation as a whole every time we help someone be able to go on and do that freedom to achieve we might think educating someone who's going to fire a cure for cancer w educating that coplan to be that might say that already from being mugged or whatever we do that education live not only that person but it lifts the level of achievement in attainment of the nation as a whole that's why this is an important public investment that's why one should stay this way we finally have some right coming in because the united states senate now we know that higher education is this great opportunity and as i've said this means that there will be people who are younger not so young who will bless us for what we're doing today getting a college education is that core of the american dream and i ensure that every student has access to their dreams but make sure though that when they graduate that their very first mortgage isn't their student debt by college has spoken eloquently about how often that debt is twenty thousand dollars more i know in my own own state college tuition is on the rise the tuitions at the university of maryland on land grant college has increased by almost forty percent since two thousand and two financial aid is keeping up pell grants now only cover thirty percent of what a four year public college covers twenty years ago those pell grants covered eighty percent of the cost and we've looked at our families our middle class families they're stretched and they're stretched families in my state are worried about many things worried about their jobs worried about the cost of raising the family gas prices are up the cost of utilities are up the cost of health care is up you name it everything is up but wages they're raising from car pole to work to back again and one of the things while they might be taking care of mom and dad has made assisted living we're also wanting how are they born with this their college their kids to go to college so that they are assisting their kids with learning how to earn a living so our families need help and by gosh i believe that help begins at home now this is what this legislation does it will increase student aid by increasing pell grants from forty three hundred dollars per year to fifty four hundred dollars per year  well it's an a thousand or seven hundred dollar increase well this is just wonderful i mean that's already five thousand dollars breaks over a four year program if you're looking at a community college i mean this can help you pay for this and so many of our young people the community college is the first access to access to higher ed now these families and the students will know exactly what this means these simple expansion of pell grants is already going to take that opportunity ladder and take that first rung and make sure that it is reliable and stable now it has other important aspects in this bill in addition to it i'm so proud of the fact that we've deferred our loan to our act defer deferred extended loans for our men and women in the armed services under the obama servicemembers could only defer their student loans for six months and i think if you're fighting in iraq well i think we ought to do for indefinitely but we'll take what we can get in the law that's an important step now i want to just say a word about the pending amendment first i want to just say about the comments about public service why is it every time we talk about public service jobs  walking down that rugged terrain of wall street fighting their way to get a lot say is really tough work but why is it that if you are an f b i agent we're going to talk about you  about if you're a nurse in the in the v a helping with that prosthetic device or that injured warrior coming back we've got to remember that civil service is honorable and civil service is hard work and public service makes contributions to the public good and i would hope that we would then in this debate and also follow the kind of rubric that's been developed by our colleague from ohio senator voinovich he's wearing to about all the retirements that are coming in civil service and how we're going to recruit well let's talk about specifically what this guy's this is debt forgiveness where we are facing shortage we're talking about debt forgiveness in wall and force wall enforcement all over the united states of america is facing shortfalls and there were current there are people who no longer want to b children but we won't play recruit and retain but over regulate our teachers we've got to be able to get them in and then when we talk about the fact that if you are an elementary school teacher or your dad preschool teacher that gets our kids ready reading reading that often they are very poorly paid and paid less than if they had worked in fast food opportunities we've got to be able to help  teachers then i want to talk about an area that's very near and dear to me nursing shortage i have worked on a bipartisan basis with the senator from maine mrs ms collins when how to deal with the nursing shortage it is now achieving that critical mass over forty percent of our children will be retiring of our nurses will be retiring in a very short time it's difficult also to retain our nurses we need to have never been in a nursing school mr president why have nursing school is tough the mayor knowing unrelenting if you are in a nursing college program whether it's a community college or a four year college you've got to do your live work you've got to do your clinical work you can't take time long to go work to earn that to wishin you've got a p they're learning to be a nurse there is practically no way that if you want to be a nurse x ray technician an occupational therapist a physical therapist anything in allied health you cannot take your time off to work your way through but you are mounting debt this is the way that gives you a break i believe in giving help to those that will be able to help us in our community so if i could finish  my and i'll be happy to yield just to finish my point and my momentum here i've always the kennedy approach here only student debt forgiveness is and prudent and i believe i can implement in a way that does not create abuse let's respect public service let's try to deal with the fact where we're facing critical shortages and to also begin to really work together to solve our nation's problems where willing to spend their lessons of dollars to recruit in critical areas in the military i happen to support that to repeat that sargent n roll call number two five six i voted yes it was my intention to vote no therefore i ask unanimous consent that i be permitted to change my vote since it will not affect the outcome the senator is a familiar with the fact i'm just wondering whether it's true about the students in in maryland but the average indebtedness of a student and now graduating from like a four year college has gone up significantly from  hundred three to from ninety two hundred dollars to two thousand and four where it is now a close to twenty thousand dollars one hundred thousand dollars may vary a thousand dollars to two in different states but by and large it's a twenty thousand dollars the senator is a senator familiar with a so let's take the starting salaries of some of the public is on to the senator that's exactly right we feel we are experiencing the on to the medical school more often than not you're probably closer to one hundred thousand dollars by and large for the time you finish the medical school but let's just take the average college graduate someone that might have gone through the community college and gone into finished four years of college but they air ending up at about twenty thousand dollars in terror into debt is the ascent of familiar with the fact that here is a massachusetts a starting teacher gets paid thirty five thousand dollars thirty five thousand dollars a year let's take a social worker in tennessee is thirty three thousand dollars let's take a a here is a public defender and forty three thousand dollars they obviously have to earn and borrow more because they need the additional kind of for professional training this example here is a public defender in indiana their debt is a fifty one thousand dollars so they  fifty one thousand dollars they get annual salary now as i heard the senator from maryland and we could go on cross the line in terms of some of the areas of public  sender's mind that those individuals with that kind of dad and that kind of salary that virtually and that kind of obligation to repay at the present time is not is going to effectively make it impossible  for those individuals that might want to go into those professions to do so i i'd like to get the i'd be happy to respond and if the senator would allow me to focus when the allied health professions which  i'm quite familiar that it's a fact first of all when you look at what you could oh you it affects your major so if you are walking i want to major in nursing or where there's that will be more good creative at the end of graduation so it really starts in the freshman year where they're looking at that second let's go to another issue in nursing and as the senator knows that we have a problem with having enough people to teach nursing that requires a graduate training master's plus doctoral think well if you come out and you well know this bucket a box and you're trying to pay off your  undergraduate loan working that terrific shift that the nurses work and you're thinking about graduate school you are not going to go get a masters or doctorate to teach are saying and we're not had very little in the way of helping you so we are one number one exacerbating the shortage as we have in these areas and we're also exacerbating the people who would then have to go into graduate school to teach the very people we need to teach this let me live in the senate or something and that that is certainly both understandable and and expressing the reality of today say we are trying to attract to a math teacher or a science teacher we understand that if we're going to be competitive in the world it's got to be the new industries the enervate of industries and i don't know what it is and baltimore but i can tell you in boston it's very difficult to get good math teachers to teach in in our in our public school teachers it's very difficult to get good science scientists and science teachers in there it's difficult to get good chemical chemist chemistry teaches to teach in there and in the sciences i s extremely extremely difficult because if they someone is going to have the ability to be a good teacher be understanding their core structure is going to have to take the college and then going to have to take a dish additional kind degree now if it's still going to be paying a very modest a salary what do you think that math science teacher is going to do do you think they're going to work go to work in the private sector for several hundred thousand dollars or one hundred thousand dollars a year or go and teach the citizens of baltimore the citizens in boston at a very modest a salary and what do you think is in the best interest of our nation in terms of its i can answer that senator because we see it every day in the state of maryland who has a profile not unlike the state of massachusetts we have schools in the baltimore washington car corridor or that are down as of now getting ready for school year to recruit people in math and science but that elementary and high school we also have a robust robust science program i mean in the private sector first of all we have defense jobs we have biotech jobs we have that if you are working is that science teacher at thirty eight thousand dollars with this big that you can go to work and pretty interesting private sector jobs some under government contract you know not all government workers we got to say you know government work is often getting contracts with the private sector getting it but they're going to walk out and they're going to take the seven eighty thousand dollar job or the at one hundred thousand because it's not because the money they want to pay down their debt and they want what everybody else wants the ability to have a family buy a home and you know a starter home now in our community is four hundred thousand dollars for that's a starter starter where can you imagine that so of course they're going to make those choices or senator if they do come they stay a very short time a very short time so we think that this is a good way to get the men to teaching and get them to stay in teaching and we believe that once they come and once they stay a few years they'll stay a while particular if we've helped them follow their dream while they're helping these other young people to get ready to follow there's just a finally this senator in the in the legislation that these are the areas that we have  indicated that individuals would be able to get their their loan forgiveness and as we were talking about public safety we're talking about law enforcement we're talking about public education early child education and child care we're talking about individuals that are going to work with the disabled and the elderly we know the senator's spoken so eloquently about the changing demography of this country increasing concerns that we're going to have to for our elderly to make sure that there's going to be alternative choices for those elderly people in independent living legal services including the public defense library sciences school based  service providers work on the indian tribes these are areas where there are critical shortages and would not the senator agree with me that these represent represent professions which are making a difference for other people for other people individuals and if we're able to have dedicated competent able gifted people that are work in those areas we're going to be a better nation for doing absolutely the senator is pinpointed exactly the point that i wanted to make these are in fields that are making important contributions to the public good be a public safety to do health or public health the education of their children at all ages priest through can pre through twelve and i think that's it senator a dry don't know how it is in boston but we are experiencing a spike in violent crime in baltimore we ha a considerable number of vacancies in the baltimore city police department and to same time they tried to cut the cops program and vocal law enforcement subject of another debate in appropriations but i'll tell y there you know going to be trying to recruit if we're going to fight crime to fight crime with police officers in the way of enforcement and you fight crime with education and other prevention so you pinpointed  that's why i can understand some of the flashing yellow rights raised by the senator from alabama but i think you've done a very good thing here senator i just want to say one thing you know i just spoke out going back to my mother and father and sure the go go grocery store which you know i was working as a child abuse worker you know when your brother was elected president i was working as a foster care worker at catholic charities and i wanted to prevent a family break up and i want to work a department of social services i was a child abuse worker for a couple years that's pretty tough for what those social workers do but i'm going to go to graduate school so i would know how to do better so i'd be more effective so i really could intervene well i was in a manson pated adult graduate school even the university of maryland it was getting under way but thanks to the war on poverty and thanks to a grant at the national institutes of health again which your brother started and you have so steadfastly continued community mental health there were community mental health grants where barbara color scheme could go to the university of maryland and get her masters in social work well given sometimes my style of debating people might not say i have a therapeutic personality but i will tell you what i learned on the streets of baltimore as of child abuse worker and what i learned when my program at the university of maryland i think that baltimore is a better because of what i learned and i try to bring those skills and talents but i could not have done that nor could i have taken out those loans and interrupt i was already an adult to be able to do that had not the united states government said we're willing to invest you if you're going to put your heart and soul back in america and i say hats off to those programs that give all those other people that kind of chance  mr president i want to thank the good senator from maryland she has a way of speaking and taking complicated issues and simplifying them and getting to the core and the root of them and she has just done so in a very important way which addresses not a lying aspect of the sessions amendment and that is the value of work in the public sector the value of work in the public sector  as as differentiated from the private sector because the value that it makes and the difference it makes to other people and that is what we have tried to do in this legislation  this legislation that said that after ten years after ten years after ten years of working in the public sector the the remainder of your loan would be would be would  the fact is in the legislation there is and what we call an income tax this isn't and the income cap is that for any when the earnings have to be less than sixty five thousand dollars that's still a lot of money but this doesn't apply you go to want to work in a public service but when you're somehow you going to be in excess of sixty five thousand you don't have your loan forgiveness you don't have the loan forgiveness so this is really targeted to the kind of individuals that senator mikulski is to talk to the examples that we have given out here those that are in the law enforcement those that are teachers those that are working in the nursing profession so short of working  direct loan programs page fourteen provides that there's going to be the consolidation is going to be you can be in the fell programs all of you want you prefer that program fine you want to take advantage you want to go through this program the provisions are spelled out  eight they can do it if you've been in the direct loan program or the file program you can still have the benefits of this particular program tap in terms make sure that it's not going to be the abuse at the top of the level make sure that it's going to be available both in direct loan between the public in the private sector and the great needs that we have in terms of the public sector that's very important i just want to remind my friend from alabama according to this the legislation he is to be one of the fortunate senate is in the higher education the increased grant aid for students for the state of alabama is to increase to four hundred and forty two million dollars over the period the next five years four hundred thirty my own strait of massachusetts is three hundred ninety million dollars so alabama's come out  grant programs as focused on a person's lower income we probably do have lower income students in alabama we probably benefited nicely under the pell grant program compared to more blessed i'd like massachusetts  simply would ask the question what are right the question i raised about this is that if you've got two persons in narcing screw and one is maybe already a nurse but trying to get a higher degree and she works  settle down the one who doesn't do that gets more benefit than the other and it does only favor those in the public sector and not in the private sector and i do think sent to canada i believe this bill continued the emphasis which i suppose or maybe having bad are pell grant provisions for those who do math and science is in some of the how are some of the areas that we have shortages own i believe it does further that does it not which case i don't know did that last year when i was on the meeting and i think that was a good step in trying to help deal with the shortage areas but you've heard my complaints and i think the center one provision that we have that's applicable both for those that nurse that wants to work in the private sector and they are fortunate they we have some extraordinary nurses i'm a very strong believer in the nurse profession and have been i think they are the backbone of our old health care system but we also provide in this whether they're in the public or private is still the limitation and they have the debt or not they're still limited to a fifteen percent of their income if their nurse works in the private sector works mass general hospital gets a good to sally there or works out in the in the community  in terms of trying to work with foster children or otherwise both of those are treated the same with regards to the percentage of their income to fifteen percent and  county in the repayment of it so that we treat everyone the same but on the loan forgiveness a senator is quite correct we have targeted those individuals that are going to be working what we consider to be the in the public sector for the common good for the larger sense of purpose for the country as expressed so well and eloquently by the senator from maryland to be eligible for the forgiveness and that's the point that the senator has made we had for example under this bill as i understand  a teacher in alabama that earns thirty one thousand dollars three hundred sixty eight and the average loan debt in alabama seventeen thousand five hundred fifty nine dollars and they could have but they could have the loan payments capped it fifteen percent so it reduces his or her monthly payments by fifty nine dollars from tooth hundred three dollars two hundred four that's a thirty percent reduction which is not insignificant and then ten years of teaching under our legislation all the remaining debt would be forgiven in this case a benefit some ten thousand dollars not not insignificant but ten thousand dollars for that teacher in alabama they have to teach for the institutions that we say that that they're going to survive and we've got the c d o figures that show that they are we've got their own figures for example in sallie mae show even with this legislation the profits that they're going to make over the next several years we think this is a  i haven't talked with my friend and colleague but we'll be ready to move ahead and vote on that it is appropriate to time we'll talk with our colleague here and see if we can figure out the best time  c from reinstating the so called fairness doctrine the amendment says the commission shall not have the authority to prescribe any rule regulation policy doctrine standard or of the requirement that is the purpose or effect of reinstating  require that broadcasters present opposing viewpoints and controversial issues of public importance calmly for it is the fairness doctrine students falling debate on the education reconciliation bill they may well wonder what the fantastic action controversy is all about after all this is this bill the reconciliation bill is about the pod casting blogging you tube channel surfing generation that knows nothing but choice and vigorous freedom of expression these students have grown up in today's info tech world of rich and diverse media sources in which just like the rest of us they can get any information they want how they want and when they want it free of any government content restrictions mispresent i want to keep it that way it hasn't always been like this only twenty years ago that we did away with the fairness doctrine on the surface the ventus doctrine sounds harmless enough but at its core the fans of structure would threaten our constitutional right to free speech and fundamentally under mind the workings of our democracy government has no place monitoring ideas on our public airwaves and penalizing broadcasters who do not meet the government's definition of fair there is a reason why our first amendment is the first amendment and it's freedom of the source of speech because all freedoms are at risk when government monitors and controls the broadcast of ideas that is why i will be offering this amendment which will protect america's constitutionally granted right to free speech after all what sort of message are we sending to our future leaders when there are some on the other side who are seeking to restrict free speech this president our founding fathers knew very well the importance of free framers the constitution established free speech as a first amendment along with freedom of the press and they come together in the first amendment mr president beyond first amendment principles and also market principles that at stake here since the end of the fairness doctrine in one thousand nine hundred seven talk radio has flourished because of consumer driven market demand not because of government command not because of government control the history of the fairness doctrine is actually one of chilling freedom of speech the reality is if you're a broadcaster and you know that you have a government regulator monitoring what is on your channel your station little pencil and paper in hand and and marking with a probably a stopwatch the amount of time that is that is you discuss idea a and then all of a sudden if you don't get what the government regulator feels is the right amount of time to give a varying opinion to cut to subject a in the end you risk penalty you risk you put yourself and your business at risk and the reality was during the years in which the fairness doctrine was in play it chilled freedom expression i think some folks probably  let's let's let's just play country music let's just do something else let's not talk about things because it's going to put us in jeopardy for our livelihood in jeopardy and that's not what america is all about at the end of the day as a present there is nothing fair about the fairness doctrine the issue is not which broadcaster is fair and which one is not which broadcast is balance and which one is not the issue is who makes that decision i believe fairness is what the american people decides is fair not some washington politician a bureaucrat americans love affair five there's nothing fair of the intent is to silence debate just because a government bureaucrat disagrees with a politician disagrees with that and then employs a government bureaucrat to to chill that expression of ideas in the end our nation our democracy is best served when we let competing ideas enter the political marketplace freely and let the best ideas when one of my hometown papers the st paul p well the other day when they said in an editorial and cited fairness is beautiful especially when it's optional and they went on to say that the gabbers gab right left center where wherever without government imposed balance americans can make listening and viewing decisions according to their own sense of what is fair to have faith in the marketplace of ideas as we do is to believe that over time good ideas will rise by their merits we live in an to get their ideas set forth the public in the end will choose what to listen to that is their right it is not government's right it is not government's obligation is not government's responsibility city to monitor and regulate that that is very dangerous it is very dangerous mr president the fairness doctrine is a flawed idea from a bygone era that has no place in today's information age my  americans right to free speech and to allow for our broadcast is to contribute to our national dialogue without without government censorship without government command without government control that is the beauty of democracy is the world in which the students  we will improve this very good bill there's a lot of good stuff and it's reconciliation bill and in the end we want to have young people have access to the free flow of information we want to hold people have access to the free flow of information and we don't want to step back into a bygone era where government was monitoring ideas monitoring content very dangerous and i will ask my colleagues at a later time to support this amendment and again at a later time last for the gays in the as this president with mr alexander consent that i may be permitted to speak as if in morning business there objection without objection mr president abin very deeply disappointed with the response senate democratic leaders to the president's nomination of judge leslie southwick to serve as a judge on the u s court of appeals for the fifth circuit i had expected that his nomination would move expeditiously through the judiciary committee and the senate is eminently well qualified but the opposition of some members of the senate judiciary committee and some outside political interest groups have slowed action on the nomination i have known leslie southwick for thirty years his qualifications are beyond question during his distinguished career as a lawyer and  state court judge he has earned the respect and admiration of liberals and conservatives democrats and republicans as well as beller lawyers and judges who have worked closely with him and who know him well he is fair and thoughtful and would be an outstanding federal court of appeals judge the judiciary would be well served by his leadership and his knowledge of the  following law school he clerked for the chief judge of the texas court of criminal appeals in austin and then in one nine hundred seventy six for judge charles clarke on the fifth circuit court of appeals the next year he began the hundred three he served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the civil division of the united states department of justice while there he supervised the federal programs branch of the first ten years on the court of appeals judge southwick wrote the most opinions of anyone on the court he has been involved in more than seven thousand opinions during his service on the mississippi court of appeals and he personally wrote almost eight hundred judge southwick also has a distinguished record of service in the judge advocate general's corps of the united states army reserves and has been an instructor at the united states military academy at west point in august two thousand and four lieutenant colonel southwick and the one hundred fifty fifth brigade combat team of the mississippi national guard were mobilized in support of operation iraqi freedom the unit was deployed in iraq from jan you married to december two thousand and five where he served as the staff judge advocate he spent much of his time in a giraffe an area of significant insurgent activity in a letter to the judiciary committee one of judge southwick fellow soldiers wrote this he also took on the task of handling the claims of numerous iraqi civilians who had been injured or had property losses due to the involvement of the united states military in our area of operations this involved long days of interviewing iraqi civilian claim much many of whom were children wetter's and elderly people to determine whether the united states military could or should pay their claims he always listened to these iraqi claimants patiently and treated them with the utmost respect and kindness he did this not add just a sense of duty but because he is a genuinely good and caring person is the end of the quotation from that letter judge south is currently a professor of law at the mississippi college school brawl he teaches courses in administrative law consumer law evidence statutory interpretation and your digital history he's written several legal and historical articles that have been published in the mississippi law journal the mississippi college law review the wall street journal and other publications he's the author of a book entitled presidential also rans and running mates it won an american laboratory association prize as the best reference work of the year in one thousand eighty fat judge southwick has served as president of the american ends of court as a member of the american law institute and on the curriculum committee of the american bar association section on legal education he was honored by the mississippi state bar in two thousand and four with the judicial excellence award the american bar association standing committee on the federal judiciary unanimously concluded that judge southwick is well qualified to serve as a federal appellate judge this is the highest rating a judicial nominee can receive after being nominated on june sixth two thousand and six to serve as a u s district court judge in the southern district of mississippi he received a hearing in the judiciary committee here in the senate and was unanimous reported with a favorable recommendation for confirmation after two nominees for the fist circuit from our state were turned down senator lott and i recommended judge southw and president bush submitted this nomination to the senate on january in two thousand and seven in an editorial published in june the clarion ledger of jackson called judge southwards nomination and that outstanding appointment in an editorial published in june two thousand and seven the clarion ledger stated that judge south we could build a reputation based on professionalism hard work and integrity and that support of the nominees home state senators is an important indicator of broad consensus on the nomination mr president this vacancy on the fifth circuit has now existed since two thousand and four the seat is considered a judicial emergency by the federal judiciary meaning that the  efficacies of the court are negatively affected by this vacancy and i am confident that judge southwick will serve with great distinction on this court and he will reflect great credit on the federal judicia if he's confirmed i'm proud of the recommendations senator lott and i have made to the senate and the senate should confirm this nomination mr president michonne the support of community leaders in my earlier remarks i have just been handed by staff members of my and a number of letters that have been sent here's one june first two thousand experiences with judge southwick in iraq and he started with a story that i had not heard until that read this letter earlier today that lieutenant colonel southwick joined the army reserve hundred two obtaining an age waiver to allow him to join even though he knew from the outset his age would necessarily prohibit him from serving long enough to vest a military pension hundred seven then captain southwick transferred to the mississippi national guard when lieutenant colonel southwick was originally assigned to what was then called state area command in two thousand and three colonel southwick volunteered to transfer to the one hundred fifty fifth separate armored brigade a land combat unit this was a courageous move as it was widely known at the time that the one hundred fifty fifth was nearly certain to mobilize for overseas duty in the near future he then goes on to talk about the leadership the military leadership the asset and quality that he brought to the one hundred fifty fifth brigade combat team on active duty near the job  iraq he served as my remarks indicated as staff judge advocate for the one hundred fifty fifth and it was located at forward operating base kalsu after his service in iraq lieutenant colonel southwick transferred back to joint force headquarters of the mississippi national guard he makes this comment general cross does in closing while there are many core qualities cited to a successful military officer one attribute i have found particularly important during my many years of service sound temperament in that regard lieutenant colonel southwick has both a considerate and measured personality i can tell you without hesitation that i've always found lieutenant colonel sapphic to treat everyone with whom he comes into contact with both  and respect another letter this one from a young warrior with the brainy grantham grauer in huge firm where leslie southwick practiced law for a number of a member believe in fairness for all people and salute our leaders for giving their lives to assure that fairness while i share the sentiments of other african to merican is that the federal judiciary needs to be more diverse i believe judge southwick is eminently qualified for the united states fifth circuit court of appeals and right in support of his nomination i met judge southwick during my third year of law school when i interned with the court of appeals of mississippi the internship allowed me an opportunity to work with most of the judges on the bench at that time i was most impressed with judged southwick because of his work ethic and his serene personality when i finished law school in one thousand nine hundred six i believe that my chances for landing a clerkship were slim because there was only one african american court of a the bench at that time and there were few caucasian judges during the history of the mississippi supreme court or the court of appeals which was fairly new who had ever hired african american law clerks in spite of the odds i applied for clerkship judge southwick granted me an interview and hired me the same day roger southwick had many applicants to choose from he saw that i was qualified for the position and granted me the opportunity during my tenure as clerk with the court judge southwick thought through every issue and took every case seriously he earned a reputation for his well thought out opinions and his ability to produce the highest number of opinions in a term he did not matter the party's affiliation color or stature what mattered was what the law said and judge southwick worked very hard to apply it fairly judge southwick valued my opinions and included me in all of the discussions of issues presented for decision having worked closely with judge southwick i have no doubt that he is fair and impartial and has all the other qualities necessary to be an excellent addition to the united states court of appeals for the fifth circuit in addition to serving our state judge southwick has also honorably served our country during his mission to iraq in two thousand and five southwick found the time to write me off and to let me know about his experiences there upon his return to the united states judge southwick shared with others his humbling experience serving our country it is clear from his writings and speaking that he served with pride and dignity over the years judge southwick has earned the reputation of being a person of high morals dignity fairness it is unfortunate that there are some who have made him the chosen sacrifice to promote agendas and have set out to attain all that judge southwick has worked so hard to accomplish i am prayerful that those efforts will not preclude judge southwick from serving as our next judge on the united states court of appeals for the fifth circuit bernie grant from grammar and here you mr president and there are a number of other letters there too from the school of law mississippi college where george south where it has been a member of the faculty one is from the dean of the law school another is from the associate dean philip mackintosh i was impressed with his strong feeling that comes through in this letter that i had detected and interpreted judge southwick is a man and this is to senator specter and to senator leahy he wrote each the same letter dated june for se as a man of highest integrity honor in intellect as a judge on the mississippi court of appeals he scrupulously did his judicial duty in following the law all in his judicial opinions i am  disappointed that some have taken the opportunity to try to score political points about characterizing judge southwick as intolerant or having quote very fixed right wing world views in quote seeking to imply that he would not be fair and impartial in applying the law in my personal and professional dealings with him back in a test to his fine character i have not the slightest doubt regarding his impartiality and commitment to fairness as an example of the regard with which judge southwick is held by the law faculty at mississippi college he was offered a position as a visiting faculty member following his resignation as a judge for the mississippi court of appeals and pending the approval of his nomination to the fifth circuit the suggestion to make this offer was made by one of our faculty members and the recommendation w unanimously approved by our faculty we have a politically and racially diverse faculty but not one note of concern about judge south weeks integrity fairness or impartiality was founded his appointment  faculty was strongly supported by all of our faculty members i might even mention that his teaching partner for trial practice this past semester is an african american attorney and former mississippi circuit court judge judge southwick personally recorder recruited to partner with him for this course i hope you will support the nomination of this outstanding man to this circuit he is exceptionally he is an exceptional candidate and deserving of confirmation there are other letters similar in tone here's one from i couldn't help but notice from the university of mississippi school of law the law center at the university where i graduated from law school and is written by john bradley at it it caught my attention because john bradley was a law student when i was a law student john robin bradley is what we called him then he's now a professor of law at o b s he was one of the most liberal members of the faculty when he joined the faculty and he's lived up to that tradition very proudly ever since i have a very high regard for john roberts read he was editor in chief of the law journal and when i was a first year student i had the honor of being invited to go to a law journal conference that william and mary with john robin and then the next editor to be  two thousand and seven gentleman our right to come in to you and the committee on the judiciary on the judicial and legal ability of lesley southward how do so not in generalities but in the context that especially now about it is my hope that this specific information will give you insight into how he has undertaken his role as a judge my detail knowledge of leslie south works work as a judge on the court of appeals of mississippi concerns of the law worker's compensation and it's important overlap with other areas of law person principally tort law for a number of years i have thought and written about these topics consequently i pay extremely close attention to the court decisions although based on statutes this area of law has become intricate and often complex so much so that lawyers specialize in the field in order to be effective when judge southwick started as a first time judge with the newly created court of appeals he and some other judges had little or no experience with this area of all this showed up in several opinions that i considered to contain incorrect analyses in articles that i wrote and in oral presentations at law conferences i often detail the reasons that i regarded some of the opinions as incorrect including several that judge southwick wrote or concurred in my observation was that judge southwick recognized that he and other judges needed to learn the intricacies and complexities he said about doing that i saw him at all law conferences at which i was a speaker and i know he read and often cited my publications sometimes he agreed and sometimes he disagreed with my explanations but the point is and this is in a tallackson but the point is that he challenged himself to learn about a field of law in which he had little or no previous experience topics which came to his court frequently his court heard appeals in all areas of law and we expect broad institutional competence lawyers do not come to the bench with all encompassing experience but the good ones can and will learn this is no small task judge southwick in this again is in a to alex judge southwick rose to the challenge about hard  work legal ability and dedication i saw him struggle and i saw the evidence that he is learning about this the yield this is what we hope for in our judges judge southwick did this and earned my respect for his legal and judicial ability my expectation is that he will continue on this path as a judge as the end of the attacks in my view he says in closing his achievement in this regard is a significant indicator that he has what it takes to be a good judge one of those humans to whom we entrust our halls of justice sincerely yours john r bradley professor this next letter is written in hand hand written back a comma cobb is the presiding justice of the supreme court of mississippi the letter is written to senator a southwick to serve on the fifth circuit court of appeals i have known him for many years and i'm honored to give him my highest recommendation without reservation in every way he is worthy to serve judge south weeks sky our ship and character are stellar the opinions he wrote during his ten years on the mississippi court of appeals reflective thoroughness and fairness as well as the depth of his knowledge in the quality and clarity of his reasoning and writing in every respect of his legal career and life in general leslie southwick has explained he has a long and consistent record as a devoted family man a courageous military leader an accomplished author and an excellent appellate judge his awareness and attention to promoting fairness and equality with regard to race  gender are exemplary our country needs conscientious and independent judges of impeccable integrity and i cannot think of any one and she underlines anyone who sets who's who is better qualified for this appointment sincerely k be presiding justice supreme court of mississippi there are other letters and i'm not going to prolong my remarks to dana loesch to wear us on the faculty another from one of his former partners well this one may be a little different john hennigan here's another democrat i think i hope he's not upset with me for publicly identified him in that way he's a bright bright widely respected i know him he's written a letter and he talks about in an area where we have not worked closely together these he's addressing arlen specter in one area where we have not worked closely together is in the political arena i was right i am a lifelong member the democratic party at all levels of the political aspect namely local county state and federal and i have previously served as the chief of staff and executive assistant to a former governor of mississippi who is also a lifelong democrat accordingly although i'm not qualified to call myself what we affectionately refer to here is a yellow dog democrat because i have known least a handful of occasions voted for a republican candidate for public office it is very fair to say that i have never been a supporter of the republican party or many of its policies positions or for that matter certain federal judicial nominees submitted to the united states senate in the past in this context i have been reading what has been said and written about the qualifications of leslie for this current post including an editorial in yesterday's new york times and i cannot disagree more strongly with the personal attacks that are being made against his character integrity or fitness for office or about his commitment to civil rights for all people regardless of their race color sex creed religion or national origin it is an abomination that he should have to experience these unfair and unjust personal attacks because they are quite simply untrue and cannot be made by anyone who has had the opportunity to meet work or be around leslie for even an abbreviated period of time his many years of public service at the state and federal level leslie has served his state and his nation with honor and distinction at sacrifice to his personal gain had candidly can think of no one whom i would trust more to carry out the oath of office that he will be required to take and to oppose the laws and constitution of the united states if he is confirmed by the united states senate know there are others who may want to speak on the legislation that's pending before the senate this one is from a fellow member of the mississippi national guard which was who were they were deployed together stressful and challenging leslie always listened to the iraqi claimants patiently treated them with the utmost respect and kindness they did this not just out of a sense of duty but because he is a sincerely genuinely good and caring person this is from norman jean portman junior and he is from laurel mississippi a lawyer with his own law firm there very respected person in our state there are other letters that i thought you might be interested in is from jose a cantu he's writing chairman leahy this is a copy of his letter here chairman leahy i read in the houston chronicle about the nomination of judge leslie southwick to the united states court of appeals with this circuit article was questioning his character in light of a case in a mississippi appellate court involving a racial incident where a ruling was in favor of the white plaintiffs since i grew up with judge southwick in edinburg texas located in the rio grande valley i was shocked to read about the opposition to his nomination on this basis i was a classmate of judge south we can hash through and knew him very well i always found him to be extremely polite and absolutely fair with everyone what the paper in the political activist referenced in the article implies is that judge southwick is a racist because of the ruling on the court this is absolutely ridiculous and totally unfair the valley has a large hispanic population and leslie never showed the type of discriminatory attitudes that are implied in articles to the contrary i remember him as treating everyone fairly and with respect what was equally disturbing in the chronicle article was a little lax opposition to the nomination being a hispanic american man needed an extended family want to voice our strong issue since this organization is portrayed by the media to speak for all hispanics i won't your office to know that it does not my family and i wholeheartedly support the nomination of judge south is apparent from the article that lulac has no firsthand knowledge of judge southwick character or integrity but merely wanted to jump on the bandwagon and oppose this nomination because it was submitted by president bush growing up in the valley both my family and i have been a lifelong democrats now i live in houston and am beginning to believe that politically motivated actions like opposition to the nomination of this by an individual in jurist will force many of us to seek the republican party as a viable alternative i respectfully request that you support the nomination of judge south we can confirm his appointment for the court of appeal sincerely wix nomination to the united states court of appeals for the fifth circuit you will have before you leslie's resume it is outstanding and it reflects both a sense of duty and an intelligence appropriate for  service as an appellate judge judge southwick succeeded me as president of the charles clarke and of court named for the former chief judge for the fifth circuit for him leslie clark after  leslie was elected to that position by trial and defense lawyers of the most professional skill and integrity leslie is diligent in performing his obligations he is smart he has integrity and he is temperate in his actions and decisions leslie is passionate about love of country his alma mater's baseball team pairing rice parents and his adopted state mississippi if a man of intelligence temperance and integrity who has served his country his day and his profession honorably and with dignity is not qualified to be on the court of appeals the process is faulty the legal profession and the parties who will depend on his intelligence and his integrity deserve to have a person of his caliber on the court thank you for your consideration sincerely yours catherine a chester shareholder watkins ludlam winter and stennis professional association madam president i think i have read enough letters and i didn't mean to read them as many as i did but i hope that senators will see from these letters they're not form letters organized by any political party or any special interest group these are letters that were written because people care about and know about leslie southw are convinced that he's being treated unfairly by the united states senate if he's not confirmed i know the judiciary committee has had a hearing i was pleased to introduce leslie southwick at that time with my it never occurred to me at any moment that there would be any question raised about the integrity the sense of fairness the qualifications the fitness to serve as a united states court of appeals judge during the consideration by the senate of this nomination the fact that aphelion blagged to be here on the floor after i had made my comments about the sincerity and seriousness of purpose of those the written and the high quality of the people who've authored these letters so to me it is a dark and sad united states court of appeals it's unthinkable but information that i've gotten from those who've talked with all the members of the committee on the democratic side that might happen i don't know when a hearing meeting is scheduled or when that's going to occur but i hope that there's an opportunity for reflection and careful consideration of action before that meeting does occur i was served my first two years here in the senate on the judiciary committee and how can recall i succeeded been chairman you committee i succeeded him when he retired from the senate and this was in the carter administration and we had a lot of hot button issues come before the committee it was an interesting challenge to be on the committed during such a period national transition and alan simpson and i were the two junior republicans on the committee that year but i guess the committee and it was a pleasure really to serve and get to know all the people who were on the committee at the time but out so remember thinking somewhere along the after about six months of experience on the committed that maybe the best thing i could do for my career in the senate is get the heck off the judiciary committee and get on to something a little more attractive from a political standpoint and so it has as it happened it worked out two years later workload the volume of information that has to be processed by the members to stay up to date with the legislation this referred to judicial committee so i have an appreciation for the challenges that are face and particularly on a nomination that comes along not from your study not from your area of the country take a look at what the facts are make a decision and move alon well i hope the judiciary committee will take another look at this nomination and look at what has been said about the nominee and his qualifications and his entire career which has been one that has reflected good judgment a concern for his fellow citizens whether they are black or white or hispanic whether they're democrats or republicans really creates a bad feeling a sense of unfairness that is pervading the body so  a president this senator from colorado is recommending thank you very much ben president let me thank my good friend and the distinguished leader of this senate for so many years senator robert byrd for allowing me to go first to just make a few comments about the importance of education and the the bill that we are considering here on the floor today the higher education of two thousand and seven i mean first of all say madam president that when we talk about education it ought not to be lost on any member of this chamber that educational opportunity really is the keystone to success for all of us in america you know my own personal story i know that my parents never had an opportunity to go to college or to get a college degree and that in my family though we were poor so we grew up without a lot of material wealth they were very rich in spirit and believed in those fundamental values that have made america great they believed in hard work they believe be believed in faith and they believe that the community was there for an important reason and they all understood without a doubt that education was in fact the keystone to success you know i often remember sitting there at the ranch in southern colorado almost three hundred miles south of denver colorado with a kerosene lamp on the table and the eight siblings around the table my father my mother making sure that we were doing our homework and my father would say to all of us he would say i can't leave you large branches i can't leave you riches but the one thing that i can make sure i give to you is an education one gets perhaps because of his teachings and his understanding of the promise of america i have a brother congressman salazar who is in the house of representatives also serving our great nation and serving the state of colorado and as i think about those educational achievement so we've had it would not have happened were not for the promise of america and the programs that have been have been created here by so many people who came before me i was on the floor earlier and serving as presiding officer when  to the tent in fact on a wheelchair and someone whispered to me that the person who had just arrived on the scene was none other than clay born well and it was for the first time that i connected the dots i remember going through college and receiving the tall grants that allowed me the opportunity to go to college but i never knew that the term pal was somehow associated with someone who actually sat just to death to my left here at one point in time and i was the great senator creigh born pal from the state of rhode island who came up with the idea that the promise of america really was somehow embedded in the opportunity to receive a good education and i think he believed is many of us here believe that economic barriers should not be the reason why someone does not advance in higher education everyone who wants to go into higher education should have that opportunity to do so and yet somehow today when we look at the reality of america the fact of the matter is that that educational opportunity that was there for me and hundreds of thousands in my generation is being slowly taken away from our american youngsters we have been headed in the wrong direction madam president and it is for that reason that this i just sation with senator kennedy and and the members of the health committee with a vote of seventeen to three have brought that legislation to the floor of the united states senate today and i am proud to be a supporter a strong supporter of this legislation because it will keep hope alive in america with the american dream that it results from the education that is provided to the people of our great nation when you look at what's happened today in terms of the education educational opportunities for for americans it's getting harder and harder for our young people to access higher education four hundred thousand talented qualified students each year that's four hundred thousand decide that they can go to higher education because of the economic barriers four hundred thousand talented young americans successful young americans who should have an opportunity to go on to higher education so that's what this bill is all about this bill is about tearing down those barriers so that these young people these four hundred thousand talented young people have an opportunity to be a part of the american dream a president when one looks at what has been happening over the last several years in america we have invested continue to invest in education the fact is that we haven't invested enough and the math of the fact is when you look at the statistics that what we have invested in educational opportunity in access to higher education the investment has been a flat investment so by the time you take into account general inflation and particularly the high rate of inflation and higher education we have been in a roadway that has been this investing in opportunities for the young people of america if you look at the white lines in this chart what they show is what the maximum  been from two thousand and one through two thousand and seven centrally see a flat line across right at about four thousand dollars during that same time period you see what's happened with respect to the cost of education we've got one point of a little over eight thousand dollars now to an average of over almost thirteen thousand dollars so the gap has increased we had a gap of five thousand two hundred eighty two dollars in two thousand and one today the gap is eight thousand seven hundred dollars so what's happened really in the last five years is that it did friend of mine from the university of michigan called it the disinvestment in america's future what we're doing is taking away opportunity for the young people of america and the bill before us today madam president is a bill that right that wrong and puts us on the right direction to investing in the education of our young people  important because it raises the maximal palla grande to fifty one hundred dollars next year it's about time it's about time that we do that we waited far too long to an increase of cal grants for young people secondly it provides loan forgiveness to those borrowed borrowers who serve in the areas of national interest those values of early childhood education librarians highly qualified to teachers speech language push pathologists and others it make sure that we provide loan forgiveness for those people who decide to take jobs to serve others in addition the program creates a forgiveness for the balance due on direct loans by borrowers who been public sector employees for ten years and who have made one hundred twenty income contingent payments on their loans the legislation also makes federal loan payments by student borrowers contingent by capping payments at fifteen percent of an individual's income and allowing those borrowers to have their loans forgiven forgiven after twenty years of payments this is an important issue particularly when we see how much debt is being put on the saddles of young americans they're graduating from college and from graduate schools there are a number of other provisions that are very important in this legislation and finally with respect to my own state of colorado i want my own state just like every week senator here to make sure that we providing the max mopper to money for young people and this legislation will do that through these programs that i just spoke about for the state of colorado what this means is that we will have three hundred twenty five million dollars more in student aid aid over next five years that's three hundred and twenty five million dollars more in student eight aid for the next five years so i'm proud of this legislation i'm proud of my colleagues both democrats and republicans in the health committee who have brought this legislation forward and i would urge my colleagues to support it wholeheartedly as part of making sure that the american dream that we live here today is a dream that this generates and other generations behind it will be able to achieve for several days for several days football player for running a dogfighting operation i'm not going to comment on that particular case the man has been accused we have not been convicted must wait until all the facts are man and a verdict is rendered the man cited in these recent news stories is in isn't until proven guilty lord help them it is proven to be guilty in a court of law we must wait for the justice system to run its course but the facts are already and and the verdict has already been delivered what's it about president is about the scourge of dog fighting in the united states dog fighting dog fighting in united staes according to the humane society there are about forty thousand dog fighting operations in the united states manager of dog fighting issues for the humane society john goodwin points out and i quote john good the deputy manager of dog fighting issues for the humane society john goodman points out and i quote dog fighting is at an epidemic level in the united states it involves urban areas as well as rural areas it involves all sections of the country it cuts across cultures and class and other socio and economic differences dogfighting continues even though all fifty states have laws on the books prohibiting dog fighting dog fighting is a federal crime was a then again dog fighting is a federal crime and yet animal welfare officials report to dog fighting is more popular today than ever shame shame hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars are all vintage stake in the breeding and the training and the sailing of fighting do two dogs are placed in a p how sadistic god created each other and get this the fight can go on for hours the fight can go on for hours you hear me if i can go on for hours poor dogs literally by and rip the flesh of one another and bet as high as fifty thousand dollars up laced bets as high as fifty thousand dollars are placed the brutality goes on until one of the poor dogs is seriously injured dow that reason mr president dog fighting is regarded as a blood sport a blood sport a blood sport the worst worst worst sadistic left wondering who are the real animals who are the real an other creatures outside the ring vulnerable creatures to kill to kill to caillaud and putting them in a rain to be killed or to kill in my time creatures to kill  undercover investigators who have infiltrated dogfighting ring was have found blood soaked dull with live threatening injur as soon as they are no longer able to compete undercover investigators have found dogs with the ripped ears torn  dangling from their bodies i swell and shut and faces riddled with punctures so severe that they were barely able to breathe how  dog to survive a fight often died days or even hours after the fight from blood loss stock dehydration exhaustion or infection  i've seen a human being put to death for killing another human being even the winner of a dog fight commonness suffers from massive bleeding ruptured lungs broken bones the training of the poor creature the training of these poor creatures to turn themselves into fighting machines is simply barbaric barbaric barbaric  rabbits or small dogs as a training bait of this most cruel business reaches beyond the fighting ring itself as reported the dog fighters often involve their children in their bloody activities was severe damaging psychological i san studies have revealed that children exposed to dog fighting develop a greater acceptance of the aggressive that attitudes and behavior they are taught to believe that violence as a dog owner and a dog lover to understand how human beings can be so cruel dogs have endured as our devoted that provide them potent emotional support to humans hours of enjoyable companionship god help their so congress has made it a federal crime to engage in dog fighting caretaker of the all of his creatures responsibly and with decency and with respect the book of proverbs and the whole of viable king james bible tells us right just man regarded as the life of his beast but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel margot dante tells us that divine justice reserves special places in jail for certain categories of center a president this senator from pennsylvania to recognize madam president asked to be recognized as if in morning business is their objection without objection so ordered madam president thank you very much i'm honored to follow senator byrd to the floor today like he's done on so many other days in the senate he reminds us why he's now only  distinguished colleague from west virginia but why he's so revered we thank him for what he talked about today madam president i rise today to talk about one of the most important issues facing our country our world and our children and in the issue is global warming due to climate change and i know that the the presiding officer has a strong interest in this issue as we've talked about it and she has with many of her constituents in minnesota and beyond and we appreciate that commitment the problem as you know is so serious that it could physically and irrevocably change the world in which we live so i think we're confronted today with a moral duty to preserve the environment not just so we can have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink because this world this world that we live in is our care for our children and our children's children god's creation itself in the state of pennsylvania we've always held the environment in high regard and in our state like many states we put it right in our constitution article one section twenty seven of the pennsylvania constitution reads as follows the people have a right to clean air pure water and to the preservation of the natural scenic historic aesthetic values of the environment pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people including generations yet to come as trustee of this of these resources the commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people unquote that's what our state constitution says and as a public official from that state albeit in a federal capacity i feel an abiding obligation to give meaning to that constitutional directive through my work in the united states senate so for all these reasons i firmly believe that we must take action to slow stop and reverse our greenhouse gas emissions and the united states must stand up as a leader in the international arena to stop global warming madam president i'm not a scientist and i don't claim to be an expert on scientific theories but i do know something about some of the literature that's been written the last couple of years one i remember in particular and this had a a profound impact on me and it's a very simple statement but it tells what we're dealing with here i remember reading back in two thousand and five that the percent of the earth's surface with it which has been subjected to drought has doubled since about one thousand nine hundred seventy so in just about thirty five years the percent of the earth that has had drought connected to it has doubled that alone should tell us what what the stakes are here what drought leads to leads to poverty and hunger and starvation and death and darkness and we know it from our our recent history the catastrophic storms and flooding katrina being an example of that changes in habitat the threatened species and the potential for a mini ice age in northern europe is melting ice sheets disrupt ocean currents major ecological changes translating into major social socio political changes we know that various committees in the senate foreign relations committee being one are dealing with this issue as well focusing on the implications of global warming to national security in the military readiness of our troops so many examples even in dar for the terrible terrible car that we see unfolding every day part of that was caused by changes in our environment drought forced people to move into new areas causing conflict consider the employee implications of widespread global droughts storms coastal flooding and crop failure among others inflicting this future on the children of the world the children of america is unimaginable and i think the un forgivable yet that's exactly what we're doing we no longer take action we don't take the action we must take the evidence of human caused climate change is overwhelming global warming exists and human activities are a major factor the evidence rising average temperatures melting glaciers shifts and m bird patterns is telling us something it's telling us that we're failing in our duties as stewards of god's creation so what should we do about it it's a question that i've asked and so many others of asked over the course of many months in the senate and many years i've spent like a lot of my colleagues spent many many hours talking to what we might call stakeholders people who are in the manufacturing field people who might own businesses labor unions environmentalist scientists all the way down the list of people who have an interest and groups that have an interest and they're all determined that national climate change and the programs that we develop to combat it must accomplish a number of basic goals i'll read quickly through about ten of them making mandatory greenhouse gas reductions operative word there being mandatory not voluntary number to reduce greenhouse gases at  levels identified by international scientists of eighty percent by two thousand and fifty take immediate action to reduce emissions in the short term number four reduce economy wide greenhouse gas emissions number five use a market based approach to reduce emissions while providing some stability in the market especially in the early years number six vallance regional differences in the sources of greenhouse gases and solutions number seven position the united states as a global leader on climate change while bringing developing countries like china india and mexico to the table number eight hold states accountable for their own carbon consumption number nine make major federal investments in carbon capture and storage research in clean coal technologies and finally number ten continue reducing other pollutants that pose threats to public health so guided by these ten principles i'm i'm a co sponsor of three global warming bills first is the global warming pollution reduction act introduced by our colleague senator sanders and senator boxer and i commend my distinguished colleagues from vermont and california for drafting such an important bill their bill will be the starting point i believe for the senate's work on global warming legis this legislation make strong and significant reduce the long term goal of an eighty percent reduction from two thousand and six levels by two thousand and fifty we know madam president that the science must guide us in this work we must not do any less than what the scientists tell us we need to do to prevent the catastrophic changes in the earth atmosphere the second bill that i'm co sponsoring the low carbon economy act introduced by senators bingaman inspector i applaud them for their work in putting together a comprehensive and detailed piece of legislation many of the things that will debate in the senate will be critically important to my home state of pennsylvania that any climate change program must include a number of things first of all a detailed proposal for a cap and trade program for carbon credits secondly measures to keep our manufacturers competitive we must again bring our international trading partners to the table in a commitment  provide some measure of ability to the new carbon economy the third and final bill that i'm co sponsoring of senator carper is clean air planning act this legislation keeps other has it is air pollutants at the forefront of our discussion nitrogen oxides sulfur dioxide in mercury continue to have deleterious effects on the health of pennsylvania and america in terms of asthma in our children harmful impacts mercury on early childhood development and women's reproductive health so all of this compels us to take action each of these bills do each of these bills have strengths that must be concluded in any climate change proposal developed by the environment and public works committee in the full senate i've discussed with chairman boxer in her legislation and i appreciate her longstanding commitment to getting a climate bill to the senate and to the floor commend as well i must say her leadership on a wide range of environmental issues over many years and i want to thank her for her continuing commitment to work with colleagues like me so that will be at the table to work on priorities for our country as well as pennsylvania's priorities in any chairman's mark on a climate bill so in conclusion madam president i urge all of my colleagues to join the call of the thousands of people who have visited capitol hill and came to our offices to to talk to us about global warming not to mention the millions of americans who can care very deeply about this issue as democrats republicans and independents alike east and west north and south we have no time to waste when dealing with the problem of this man magnitude in gravity for our world so madam president i ask unanimous consent that i be made a co sponsor