earlier i allowed students to receive an a determination or estimate in their junior high school so they can gain the information about whether they have a real opportunity to go on to continue on to college get the information get it accessible available easy to understand to students in a timely way and that is the purpose of this particular effort ensuring access to adequate grant a one component of solving the college access crisis is also sure more students are graduating from high school ready to succeed and in college in two thousand and one colleges required a third of all freshman to take remedial courses in reading writing or math because so many high school students are not learning the basic skills to succeed in college or work the nation loses more than three point seven billion dollars a year this figure includes one point four billion to provide the remedial education to students who have recently completed the high school in addition this figure factors in the almost two point three billion that the economy loses because remedial reading students are more likely to drop out of college without a degree and therefore reducing their earning potential this is extremely important and that to brings us to the work that our committee is attempting in our the the no child left behind the target of that is the lower grades but we are interested in trying to find a seamless web where we get to the reauthorization of the head start program coordinating with tended garden coordinating with the no childless are left behind coordinating with the colleges and universities we understand that this ought to be a seamless web so to speak it's not at the present time and we are committed to trying to do it and if we have these kinds of gaps in the learning process for our students we're certainly not serving them well this bill also includes a provision championed by senator brown to maintain the strength of the trio and gear up programs which it provide the under privileged to do this with the support they need to go to college and graduate from college the higher education act of one thousand nine hundred fifty five established the national teacher corps federally funded great society programs develop our nation's teaching force this bill continues that tradition by promoting high quality and effective preparation a programs for new and prospective teachers for recruiting retaining high quality teachers in high need schools as was of particular interest to senator nelson gaylord nelson who is deceased but he was very much involved in that program and it was very very successful we had another teacher corps program that took retired teachers and had to go in under served areas which was very also impressive it made a real difference as well but that particular provision is not included in this legislation finally this bill will create a new student safety grant program to help colleges and universities to improve their campus safety and emergency response systems as the nightmare ever to new tech made us all too aware tragedy can strike anywhere including on college campuses this and we have important provisions in this area this legislation received a unanimous bipartisan support in communities and i hope we'll see that demonstrated today find a point mr president when we are talking about the cost of college as we also include  a report what states are going in in a number of states for example in my state of massachusetts in the recent years prior to the election deval patrick  under previous government we saw or substantial reductions of state help and assistance to colleges and there was no alternative but they had to raise with the fees on for young people going i didn't say that these were increased taxes but effectively they were for these these young families we had a dramatic reduction in terms of the help and assistance and it's important i think for american people to understand other states helping are they doing their fair share or is the fact that we've seen the increase in particular state the result of state action we want to make sure that the public understands it and that we understand it as well we are open we are serious about trying to make ensure that that college education is going to be affordable and accessible to everyone this is not the final answer mr president and we have got a lot more work to do but i would hope that the students and their families and the education community would feel that this is a very important and constructive step and it's that reflected in a very important a bipartisan effort on our part to make sure that we're going to get help and assistance to the young people in this country so that our nation can be strong economically and can have the young people that will make sure that our great institutions are going to function work to protect our values and protect the senator from massachusetts mr kennedy for mrs boxer proposes an amendment number twenty three sixty eight and i ask that further reading of the minute be dispensed with without checks and that mr president yelled myself at the time on the amendment it self senator from massachusetts recognizing mr president under the boxer amendment to this is to provide additional funding provides just an authorization programs or the special programs formed by colleges as well as from some high schools to help assist students that come from lower incomes but have the capacity and capability to continue on to school and college and it has been enormously sessile and what has happened is that there are these applications for upward dam programs that are made by those in the colleges or the schools to you know to be able to get a grant and  depending on a variety of different fact is those grants are either approved or not approved they're ranked and then either approved or not approved the cutoff time at the present time is now ninety two percent ninety two percent great isn't the quality of the individuals but it has a wide variety about how the grants are developed and i'll include in the record how those are done but it's at ninety two down it to generally was in the eighty's has fluctuated over the period years but it's been the low eighty's sometimes very high seventies and but the boxer amendment would with the increased authorization which amounts to approximately fifty four million dollars will have raised the upward bound scoring to say that anyone above seventy on the most recent isn't what the results of the upward bound programs been nearly ninety percent of the upward bound students graduate from high school compared only sixty eight percent of all low income eighteen to twenty four year olds we've gone through the other charts that showed even a graduate of those that are going to be college ready seventy percent of the students attend college compared to the lower rate fifty four or all low income students at fifty percent of upward bound students attend a four year college where two of the low income students and the upward bound students four times more likely to earn undergraduate degree and students from other similar background  this shows mr president that what i think all of us believe and that is all students can learn made learn at a somewhat different pace or a different time but they can learn and what we have seen now is for a number of different reasons we find out particularly that to those that in the lower income are either discover aged or because the costs because the application to skew the system is a really skewed against them and we have seen that education rather than being a factor in a force which is uniting our country is adding to the disparity one of the most effective programs because it's a trio program within the trio program is the upward bound so this has members have very very familiar with this program we all have  programs in our own states i have many in my state i have the list it's just every about every single state and not only the  states but we also have in puerto rico and other american samoa programs that are out there that are working and providing these kinds of opportunities for for for students so this is a just an authorization but it is important one mr president is targeting the the group of students who need that extra help and assistance it's a remarkable that to the schools and colleges are so involved in trying to help the high schools universities i know and mice in the city of boston many many of the high schools are tied on the end to the colleges that work with these as students and it's a wonderful relationship it's the way it should be and these kinds of outreach programs to try and help assist many of those students that are the neediest and are facing a wide variety of different challenges recognizing that they too have dreams  and interests in terms of furthering their education this is a stream lee modest program but one that is enormously valuable and as demonstrated time in and time out it's success senator from wyoming i want to voice my free sheesh and for the presentation that was just made to give people a fuller understanding of what this amendment does and make a couple of additional comments on it  one of the one of the problems that brings this particular amendment forward is that the appropriators did not appropriate the money that would have provided for all of the people that got a score of seventy or above to receive a grant interest year two thousand and seven and perhaps that has to do with a lack of authorization or too low of an authorization so this money is an authorization and that's an interesting process that we have around here we have the budget process which is where the president recommendations on how he thinks we ought to spend money and then we revise it sort of the way we want to spend money except the real revision is only in the caps on that that's what budget is it's how much total money we get to spend and we have an authorization process where the committees that are involved in the actual legislation for that area this in this case higher education comes under health education labor and pensions the health committee and so we get to authorize which says what we think ought to happen kind of in a maximum sort of way and so this amendment does authorize additional funds that would meet the criteria i do have some small concern it says that they would allow for those to reapply that did not apply for assistance this is a competitive grant situation and for whatever reason they might not have applied if they didn't apply in the competitive grant you just simply don't get to emphasize that anybody who wants higher education ought to look at the programs that are available out there and that's one of the things that we're trying to do is get more information to more people about what's available we originally called it the trio program because there were three programs  that would help help students some in minority some in lower income situations but we had three programs now we're at eight programs and we keep devising ways so that our kids can get more education what we need of course is for the kids to take advantage of the programs that are out there and i certainly wouldn't want to stifle a program by not authorizing this at this point in time so i would encourage just to accept this from alaska is recognized thank you mr president the president we know that a college degree and highly skilled labor force are the keys to increasing earnings into american competitiveness around the world when the sen health committee began work on the reauthorization of the higher education act my main priority at the time was to ensure the more students could access and afford college and job training package accomplish these goals and more early friday morning the u s senate increased the maximum pell grant award to assist low income students to go to college or to get job training and then we added additional funding for the neediest of low income students i'm also very proud that we authorize and appropriate is two hundred twenty six million dollars for the college access partnership grant program this is a partnership between the federal government and the state to help more young americans prepare for apply to and succeed in college we also did good work in the bill in protecting borrower benefits that are provided by state agencies and the nonprofit lenders mr president in alaska we have a state agency lender that uses their special allowance payments or their step payments to reduce the loan interest rate to the lowest in the nation they provide outreach and call it college early awareness to middle and high school students they provide need based grants and other very important benefits alaska's state agency nonprofit lender and others like it in states like wyoming and tennessee and north carolina are not plowing their separate into their profit margin i'm gratified that the senate w able to recognize the good work that we're seeing in the state of alaska and many other states the good work that they're doing also in the legislation last year we ensure that young americans will not be saddled with unmanageable amounts of debt after they graduate as president if these and other provisions in the seven hundred sixty two that go hand in hand with the bill that we're debating today and which i'm hopeful we will see passage hopefully by tonight this  sixteen forty two the higher education amendments act of two thousand and seven includes many important and beneficial provisions that will ensure that students parents and the american taxpayers get the fairest yale's the best information and truly the biggest bang for their buck this legislation makes the cost of college more transparent to the parents and students can compare the costs of different colleges to determine which ones will most effectively and affordably meet their needs it places prohibitions on unauthorized entities using student loans and grant information for marketing purposes it provides fair sensible and rigorous ethics reform for financial aid administrators and lenders to ensure that the students receive the information that they need to make decisions that will benefit them and not benefit unscrupulous lenders or post secondary of institutions title two of the bill streamlined and strengthened teacher quality enhancement grants to bring more accountability to university teacher training programs and it also directs the secretary to further simplify the fafsa the free application for federal student aid when we were talking on the floor last week about the fast fast application the senator from wyoming held up that eight page application in demonstrated what it is that students are faced with when they take this on mr president i am particularly proud of one provision that i worked to include in as sixteen forty two this provision makes it easier for service members particularly those in the lowest rank and their spouses to afford college i was in in the state up at fort richardson last winter and i was visiting with some of the wives of the deployed  servicemen deployed to iraq and afghanistan and i asked them in this town hall meeting what is it that i can do to help you as you wait for for your loved ones to return home how can we make your lives better we talked about quality of life initiative we talked about greater certainty with deployment but one of the wives told me that during this time that her husband was deployed for the fifteen months she was trying to take advantage of of this time period to better herself by going on to college and she told me that one of the things that was keeping her from being able to afford to go to college was that the money that the military pays to help offset a portion of their housing costs just counted in towards your income this allowance prevented her from being eligible for a pell grant now given the low rate of pay for many members of the military particularly those in the lowest rank this is a this is a barrier for them and being able to take out student loans i soon found out from the national military families association that many military spouses are in this same position to when i came back to the capital i worked to include language in as sixteen forty two that would exclude the cost of the basic allowance for housing for service members living off base as well as the value on base housing from being included in calculations for financial needs executing the basic allowance for housing which in the vast majority of cases does not completely cover military families housing costs and the value of on base housing this will benefit the least well paid members of our military and their spouses these are private schools the men their predecessors lance corporal airman or pop whose base pay is less than thirty five thousand dollars a year we can help now and as those that are deployed are serving our country and these thousands that perhaps are here and again looking to better themselves during this period of time as they as they wait for their loved ones to return home  this is a true benefit for them i could not be more proud to know that this this strong woman that i met last year intentionally thousands like her will have a better chance now of being able to attend college should we be successful in passing this legislation overall i believe that we did a fine job in making college and job training more accessible and more affordable i'd like to thank my colleagues especially senator kennedy and senator enzi for their generosity their graciousness throughout this long process and their true dedication towards the goal of educating all of america's young people with that mr president i committee and sides of the earlier amendment that was on our income based or the assistance to the students had a very worthwhile amendment that's going to make a big difference in her state but in all of our states in terms of making greater availability information and outreach to to students who are qualified to go to the schools and colleges but otherwise i would not be able to do it because of lack of information support that was a key element and also very much involved in the grant program which is included in this for science and technology into schools so she's been a very active member we have value very much are employed in involvement in the in the legislation we thank her for her comments mr president the senator from wyoming i too would like to thank her for comments in her tremendous participation on the committee particularly with her muro approach to problem solving and that room approach affects wyoming equally well maybe not equally to alaska because they have a lot more land with a few more people but she's she's done a tremendous my twenty nine years here in the senate i've stood the floor many time with senator kennedy but on this time we're absolutely joined in this magnificent piece of legislation which i submit on behalf of s kennedy and your stance very very hard work in preparation this amendment and my staff a senior member of angela stewart who over the weekend i was traveling has many of our colleagues in our perspective states and i must add at least six day telephone calls over a period of two days just working out the refinements and protocol with regard to this amendment and i think it's a representation of how the senate no matter whether we're on the floor where we maybe we can constantly are working on the legislative proposals that many of us have time to time now again i want to draw all the attention to the title of this particular amendment first i send it to the desk and ask it for me consideration is entitled a minority serving institutions for advanced technology and education amendment to sixteen forty two i remember in the one nine hundred eighty s traveling to several of the his starkly and they referred to him his starkly black colleges of the commonwealth of virginia and having had a an engineering background myself at my old school washing had often in abundance and i suppose at that time the thoughts in my mind led towards this day and it's been a long climb up the mountain not just statements regarding this amendment of course may do so and that they be co located in the record following the introduction of this amendment without jackson so would and this president  that over sixty percent of the top jobs in america all across our land require not only a basic knowledge but really advance kill and what we refer to as information technology in jobs in this area frankly pay income and higher salaries and today as i said many of the minority institutions this covers a wide group of institutions which i will address later in the text but they are minority institutions simply lack the resources the necessary capital and downloads all types of financing that go into these institutions to acquire our basic quip whether it's at actual computer itself advanced computer technology to hook it into systems and they also need it in their dhamma tori's in the libraries and the like and it is for that purpose that we're asking the senate today to see what this bill to provide this sum of money for five consecutive years to fall a competitive grant program so this wide range of it's a two since can compete for  of money and hopefully attain obtain it for their respective institutions we need to bridge and i used the term the digital divide so that all students who really want and have the desire to spend the extra time the extra hours extra laboratory time and so forth to bridge the gaps so that they can compete in today's modern world and take these jobs which incidentally must present our badly needed in the workforce and thereby get a salary and perhaps a step up on the ladder of development of your career this is definitely a bipartisan amendment and as i said was a deep sense of humility many many senators that work towards is today specifically legislation most obvious as i said a grant program for these institutions of higher learning to bring increased access to computer technology internet institutions can use funds to acquire equipment and from and taishan networking capability hardware and software prodigious network technology wireless technology and infrastructure to develop and provide these educational services in addition to grants could be used for such activities as campus wiring equipment upgrades and technology training and finally minority serving institutions could use these funds to offer their students universal of universal access to campus networks thereby increasing connectivity and make infrastructure improvements moreover much has been said in this education debate about the importance of math and science i remember well i know the senators two years ago were all says of the smart grant program which provides taipans to economically disadvantaged students in the third fourth year of college and university training who elect to study critical majors in mass science and engineering and key foreign languages we must now begin to encourage and provide for those students who want to start earlier than the third fourth year and begin to enter and study these critical fields not only of math and science but of high tech i point out i remember very well when i came out of the navy at the end of world war two i had the g i bill i went to my university as a small one and they had a very small engineering department at that time is now since gone because it couldn't take the competition a larger schools but i remember so well we would go into the laboratories and afternoon and spend long hours by like them and we didn't have any air condition so we opened the windows obviously and you could hear the other students out on the playing field enjoying all kinds of sports and other things while we were there laboring over the laboratory requirements and then at night across the obligatory homework and it seems to me those of us they were in the high tech and the math i was a math major and a physics major waste bed endlessly long hours on our homework i just bring that up not to in any way utility myself in my career but simply to say that those students who want to dedicate that extra time to study in the high tech world and it does require extra time thereby giving up some of the pleasures of life we ought to have the proper equipment available for all of them the national science foundation must present reports that the percentage of bad says agrees in science and engineering across america been declining in many a time have i and other members of this body pointed out how america is falling behind it pickler with reference to india and china as so many such a higher percentage of their university graduates are following the high tech careers so let's just give a leg up to those young people who want to devote that extra time and extra motivation in their studies for these specialties this amendment also addresses a shortage of qualified professionals that teaching courses if something's got to have not only the hardware within the institution but the teachers and professors and this provides this amendment provides an inducement for their training as i said i'm proud to say that my great state is home to six institutions throughout the years i've been in the senate they proudly referred to them as the historically black colleges and universities known as h b c u's no state university st paul's college virginia university of lynchburg virginia union university hampton university and virginia state university and right now and at this point i want to thank all of those faculty and presidents of those institutions and administrators who through these many years have been year after year coming to my office pleading just for this modest program to help them put in the ampa structure again teaching faculty to help the students who want to pursue these careers likewise all across america they are here and there are over two hundred hispanic serving institutions over one hundred historically other black colleges outside of virginia and universities and over thirty tribal colleges for the united states all all of them are now going to be eligible to compete in this grant program in the mid one nine hundred eighty s on the campus of st paul's as i said my first thoughts again leading up to this day this senate has addressed similar pieces of legislation legislation and past year in two thousand and three a similar bill passed in the senate with a roll call vote of ninety seven to nothing in two thousand and five a similar bill passed in the senate by unanimous consent my friend the senator from virginia for his actual and presentation and also for reminding us about the importance of math and science and technology and engineering as a member of the armed services committee i think his involvement it and his focus on this is a is also enormously important because he understands that education is not only the value to the individuals not only the value to our economy but it is  essential aspect in terms of our national security i've talked to them frequently about the national defense education act that to made such a difference in terms of availability and this was after russia but in the late  in the dependence authorization said to collins and i had spoken to the senator when he was chairman of the armed services committee and we have the small program that is directly focused on math and science and technology that he included in legislation in the in the past we have a number of enormously interested young people who are taking advantage of those scholarship help and assistance we remember is we are normally a grateful for his his intervention is the no we pass the compete act earlier this year but they and in that compete act there are some provisions to help and assist these minority interest institutions but quite frankly there are a lot of other priorities in that compete act and i think that the fact that you're given us this legislation and this focus is incredibly helpful to us i'm just mindful as well and i'm as i say thank you so much for all of your efforts and it's no surprise to be that my colleague and friend from massachusetts senator kerry is your strong co sponsor because i've talked with him about this subject matter on many occasions i just draw the attention to this chart the air which i think makes the point which the senate has pointed out the bill provides resource for the institutions to build capacity develop improve instruction expands opportunities for institutions to sarap low and middle income students support the greater financial literacy and strengthen the focus on studies in the science technology engineering and math fields seems that this is a pretty good summation of what the the senator is attempting to do i think it's enormously important that this effort on this not just on this bill but on the previous bills where he's placed this emphasis on science and technology engineering and math that have resulted in other grants that are available to students and we need to increase the awareness of students that that is out there particularly in the lower grades so that they have all the prerequisites they need to qualify for it when they get to college but you're your info system that his had just a tremendous effect on on  higher education and on the work we've done before and i also want to thank you for the comment you made about your staff working through the weekend in our staff working through the weekend this is not a nine to five job around here for us the worst  and people don't realize the amount of dedication that they have to work for students through a weekend that would be a beautiful weekend in washington and they were indoors making telephone calls and making sure that  everything worked precisely right so that we could pass this amendment today and i think we'll be willing to take it on the voice vote and this will provide up to date technology which is vitally important everything is operating off of technology today and i especially appreciate your your concern and emphasis on minority serving institutions that have this opportunity there is a disadvantage there and we want to equalize that and you've certainly got the essence of it and the solution for it and so i congratulate you on this because it will strengthen the national and the digital in the wireless infrastructure and that helps all of us because it increases in national investment in to let me tell a short story for a minute or two second you mentioned the importance of this to the armed forces to have a pool of trained individuals to join the military today i'd like to contrast the earlier experience i had life it was a it was nineteen forty five when are one hundred forty five the war was raging in europe although it ended in may was still going on in the war and pacific and like everybody else on my block and all students at seventeen eighteen we all joined the military i don't claim to have any military career great consequence but i'll never forget the first night we've been on a small train that is stopped at stations all across the east coast picking up a dozen or two seventeen eighteen year olds on them on an old train cold as  and chuck in its way up to great lakes we arrived about two or three in the morning and we were all kind of tired and cold and huddled into a great big room and a petty officer i remember he was quite got up on the low platform and screamed out us all you guys who can't read and write raise your hand and i had the benefit of a wonderful education in high school so for flipped out i did not realize really that people didn't have the basic skills that i had been given then the petty officer said oh you smart so and so fill out the forms of the elders and so about twenty twenty five percent of these fellows they come out of the coal mines in the steel mines in pennsylvania and all up through the valley i remember that train when picking up these guys and we sat and we filled out the forms but i want to say that those men had very short training once they got to great legs the rest of us were shunted aside for technical schools but they were sent within ninety days right aboard the ships right into the battle and on those ships those days there were dozens of jobs that persons who couldn't read and write could befall them and but fall in very well so in no way do i denigrate their abilities to fight as they did bravely and were to those who couldn't read and write but today's here in the united states navy take a destroyer it's somewhat destroyers today considerably larger the destroyer of the past but the crews are dramatically reduced in number which means that every one of those naval person today has to have high tech skills and it's true is the same as in the army in the marines when you visit iraq when you see the troops out there as most of us their all working high tech equipment there is no place vailable today in the military really for one who is not skilled in high tech work and so it's a change society  albeit my student story dates back or in a half century they were fighters and what the days military we excess only those in the military with high school graduates or high school equivalent and the ones that showed technical proficiency or made it lee moved in to advanced technical courses so this legislation is laying the foundation for those in these institutions who sodas are to join the united states military arrive on the first day not requiring the rock acquiring a fellow soldier sailor airman to fill out the form they are all a smart and able to work high tech equipment so i think to manage t silver in the mind what he was saying is that silver still in the rock in your is worthless until it's mind taken out of the rock same as education genius without education like silver in the min we have i'm sure a lot of geniuses mr president of not an educated and that's too bad that's what this legislation is all about some question that a college education is the single greatest weight on the scales of success today more and more working class americans are shut out of promise an opportunity a college education because the price is out of their reach last week we took a significant step to restoring that promise to hundreds of thousands of american students by passing the bipartisan higher education access fact that should not go unnoticed that the seventeen billion dollars in new student aid and benefits represents the largest increase in college assistance since congress passed a g i bill of rights more than fifty years ago the bill that we passed last week did this in a comprehensive way by increasing grant aid expanding the number of students eligible for federal aid making loan debt more manageable and expanding loan forgiveness options of those professions that we all recognize are important to society teaching social work law enforcement and health care today in considering the higher education amendments we are reauthorize remaining programs and funding the higher education act is present this bill is not weeks overdue months overdue it's years overdue first of this legislation addresses a recent student loan scandals with provisions in the bill increased disclosure requirements go ahead and prohibiting payments and gifts from lenders to colleges and financial aid administrators and new restrictions on preferred lender list and finally putting an end to these unacceptable practices making sure that the student loan system works in the interest of our students just as importantly we tackle the rising cost college spite the billions in new student aid and benefits in the bill we passed last week of college costs continue to rise at rate they have tripling over the past twenty years higher education will continue to remain further and further out of reach to many americans so i'm pleased mr president to support this legislation i'm also pleased that students in nevada the good fortune of the state university system some of the loss cost in the nation but the same is not true everywhere will hold colleges accountable at their cost increase to dramatically and also ensures that students and parents have the information they need to make objective decisions based on the cost of college by me we'll phase out the unnecessarily complicated federal financial aid form which is currently seven pages long probably more complicated than filing a tax return with a much simpler two page form again thanks hundreds can anzhi for the work they've done the w i know my friend and colleague from wyoming well as others know that we have seen the exit this authorization that expired some three years ago so this is long overdue and to the idea that we pass both of these pieces of legislation together as it's going to make a major difference both not only to the students which we are primarily concerned out and to their families but also to the colleges and universities and to all of the other get this it concluded either late tonight or tomorrow this will be a very significant important time in terms of education policy for our country and i want to thank you very much mr president if i could say to my friends distinguish senator from massachusetts and my friend from wyoming we didn't have time to do this legislation we had to take time to do this legislation this is an example of how committees working together can get stuff done committees do a lot of work but much of that that comes out of committees is done on a partisan basis democrats vote for republican vote against it frankly we can't get their stuff to the floor it just we can't get it done i repeat we didn't have time to do this much place we're where we have so much do we have appropriation bills we need to do so as we said he says we're going to move the homeland security procreation which is essential  if legislation we've got to do that we've got to leave the conference report on the nine eleven commission recommendations we have to complete the work we've done in council for down the road i think some lobbying reform must present this it is an  example i say that all committees work together like these two men work together and we can get things done that's how we were able to get the energy bill passed earlier we took those provisions from the energy committee environment public works committee and commerce committee which there was unanimity everyone agreed and so i took those things we put them in a package and that was the bill that we passed here so i appreciate sen kennedy mentioning my name but the work has been done by this committee last week and arriving at the point where we can have this legislation completed today this is important legislation i heard senator warner on the floor today talking about when he went in the military and they had those couldn't read or write during world war two raise your hand twenty five percent the people on that ship couldn't read or write well mr president we don't have that situation today we do have a situation where there are many many people like the example that i gave we have this intellect have a college education and simply can't do it it's like benjamin franklin and the silver still in the mine it doesn't help anybody and when we have the the people who have the ability to be educated that can't be educated and doesn't speak well of our country we've got to continue down that road of being able to educate our students and this legislation tied into what we did last week is a true giant step forward and i and again i want to express my appreciation to sanders candy and angie and the members the committee for allowing us to get to the point where we have time to do a bill that we don't have time to do with all the senator from hawaii as president i send an amendment to the death the clerk will report higher education unfortunately the survey garlin those are left with few opportunities to lift themselves out of under representation continents have been largely excluded from programs such as the mcnair achievement program based on a discriminate determination that they are not an under represented group the map in their program is designed to prepare young men and women from disadvantaged backgrounds who have demonstrated strong academic potential for doctoral studies through involvement in research and others call a activities however until the under representation of native hawaiians and pacific islanders is addressed the promise of the mcnair program to help the under represented achieve their dreams of higher education will remain only partially fulfilled according to a study conducted by the pacific island access project native hawaiian and other pacific islanders have difficulty gaining access to programs for underrepresented minorities in higher education such as the mcnair program in fact th study reported that more than eighty percent of these scholarship programs did not recognize native hawaiians and other pacific islander as under represented this is asian subgroup this misconception is to a large extent rooted in a federal government's policy from one nine hundred seventy seven to nineteen policy was changed to recognize that seventy islanders an asian separate and distinct groups however many programs including the mcn program have yet to catch up with this federal policy it is our nation's credit we have that we have developed programs rather this amendment simply ensures that nato ally in and out of the pacific islander students are also allowed full access to the opportunities afforded the mcnair program which has opened the door to an advanced degree for so many in our nation i urge my colleagues to support his amendment and help young native hawaiians another pacific island has tried to help all those in the united states who need their help in education and i commend him for that and the president i yield the floor works to the disadvantage of pacific island as and as specifically to native hawaiians he quite appropriately points out that other groups are included as under served populations but the native hawaiian are not and the pacific islanders are not and that in many respects the fact that they are not able to participate in these programs works to a disadvantage of the population generally from really being included in terms of the life of not only their communities but the communities of our country and all this does all his amendment does is to make sure that they are going to be included in the this program what is this program this program is a really a helping hand to those students that are going on to college in this case should be the winds of the pacific island as a helping hand in counseling and giving in ways that means that those students who otherwise would be excluded from getting the counseling that a helping hand so that they could continue in order for graduate degrees that they should be  bringing this to the attention i i was not i must say aware that that those groups had been excluded quite frankly from the program i don't know what the origin of this happens but we always learn a good deal from our colleagues say here in the senate and we've learned a good deal about this issue today as always the senator from the why is always out front when it comes to issues on education and will hopefully except this and make sure that it's a part of the legislation  mr president the senator from wyoming i too want to thank senator akaka for bringing this to our attention that's one of the reasons that we have one hundred people in the united states senate four hundred thirty five people on the house side so that we bring all of these various backgrounds together so that something that may have been overlooked can be did in the amendment process is one of the that's a program that provides assistance to disadvantaged students who are pursuing doctoral degrees and the students in the mcnair program get research opportunities and get seminars they get some are in turn ships they get tutoring they get academic counseling and they get assistance in securing graduated mission and financial aid mentoring and those are all things of course that increase the probability in the possibility that a person will get their doctoral degree and i'm sure that it wasn't  intention to leave these groups out so this amendment of course would include the native hawaiians in the list of students eligible for this program so in his usual way of taking careful look at things depreciate i'm doing this and have enjoyed all the times that we've worked together on financial literacy i think there still is somebody taking a look at the exact wording on this so hopefully we can get that done and get to the importance of education he knows this a community and it and where we are gives additional kinds of i think understanding to his strong commitment in this area of opportunity for without direction i thank you i would send to the desk an amendment by senator byrd a clerk will report objection mr president the federal student aid need is a tangled web of tax grant loan and savings programs with rules and regulations that are so complicated that many perspective students don't know that they really can't afford to go to college families have to fight through a maze of paperwork and we've talked about this several times the difficulty of the present financial aid form nearly ten million perspective aid recipients must file that form each year and submitting the form is the only way for families to determine their eligibility for federal grants and loans the free application for financial service is a is a longer and more count complicated than a federal tax form it has five pages one hundred twenty seven questions so it's longer than the form ten forty easy which is one page and thirty seven questions for filing your taxes for the form ten forty a which is two pages and eighty three questions it's comparable to the form ten forty was two pages nine hundred eighteen questions so the contrast between the tax forms and the financial aid forms  is especially informative with a third of the financial aid form questions and a fifth of its pages is duplications with what the i r s captures need to determine tax liability for the very population targeted for the pell grant financial aid officers and education specialist typically explain the that the complexity of aid is a necessary evil without which we could not target a distance with the greatest need fast the financial aid form as long as it's argued so that it can precisely major what most needs aid however if you economists are recently completed research that m much complexity in the current aid system can tributes to its targeting they found this complexity had very little to the targeting of aid to those who most need it only a handful of questions on the fast to determine eligibility of federal aid and most of these questions are currently found even in the ten forty easy to tax form and response a small but growing number of researchers economists and leaders in higher education have offered proposals to reduce the fafsa to one page and to prepare the latest didn't fast so with that they their families have already submitted the i r s such an approach would reduce the time consuming and confusing fafsa paperwork which requires parents and students report to one federal agency the department of education data they've already submitted to another federal agency the i r s so to north carolina and senator burr on whose behalf i have submitted this amendment and erskine bowles who's the president the university of north carolina system teamed up in the belief that they could make applying for financial aid simpler and easier president bolzano simplification of federal applications is possible as administrator of the small business administration in the one nine hundred ninety s erskine bowles reduced the inch thick s b a loan application to one page after a conversation between the two this spring and president bowles put together a task force across state in north carolina and gave them ninety days to come up with a one page form that made better use of data parents have already reported the i r s this june president bowles delivered the mockup of that one page to senator byrd so north carolina has shown that we can and should work more rapidly to simplify the process of applying for a new financial aid both by reducing the length of the application and making better and more efficient use of data that parents have already submitted to the federal government through their i r s forms and i and i would mention that we've had a taskforce largely my staff that have been working on on reducing it and we have a down to a one page form but speed up the time we study included in the higher education reauthorization bill so that the relevant offices education comptroller general treasury office of management and budget and the congressional budget office and representatives of higher education and state higher education executive officers who have a demonstrated commitment to simplifying the application for financial aid report back to congress in one year how we could simplify the application and make even better use of data parents of already submitted federal government merican as students and parents shouldn't have to wait any longer than necessary for simplification one stage is complicated simplification should not preclude another stage of simplification we do want to see that those who need the money the most have the highest priority and we want that to be done as simply as possible so that it doesn't discourage people from applying so i appreciate this amendment to try and speed up the time to do a further simplification of fafsa that this amendment includes and i'm i'm pretty sure there are no objections on the other side of the aisle but leave the time open for for the question of student loans are they abused in that process and also another issue that has concerned me is america's lack of physicians in numbers sufficient to may really our current demands and the demands we may have in the future so have an amendment to die that hopefully  bill managers senator kennedy anansi might feel comfortable in supporting and it deals with both of those issues i think in a way the that takes us in a positive direction the american association of medical colleges after the recommendation of dr jordan cohen there their president a couple of years ago recommended recently that it was their official policy and that it should be the official policy of the american association of medical colleges to increase physician enrollment by thirty percent most american medical schools are now already beginning to increase in rome and maybe at about the ride right of fifteen percent which can be done in most colleges without great expense but as you get closer to a one third increase it actually began to put a bite on people's programs i've got to add faculty perhaps buildings and other capabilities that are may include may incur substantial cost well  one of the things that has concerned me and i'm not sure most americans are fully aware of it is that i shortage of physicians is being filled by an increasing number of graduates from foreign medical schools many of these are offshore schools in the caribbean for profit schools many of them don't require our test scores to get in those schools and they  are not up to the standard of american schools that's just a fact we have the finest most magnificent medical schools in the world we have a tremendous teaching and training program we have some of the best equipment any schools could imagine in in our country so it's a really special thing but i have been concerned that perhaps we've been too tough on enrollment required to have to ask or sometimes denying good people with good leadership skills class presidents captains of the football team who made a little bit ball some on what the had a hard physics or chemistry score and they don't get in so i think we need to expand the number of people that come into medical school and we ought to be open to the qualities that breed exit that are proven to further medical success frankly  and so i'm concerned about that the the answering development that i have discovered that goes to the question of  federal dollars and how we're supporting medical education is indicated by this chart dales with the number of loans certified for united states residents who are attending foreign sc academic year there were under four thousand six hundred loans and now we're over thirteen thousand alone that might make you think that this is a good thing that most americans are taking a semester abroad as is common in a lot of schools i encourage students to take a semester abroad and it is an enriching experience maybe even a year abroad and you might think that's what it that issue deals with or that show the the what really is happening here look at this chart of the thirteen thousand students that attend foreign schools about nan thousand of those are tanned foreign medical schools in about seventy five percent of the total loan volume one hundred seventy million dollars in two thousand and three and i'm sure that number has gone up is now for scott loans to students who attend foreign medical screws that's a rather shocking number and a dramatic number and it comes from the g a o report dated july two thousand and three so that's a matter that i would call attention to and what about these loans are they the people attending parish medical schools or what let's look at them in terms of the volume of loans first let's just look at number one the number one screw in the world that oversees federal students receive federal loan money is a medical school and a manical they only have one medical greneda remember the president right again and we had a an invasion of grenada navitas medical school we had medical american medical students there and that was a big matter and their safety when that invasion took loan money for medical schools is mexico they have eleven medical schools they get twenty seven million dollars england is fourth they have one hundred eighty two medical schools in england but they only get twenty five million dollars in student loans and have acquired an advanced medical program there the next go on the list next country is the dominican republic another allan's  o the dominican republic has six medical schools and they receive twenty million dollars and student loans each year the next one is st martin another caribbean island sixteen million dollars next is canada we would you have to screw and they get fourteen million dollars i think that begins to show the problem that we're dealing with here and i would suggest that we need to take some real bravely summarized what the amendment does it attempts to deal with this issue in a balanced but effective way it's safe to protect taxpayers dollar from subsidizing foreign medical schools that are failing to show positive results and we have a way to determine which ones are showing results currently in order to qualify for student by natural aid we have a rule in effect that rule is that the foreign medical school m show that sixty percent of its graduates pass the educational commission for foreign medical graduates examination this is a task that you have to take after you graduate to become licensed to practice medicine in the united states and this so currently that rule is sixty percent this amendment would raise the bar from sixty to seventy five percent to be implemented in in two years time and give them two years to prepare for this i believe it is a reasonable change because approximately ninety percent of us medical school graduates pass the medical licensing examinations on their first so under the amendment during during the next two years proud of employment the new seventy five percent standing them in a minute also requires that the government accountability office conduct  study on the amount of federal aid going to offshore medical schools the percentage of foreign medical graduates who pass examination on the first track or after multiple attempts percentage of recent foreign medical school graduates practicing medicine in the united states and a description of where and what type of medicine they are practicing and asking for recommendations for the exam passage right that the united states should require malpractise lawsuits and have lost all revoked medical licenses for graduates of foreign medical schools as compared to graduates of us medical schools now the study that we have the g a o report  would would would involve this it would examine what is happening with students of foreign medical schools after they leave in order to determine how the how effective the schools are while many of these crews likely do i pretty your job and some i think do there is really no way to know for sure as they are not licensed or credited by any american many foreign medical schools do not use cadavers do not use cadavers but instead have students perform procedures that would be done and preferably  computer i don't know about you but i don't want to doctor operating on me it's been practicing using a mouse and a keyboard in fact an article in the pittsburgh tribune review earlier this year quoted dr cameron wilkinson medical director of st joseph france hospital in st kitts and supervisor of clinical rotations for two medical schools on the island as saying this this is a planet st kitts and the hospital where the trainees and he said this quote no medical school here would have a cadaver close quote he said it would be great close quote but explain the sco in that allen's just a quip to work with them this was in reference to a screw on the island that was actually found to have a cadaver for clinical instruction but they kept him in a black bag in an sterile unlocked air conditioned room they were not following protocol for the use of good avars and lack the necessary documents to have them shipped from the united states they also did not smell like formaldehyde which  procedure for all bodies and institutions that utilize good average in medical research thus this coup was handling cadavers in appropriately but this story also makes clear that schools on the island for the most part never use it at many of these schools do not even require this do you take the m cat that's the medical college admission test standard that some of these schools are much lower than is that american medical schools in regard to him can't scores and g p a is grade point averages if they have those requirements at all the association of american medical colleges states that about get this this is the american association of medical colleges that have found that about one in four positions practicing in the united states today and about one in four p physicians in training in the united states today foreign medical graduates this is really a remarkable statistic when we have this magnificent medical school system in our country but we've got out of sync the follow on these foreign medical school graduates are in many ways needed to fill the gaps that currently exist in american medical school education system in june of two thousand and six as i said the american association of medical schools recognize this shortfall and have formally recommended a thirty percent increase in medical school graduates by twenty fifteen that double bought twenty thirty we expect more and more out of health care we must have additional medical physicians and we need to increase our own system and reduce the amount of money taxpayer money going to there are a number that are exceptional and incredibly good there are others that are moderately good there are others that don't pass muster but it is i think useful to get that kind of information got a health care request as personnel  amendment is going to help us understand what is happening with these foreign medical schools the amount of financial aid we ought to be updated on that in terms of the medical schools we ought to know the  percentage of students that are going to pass that that exam and that we also know what special ease that they're moving into and where there are practicing the types of medicine that those are practicing  it's exceedingly important and useful the senator has other references in here too in terms of the number of times that take the exam and medical licenses that are rever vote i think it provides very important information it certainly would for our committee we ought to have an update information on what is happening and also i think it's important for the american taxpayer to understand what is happening as well in terms of these this kind of in  not directly on subject and under served areas here in the united states program that does work really quite quite well that's not really the target of this particular program but this is important that we have this kind of information would be very useful for our health committee to have it and so i would hope that the senate would accept and i thank the senator for for raising this issue with us i think it it's very useful kennedy and the distinguished ranking minority member on the floor because both of them have great interest and great volman in health care that i thought it would be appropriate to talk for just a few minutes about the upcoming schip legislation the legislation that deals with the children's health program that is so important to america's youngsters there was a marked up in the senate finance committee last week and it passed out overwhelming to a great extent because of the very important and laborious work done by chairman baucus and senator rockefeller and about the issue because the administration has indicated that it's disappointing they would veto the legislation that came from the senate finance committee by seventeen to four vote i am very hopeful that they will choose not to veto this legislation because i felt it was striking in the finance committee last week that senator after senator on both sides of the aisle senators conrad centers lot for example leaders of their respective parties on economic issues they concur that the system in this country is broken the health care system cannot control the costs millions fall between the cracks administrative expenses are soaring we have largely sick care rather than health care and this is something democrats and republicans alike agree on the administration to have the view that one of the key changes that needs to be made is the federal tax rules as they relate to health care i share their view that these rules are a mess but it's not going to be possible to get to the question of broader reform until you first get bipartisan cooperation on the urgent and immediate needs of this country's youngsters and frankly i came out of the markup last week very encouraged about the senate's interest and desire on a bipartisan basis to move ahead to fix health care i think the clay their feeling in the senate finance committee is this country can afford to wait to fix health care i know there are a lot of people particularly in the media and think tanks and others who think well let's just wait a couple of years for another presidential election let's just wait two three more years and that's sort of the way it goes for the political class but for people who are hurting in this country businesses that are struggling to meet the health needs of their  workers who are dying and offer him coverage and can afford it i don't think it's acceptable to say let's just wait around a couple of more years strikes me as pretty callous in fact mr president to say let's just wait for another election and all those needs the needs of workers and businesses in parts of the country where there have been tremendous layoffs well they can just wait for a couple of more years before anybody talks about  making it clear that they share my view that the health care system is broken and now for the first time in more than thirteen years the senate has an opportunity to work in a bipartisan way to fix health care senator bennett and member of the republican leadership has joined me and legislation the healthy americans act that has been able to pick up support of labor and business we've structured it so that all our citizens could get health care coverage like their member of congress does the private sector at no greater cost than we're spending as a nation today and the bill has been put together so that workers and employers when with the very first paycheck that are offered so i don't see why mr president america should wait any longer to fix health care what we should be doing is of this country's youngsters and then move on to do what i heard members on both sides of the aisle on the finance committee call for last week and that is to fix american healthcare reality is mr president you and i have had a chance to talk a bit about it the system that we have today was largely designed more than seventy years ago it was set up after world war two there were wage and price controls our troops were coming home we want them to get good benefits we have sensually put it off on the employer and the tax code was changed to make that possible well a system designed for the forty surely doesn't make sense for two thousand and seven when the typical workers change their jobs seven times by the time they're age thirty five the current tax code is regressive and it promotes inefficiency if you're a high fly and c e o you can go out and get a designer smile put on your face and write off the cost of that operation on your taxes but if you're a hard working woman in a furniture store your company has no plants you get practically nothing now my sense says when the administration talks about changing the tax rules for health care you look at what the senators were saying in the senate finance committee about the system that being broken there's a pretty good opportunity to work in a cooperative way not two or three years from now but to move in this session of congress but to make that possible it's going to be essential for the bush administration to back off from this threat of vetoing the children's health program and to work with members on both sides of the aisle so that this legislation can get passed and it would possible on a bipartisan basis to move on to fix our health care system we've got a lot to work with certainly we've seen great interest at the state level a number of states are already moving forward with innovative programs mr president as you and i have discussed no state can fix problems that day didn't come no state can deal with the regress city in the inefficiency of the federal tax rules on health care no state can deal with medicare no state can deal with what's called the a risk the program the employee retirement income and security act which affects large employers and multi employer program no state can deal with that we're going to have to have bipartisan action here at the federal level  been very very pleased that senator bennett has joined me in this bipartisan effort my sense is that there's something of an ideological truth coming on health care we see a lot of bipartisan cooperation today in fact the distinguished senator from wyoming senator enzi and chairman kennedy cooperating on issue after issue will senator bennett and i have said on health care republicans have moved a long way on coverage we recognize that to fix health care the people who are uninsured can't just keep passing the bills on to people who are insured it's got to cover everybody and republicans have acknowledged that democrats on the other hand have been making it clear they don't think you can just turn it all over to government you can't turn everything in health care over to government and expect everything to come out well you've got to have some private choices choices in a fixed market mr president where insurance companies can't cherry pick and just take healthy people and send sick people over to government programs more fragile th are you've got to fix the private marketplace but there ought to be choices in the private sector and that too is an opportunity for democrats and republicans here in the senate to work with the bush administration once we get the on the question of the children's health program i'm convinced that we're right on the cusp of being able to move forward on health care in a bipartisan way in the other body healthy americans act that i and senator bennett have been working for here in the senate will be introduced this week on a bipartisan basis for that would then mean that the healthy americans act would be the first bipartisan by cameral piece of legislation to fix american health care in more than thirteen years colleagues are going home every time there's a recess talking with folks at home about health care and people are saying we know that the system is broken it's not enough to try to just take one small part or another you really need to step back and make changes for example in the employer based system which is hurting the competitive nestles so many of our companies we need to have some say health care rather than sick care because the system is biased against prevention we clearly need to help those who are falling between the cracks and above all we have to contain the con the costs are rising according to pricewaterhouse coopers at far in excess inflation estimated to be about twelve percent this year there's no way that's sustainable mr president it's not sustainable when you look at today's population trends and costs and the disadvantage that our employers say well i was very pleased last week that not only was the senate finance committee able to pass to chip bludge play ssion on a seventeen to four basis through the hard work of our bipartisan leadership but i was impressed because so many senators on both sides of the aisle said they want to go further and to fix a broken health care system to do that we're going to have to work in a bipartisan way we're interested in working with the bush administration on that i and others have said we can have differences of opinion with respect to how you straighten out this mess of the tax code as it relates to health care but by and large the administration is on to the key issue but to do this we're going to have to recognize first that america can't afford to wait any longer to fix health care it's not enough to say let's just deal with that after the next election that's not enough for people who are hurting in virginia and oregon and wyoming and they want to see action in the session that's what they give us an election certificate to do is to act on big issues and not just put them off for another two or three years so let us work together democrats and republicans in this body with the administration to pass the children's health program and then to continue that spirit of bipartisanship and six american health care in this congress president i yield the floor of the koran be suspended without direction mr president we've made very good progress during the morning and early afternoon on the reauthorization of the higher education act and we have a pretty good idea wage tomorrow we'll celebrate the first increase in the minimum wage in ten years in ten years i will be the first to increase in the the minimum wage a new hope an opportunity for thirty million men and women primarily women because it's the women more than sixty five percent of our women are the minimum wage workers and it will benefit some six million children because have heard that there are those that say well with the increase in the minimum wage this is going to cost jobs and it's going to work hardship on these people because that's what they've said on every increase this is the eleventh increase in the minimum wage they've been wrong on every other time at the current time the strongest economy in western europe is paying nine ninety eight for a minimum wage in and they have a listed lifted two million children out of poverty and three million workers out of poverty and at the present time in ireland it's eleven dollars an hour and they have the strongest economy in all of western europe and they have reduced child poverty by forty percent over the period of the last four years and their economies are strong so five dollars an eighty five cents in this great country at this time is just a statement that many of us believe that work should pay and that the people that work forty hours week fifty two weeks of the year should not live in poverty so this is important day maher mr president and it's appropriate that the senate pieces of legislation that one of which we passed on thursday night which is the historic increase in the need based grant aid it will be the largest increase in grant a fifteen percent of their discretionary income discretionary income also takes into consideration if they have children that obviously reduces the discretionary income five minutes left on the bill give you tell me when this one minute left and so then we have the loan forgiveness for borrowers that work in the public service jobs or you come a teacher you work with special needs children you work with the disabled your work with our elderly people you do that over ten year period you're not going to pay more than fifteen percent and you're going to get help and assistance with loan forgiveness it also protects working students so that they work hard and gain some money to be able to buy some books there they're not going to break through these students help and assistance to those students from working families for middle income help and assistance to idealistic students that want to work in public service all of that is going to be pa well under this legislation under the r authorization the other part which we are now have before the senate we are also making sure that the student loan system is going to meet the ethical requirements and is going to ensure that the best interest of the students and the loan system is going to be protected we've had too many stories of inappropriate kinds of actions in the that loan system which is makes it more difficult for the students and obviously compromises the colleges and universities so we have addressed that issue in this in this part of the program we are publicizing the cost information so that parents will understand get real information as to what the cost is for the schools we're going to also publicize what the states are providing if they've cut back as they have in my own state that has meant that the fees have gone up we all know who is responsible parents will know who's responsible we hope that this will make some difference in terms of the total cost of education the application itself what they call the fafsa in here that is the third item on here we have simplified that so it will no more no longer be a discouraging document be one that will be easier to read and be easier to be able to utilize quickly for those students that haven't got the kind of a kind of support systems that help them fill out those programs and finally we've helped in the areas of the gear up in the trio programs to improve preparation for higher education we've understood that we have many gifted and talented students that for one reason or another need that helping hand in order to be able to continue their education and go on that's been true about the trio programs gear up programs other programs that work with children that come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds but are gifted and talented students this helps and provides outreach to those students so and then we have the programs for the higher  quality teacher a preparation we understand at the end of the day the teacher in the classroom the teacher is the one that makes all different series and every one of us in this chamber we can all remember our favorite teachers the ones of their inspired us that helped us that coach just  that really encouraged us to move ahead and grass the opportunities of furthering our education so mr president this is a very meaningful piece of legislation it's a represents the best judgment of republicans and democrats alike were enormously indebted to republican and democratic colleagues and most of all the staff that worked very long and hard on this legislation we're going to have more to say on the separate tickler members but it's useful i think to just some give a summary of what this legislation is all about we've added to this legislation over the course of the day and some very useful meaningful ways so we're going to look forward to getting a good vote and on the final passage i believe my this is a teacher amendment teachers the most important factor to a child's academic achievement student achievement will not improve unless we can ensure that all children have access to qualified teachers many of our schools however lacking in a steady and ample supply of qualified teachers the current state of affairs for high schools and middle schools is especially troubling nationally twenty four percent of all high school classes are taught by teachers lacking either a college major or minor in their field of teaching however for students in high poverty schools this number jumps to thirty four percent in comparison to one thousand percent in mo poverty schools nearly fifty percent of math classes in high poverty high schools are taught by teachers with neither major nor minor in math or a math related fields such as engineering physics or math education schools and districts for too long have been forced to depend on teacher pipelines that are not producing sufficient numbers of qualified individuals teach in high need areas such as math science foreign language special education and english language proficiency and in hard to staff schools both in urban and rural areas the bipartisan commission on no child left behind led by tommy thompson and roy barnes though concentrating primarily on elementary and secondary education recognize the critical connection between higher education and k through twelve education colleges of education for improving the supply of qualified teachers one of its recommendations the no child left behind commission recommended amending title two of the higher education act to include a provision to require institutions of higher education that prepare prospective teachers to set annual goals for increasing the number of perspex teacher in shortage areas such as math science special education instruction of limited english vision students and for more closely linking the instruction colleges of education provide perspective teachers with the needs new teachers will face in the classroom additionally the commission recommended having institutions of higher education provide an assurance to the secretary that one teacher training responds to the needs of the school districts and states in which new teachers graduate to regular education teachers are provided with training in teaching diverse populations including special education students limited english proficiency students and low income students ever for prosperous prospective teachers receive training to teach in urban and rural schools and for special education teachers receive training on instruction in content areas thunderbird's amend it puts into statute these important higher education act recommendations made by the nonpartisan bipartisan nonpartisan no child left behind commission senator beer burger on whose behalf i offer this amendment and i share the belief that we must ford stronger connections between higher education and arcade through twelve schools and that higher education has a responsibility to ensure that the pipeline of prospective teachers grows and respond to the needs of american students and schools our children regardless of background or neighborhood must have access to high quality teachers so i'm going to urge everyone to support this important amendment which is offered by senator byrd here this amendment requires teacher training programs to report to the secretary of education on how they are responsive to the needs of their graduates once they reach the classroom i'm particularly pleased at this amendment recognizes the special skills new teachers need when teaching in rural areas today teachers need training to meet their needs for diverse student populations regarding students with disabilities to for english language learners to gifted and talented students and this amendment does not impose additional mandates on institutions of teacher training programs it simply requires them to report on how they're meeting the needs of the prospective teachers and local school districts and i'm sure that they are working on that on a daily basis to figure out how they can meet the needs the best way possible and sharing that with us will help us in our work i'd ask that we adopt the berman and to visit with their education department about their innovative creative ways of trying to bring in highly qualified teachers in a lot of under served areas and they they've done a very very good job of it poverty schools are more likely to be taught by out of field that teachers that that means that over thirty three percent of the math classes in high poverty schools are being taught by a teacher without a degree in their field compared to less than eighteen percent in low poverty so as we have talked all the way through this legislation both last week and this week in trying to reduce the inequities in education this is a pretty good example to clean when we're talking about the needs of developing skills in math and in science engineering and technology this is a pretty good indication the fact that if children are going to more high poverty schools the science if you take science students in high poverty schools more likely to be taught by what they call out of field teaches this is fifty six percent in the high poverty area only twenty two percent in the low poverty areas  so this is a repeated in in these other areas and what the amendment among other things are trying to do is to hold institutions of higher higher education  countable for the quality and progress of the teacher preparation all turner alternative certification programs so we have the need for math and the science that teaches we ought to be encouraging our teaching institutions  help produce those teachers and then that is really a very substantial part of what this amendment does it helps high need schools recruit and retain the high quality teachers so we give encourage meant to the schools to produce these teache and then help the high need schools to recruit and retain high quality and it helps also promotes the end of a to model such as the induction into teaching residency programs we've seen where some of these programs been enormously successful in terms of retaining teaches in high poverty areas and then promotes the high quality ineffective teacher preparation programs encourages that as well so that is very consistent with in the in the committee and we indicated the desire of working with him and we want to work with him this legislation is right on target in what we are attempting to do recognizing what i previously and that is the key in education is the a well trained teacher so this is going to be helpful to make sure that we're going to have a well trained teacher in the areas of shortage and quite clearly the math and wyoming i think the senator from massachusetts for his comments on this it is something that he and i have talked about extensively and we do know that teachers are the key to education so i'm not aware of any disagreement on either side present couple months ago a distraught mother from cincinnati wrote me about the private loan her daughter had taken out to go to college her daughter borrowed twenty one thousand dollars was facing a bill for over one hundred thousand dollars as a result she sent me to close disclosure sheet on the loan represented in this chart because she couldn't believe what she saw she took out a loan for twenty one thousand dollars for two years of school that loan grew and at eighteen percent interest rate grew to almost thirty five thousand dollars because there was a deferral on payback of the loan during her two years in school so she ended up paying sixty seven thousand dollars for the life of the loan that's why she ended up paying one hundred  thousand dollars because of this credibly high interest rate for a student loan almost eighteen and a quarter percent i've shown the statement to a loan officer in a bank and also to my attorney she wrote they both expressed to me they had never seen anything like this and there must be a mistake unfortunately the only mistake here is that congress has failed to act to restrain the cost of these loans which as we've seen can carry interest rates sometimes in excess of eighteen percent it's not an isolated problem private loans have been growing in an annual pace of some twenty seven percent meaning that because tuitions continues to grow in a rapid rate and the federal government has not met through the direct student loan program where the subsidized student or the guaranteed student loan program program is not met that increase the amount that students need has grown at such a rapid rate that private lenders of come in charging interest rates  similar to this eighteen percent sixteen percent seventeen percent whatever the cost of college is climb so much that this we have seen this kind of growth in ohio the median household income increase just three percent between two thousand two thousand and six tuitions went up fifty three percent it four year public schools twenty eight percent four year private schools think about that tuitions went up twenty eight percent for some fifty three percent for others yet the average wage in our state went up overthrow only three percent the federal loan limits of barely budged over the past several decades one hundred seventy two a freshman could borrow twenty five hundred dollars in federal loans last year that numbered barely moved to twenty six hundred dollars even though in real terms a limit on borrowing would amount to twelve thousand dollars of it kept pace with inflation to be fair the laws just changed this month the freshman can borrow thirty five hundred dollars for school but even though the limits in the first few years have been increased somewhat the overall cap on borrowing remains the same twenty three thousand dollars for a dependent undergraduate this bill does nothing to change the cap because the help committee decided correctly in my view that the bulk of savings we could achieve should be ploughed back into pell grants and i applaud chairman kennedy for doing that with the price tag for four years of college one hundred twenty thousand dollars for private schools fifty thousand dollars for public schools there's obviously a big gap for many students that gap gets that gap gets filled in many ways savings work grants plus loans credit cards you name it but for more and more students private loans are playing a bigger role according to testimony before the banking committee last month sallie mae made seven billion dollars in private loans in fifteen billion dollars in federal loans in other words mr president one out of three college student loan dollars originated by the biggest student lender in the country is a private loan subject to much much higher rates is this chart indicates the private loan program may well outstrip the federal program over the next decade what we've done in this chart is use the growth rates of the two programs over the past several years to predict how large they will grow if current trends continue the darker purple reddish purple there is that is the on regulated bank private bank loans that students are getting growing more than twenty percent a year and you can see how within seven or eight years they will overtake student loans more and more students are forced to go to the private through private banks for private loans and higher and higher interest rates every year  mr president think about these numbers twenty eight percent increase in tuition over the last six years for a private four year institutions fifty three percent for public four instore year institutions yet the average wages only gone up three percent congress very often legislates through the rearview mirror we wait until a problem becomes close to an unmanageable before we feel compelled to act today we can take a different approach we can act to address a problem before it becomes widespread this amendment i'm offering will create an alternative for the fastest growing segment of the student loan engine and a student loan industry private loans my men and creates a supplemental loan program that would be run by the federal government would provide one more option for students to finance their education over the years my republican colleagues have defended the private guaranteed student loan program by arguing that there should be competition between the guaranteed and the direct loan program at the competition may both better aspect of it which is the student loan program which is the federal student loan program and included in that program is the authorization programs that are going to deal with this issue and then we have the private loan programs which the senator from ohio is a addressing so as we are here on the floor of the united states senate and middle income families are watching us and we say that we want to do something about the cost of  tuitions at schools and colleges certainly we make a a down payment on that in the student loan program in the federal program which we have we've taken some eighteen billion dollars out of the lenders on that particular program we've helped the neediest students but the senator from ohio is put his finger on what is happening at the other end of the other end and that is the dramatic increase in the students borrowing and at these exorbitant rates of eighteen percent does the senate a share my belief that we will never get a handle on the cost of tuitions of college and university until we get a handle on that program as well i think that's exactly right what senator kennedy said because with the efforts of senator enzi and senator kennedy and a bipartisan efforts in this body last week to move money that had been subsidizing these private companies into pell grants and into better rates and better pay back periods and all of that for students we've gone a big part of the way but this chart of senator kennedy suggests shows that the private the dollars that students chart earlier that shows that increase of twenty plus percent top until now in real dollars of the percentage increase continues and there's no reason it wouldn't it will be it will grow like this but it we've seen several years of this already w senator with the point i'm making is that this is a relatively new phenomenon that has taken place and as we try and as we have gotten a handle on trying to provide need based assistance for the pell program we've gotten a cutback in terms of about and does not agree with me it's it if we're really serious about dealing with what the cost of tuition is for the students we ought to deal with all of those components and what as i understand the senator from ohio is doing that with his amendment to make sure that we are going to as a result of his amendment passed we're going to get help to the neediest students in terms of the pell we're going to get help for the manage the debt by the forgiveness program the fifteen percent we're using some eighteen billion dollars that we take from the lenders and we're going to make sure that even in the private areas that the student is going to get the lowest possible loans that's correct and senator kennedy and we're not we're not regulating the banks for simply setting up a program that the government will what will be breakeven it will not cost taxpayer dollars or setting up a program to compete directly with the private lenders which we are certain as my republican friends of said with the direct student loan program that competition will make both operate better so the bill way the secretary would then have the discretion of designing the program to mirror other features offered by private loans such as delayed payment until after graduation or deferment for certain hardships this amendment will clearly stop situations like this one from happening for a student for a student goes in with a twenty one thousand dollar loan pays has to pay five hundred dollars monthly for one hundred seventy nine times and end up paying one hundred two thousand dollars for turning twenty one dollars student loan will see a competitive competitive situation which will save those students dramatic amounts of money in working with what senator kennedy and senator ensign did last week on the debt forgiveness on the pell grants and all this area am i correct that this creates a competitive situation similar to what we've had since one thousand nine hundred three but for students that have to borrow money beyond the twenty three thousand dollar limit and it doesn't regulate the banks it doesn't tell the banks what to do it simply sets up a competitive situation that i think all of us will gain from i will reserve the balance of my time mr president i would rise to oppose this amendment there's some statements here that i'd like to clear up a little bit i guess i would not want anybody to think that this is increasing competition this is increasing government price fixing and it's requiring the secretary of education to do the price fixing she's the one who sets the interest rate that or he is the case might be at the time that it was put into effect that's not the person with the expertise around here to know what kind of interest rate ought to be charged on anything i also have some objections because this amendment has neither been through the education committee nor through the banking committee and this is something that i think the banking committee would be able very strongly to have in their jurisdiction as well i am glad we're having the discussion because i think it's very important for people to hear that you can borrow money at eighteen percent twenty one thousand dollars for all payments for two years and pay off the loan in equal installments after that wind up paying a hundred thousand dollars if you're buying a car at twenty one thousand dollars and you have to eighteen percent interest and you don't get don't have to pay anything for the first two years that car is going to cost you one hundred thousand dollars that comes into the area of financial literacy it's very important for us to impress on young people today what the cost of interest means and what the cost of deferring interest means there are people buying houses under that kind of a proposal right now and they're very surprised at how much they owe on their house it's a we're trying to do as much as we can in the bill on financial literacy part of that financial literacy i guess would be to encourage parents to have a home equity loan to provide for the student in that way it's  deductible on their income tax so there are there are a number of different ways of doing this but i don't think that having the secretary of education determine a interest rate and doing that would intention to bring down the cost of interest hopefully we can get banks to be responsible on the interest rates that they charge but when there's no federal backing no federal guarantee on the loan they're actually providing a loan at very high risk to a student with no collateral which is why the interest rates come in at eighteen percent there are other ways that we can correct the problem other than putting this in the hands of the secretary and we've had some experience with this before because there was a tuitions credit that was initiated in one thousand nine hundred ninety eight to solve a huge problem that we had at that time and it was supposed to apply to both elementary and secondary education and higher education but it was most interested intuition tax credits for parochial schools but almost all of the public attention was on the higher education part of it the carter administration very quickly came up with a two part plan automatic eligibility for every family to a pell grant if their income was below twenty five thousand dollars and automatic eligibility for a student loan and to any student who wanted one regardless of family income course one of the things that money magazine pointed out was that even a rockefeller could get a loan at nine percent and that's that's what the government set the loan rate at nine percent what's the problem with that and you know if we had a secretary of education right now and they happen to set the loan rate at nine percent i'm sure the press would say that that was absolutely terrible on the other hand if it was a democrat that said it nine percent i think they'd probably say that it was great but this this was a case where the government set the rate at nine percent what's the problem it was a time when the interest rates in this country were climbing through the rough and were on their way to twenty one percent prime so there was incentive to borrow money at a fixed nine percent rate which is what the student loan interest rate was th didn't have to be repaid until after college when interest rates were going through the roof so students borrowed the money put the funds in a money market and paid it back as soon as the repayment began having made a tidy profit on the float other students borrowed money and use it to finance cars and other things other unrelated to college in fact parents were encouraged to borrow and do home improvement in other things because they could get this nine percent money from the federal government the amount of money being borrowed jumped from one in seven tenths billion in one nine hundred seventy seven seventy eight to six in two tenths billion in eighty eighty one an increase of two hundred sixty five percent in four years federal costs associated with the student loans grow from four hundred eighty million to two and a half billion which is also growth of four hundred twenty percent so under the browne sanders amendment a student attending an expensive private college could borrow the entire cost of attendance as much forty five thousand a year on highly favorable terms repayment will indeed start right away but if families have college money in the bank they can pay off the loan gradually and earn on the interest as they do the same as we had a problem with before the amend it also will encourage students to have their children borrow money for college rather than finance it through the plus loans or other mechanisms that would put the burden on the adults in some cases of course parents will have the students take out the loans and would repay it for them and so i'm suggesting that this would this is this is something we haven't reviewed enough to do yet that it would put some of the present loans in jeopardy we've been very careful in the in both last week's bill and this week's bill to be sure that there was some competition between direct loans and and the private  loans but those were reviewed over a period of time or looked at with some history and this one doesn't have the history so i would i would hope that we would vote against it i would yield the floor and reserve the balance of my time my time i haven't used all of that yet today so any debate so i probably went on this one either but i do have two letters that i'd like to submit for the record one is from the american association of state colleges and universities also a u s public interest research group in the united states student association and some highlights that i'd like the entire letter published are a few of the highlights of it here senator on behalf of the students and institutions of higher education we urge you to oppose the brown amendment to create a new supplemental loan program and eliminate all federal student loan limits by eliminating all federal loan limits quite a bit further down the letter the brown amendment could have serious negative unintended consequences on state investment in our education and i also have a letter from the financial services roundtable and i'd run student loan program in addition to current programs that would offer loans currently being made by private student lenders this government system with its ability to borrow money at government rates would essentially supplant lenders offering private student loans in the policy implications  such a program or broad in unintended consequences are numerous so once again i would reiterate that  this hasn't been tested it hasn't been vetted through the committees and of course when it goes through committees that's an opportunity for a diverse group of people to put their opinions behind something as well as the meet the stakeholders and get an outside the arrangement between the direct student learning in the private money back in the ninety's when senate can he was chair of the committee there was considerable open dialogue about the fact that we were going to set a even playing field where we would allow the marketplace actually students and schools to decide who is going to win who would be used more often direct lending or the private market and that was the theory and then from massachusetts and the senator from indiana at that time senator coats and i worked on this a great length and we worked an arrangement where this was the way we were going to approach it but ever since then her at least in the last year there has been an attempt to tilt the playing field significantly towards direct lending and to make the government the lender of first resort and last resort for most students even though in most instances that has been rejected both by the students and the education community this amendment is just an extension of that effort and is arguably an extremely expensive extension effort because even though the scoring rules may reflect a zero scoring and i'm not sure that well but if they even if they did we know that those rules don't adequately reflect the cost the government having  participating in these types of lending programs and what we're doing now under this amendment is saying not only do you have these base lending amounts that are available under direct money but you're going to be able to borrow up to the full cost of your education and encourages high cost tools to become even more expensive one of the things we've seen is that there appears to be a direct correlation between jewish and going up at schools and lending that really supported lending in federally federal grants being increased so the students don't use the advantage are you not use the advantage by this expansion of direct lending in and many times grant rather the schools that are banned especially high end schools who simply raise their tuition to absorb whatever new money is flowing in out of the federal treasury has become a become a fairly cynical game on the part of many academic institutions in this country but it is exactly what's happening and so this amendment really needs a hearing and it needs to be that it very aggressively in committee as senator from wyoming the ranking republican has pointed out because it basically in my humble opinion right up front undermines three of the basic principles that we should be trying to resist occurring around here the first principle is that we not under tilt the playing field in favor of direct lending over private lending or private lending over direct lending and last week's amendment which took a significant amount of money out of the subsidy for private lending i think was a good step in the direction of not allowing private lending to get the a not be passed because it gives direct lending an unfair advantage secondly it should not create an atmosphere where students are pushed towards higher income school higher cost tools and where parents and students are allowed to borrowing at one rate lending at another rate assuming that they had some other sources of revenue and thirdly it should not encourage this process which is occurring out there giving significant resources about any discipline to higher education facility so that they can then raise their tuition at the expense of students who don't have these type of resources to pay these loans or who don't qualify for these loans and end up the education becoming more expensive so that because the higher education institutions see that there's easy money out there to capture and they don't have to be disciplined in fine in managing their educational systems so there are a lot of issues here that this amendment raises a lot of issues now i know that some of the other side basic goal is to move the whole thing to direct lending i mean there's unforeseen that's become the the cause celeb around here in the purpose of much like universal health care we'd like to have universal federal lending product all of these around here but the private sector plays a significant and constructive role in making college affordable to american students and has in the original agreement which was reached in the ninety's make the playing field balanced and fair and keep it down so that there is the way we should be proceeding up doesn't run the system it simply sets up a competition it doesn't filter the playing field it makes the playing field even so that interest rates won't continue to be a usury is rate of sixteen and seventeen eighteen percent we know direct loan program works we've seen government involvement in the direct loan for a program as in now as in stafford the government in fact has negative subsidy rates of seven percent and four percent in other words the government has done the so efficiently that the government either breaks even or actually makes money we know that this program doesn't take effect my member doesn't take effect until spoons exhausted up to twenty three thousand dollars there are other opportunities to get financing for college it only goes there it's not in a new program that that simply will take people in because it's filtered as my friend the senator from new hampshire says and we also know  if we do nothing as usa today said there's just one problem the efforts short of this amendment would do little to rein in the fastest growing areas of the market loans that are not federally backed whose rates can generally rise without limit bills in congress wouldn't affect rates and these loans also often called private loans until this amendment the ranking member said he hopes that the branch banks charge lower interest rates the fact is as the senator from hampshire said talking about gaming the system the banks are gaining the system that's why this woman from cincinnati had to on a loan of twenty one thousand dollars had to pay one hundred two thousand dollars back it eighteen percent interest we just want some competition i just don't want to see the easy money as the senator from new hampshire says easy money it's easy money for the banks it's huge profits for the banks so this is really a decision that comes down and we're going to support students in giving the opportunity to go to school this is a buying a car this isn't making car loans this is providing opportunity for a lot of students whose it's their first chance to go to college my my wife with the cow role that kent state university thirty years ago first wanted her family to go to college she probably couldn't do that today because the loans and the grants are to vailable the way they were thirty years ago she would have either not been able to go to school he could have put the financial package together or she would have seen a situation where she would have been burden with such huge loans huge debt when she graduated this is a choice are you voting for students in this country giving opportunity to middle class students opportunity to working families or are you going to supposed to support the banks so they can continue to charge these kind of fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen percent interest rate is the present i ask for support of the brown  acts as an amendment to the higher education act two thousand and seven this memo to create a targeted student loan repayment assistance program that will bolster the ranks of attorneys in the criminal justice system in america i think the need for th prosecutors and public defenders offices throughout the country have serious difficulties recruiting and retaining qualified attorneys in a recent survey over a third of the prosecutor's offices nationwide reported problems with keeping attorneys on staff and over sixty percent of prosecutors offices that serve populations of two hundred fifty thousand or more reported serious problems with retain retention of attorneys the stories the same and public defender offices another recent survey found that over sixty percent of state and local public defender offices reported difficulty in attorney recruitment and retention when prosecutor and defender offices cannot attract new lawyers or keep the experience ones they are building to protect to come public is compromised case loads become unmanageable cases can be delayed or mishandled crimes may go on prosecuted and innocent defendants may said i may sit in jail why is it the prosecutors and offenders officers are struggling to keep attorneys on staff i'll tell you one major reason student loan debt over eighty percent of the law students take out loans to finance their legal education the average educational debt for law school graduates in the class of two thousand  was almost seventy nine thousand dollars for private school graduates fifty one thousand for public school graduates two thirds of law students also carry debt from their undergraduate experience in light of this isn't surprising that two thirds of law students in a recent national survey stated that student loan debt prevented them from even considering a public interest or government job two thirds of law school graduates and if those dedicated law graduates who initially accept criminal justice jobs many can't stay they just can't afford to do so with the student loans that they face the higher ed reconciliation bill we passed last week really does some important things to address student loan debt in general for those who have already been in public service for ten years there is student loan forgiveness there's a cap on how much a student would apartment a graduate would have to repay for a period time and at the end of ten years their student loan forgiveness but unfortunately it doesn't go far enough to address the urgent need to help our criminal justice system to recruit and retain qualified attorneys we need a special solution here to provide immediate assistance by amendment to john r justice prosecutors and offenders incentive acts is a tailored solution by men would establish within the department justice a progress program of student loan repayment assistance for borrowers who agreed to read to remain employed for at least three years as state or local criminal prosecutors or state or local or federal public defenders i should point out the federal prosecutors are already eligible for loan relief program and existing programs under my amendment or worse could enter into another agreement after the three year minimum for an additional period of service attorneys who participate in this program can receive student loan debt repayment of up to ten thousand dollars annually with a maximum overtime of sixty thousand dollars repayments begin with the first year of service but remember no repayment unless there is a pledge to work at least three years and then the opportunity to come back for another three years so a commitment has to be made the program gives priority and repayment benefits to attorneys who have least ability to repay it ensures a fair allocation of benefits among prosecutors and offenders nationwide if an attorney receives loan repayments under this program but doesn't complete the agreed upon period of service they have to pay the money back to john or justice act is modeled on existing loan programs that cover federal executive branch employees and the department of justice they've been demonstrated to be a great success as attorney recruitment and retention simply put a targeted loan repayment assistance program like this one would create more criminal justice careers more feasible and more attractive to qualified attorneys let me just say mr president this bill is passed out of the senate judiciary committee twice it has strong bipartisan support it was brought to me by the prosecutors and the defenders in our criminal justice system as we read in the news about case after case where those in prison have had their prosecutions re evaluated we understand that competent counsel is really the bedrock to a good system of criminal justice we need the very best attorneys on both sides of the table prosecuting those who've been accused of a crime and defending those who have that presumption of innocence in america this bill has strong bipartisan support thirty eight senate co sponsors companion legislation in the house passed by a vote of three hundred forty one to seven three it is supported by prosecutor defender and criminal justice organizations i urge my colleagues to support their state and local prosecutors and defenders and support this legislation that has among others the support of the national district attorneys association the national association of prosecutor coordinators national legal aid and defender association the national of criminal defense lawyers the american council of chiefs defenders national juvenile defender center the american bar association the conference chief judges and the american lawyer deans association now mr president there's like to ask  status is there an amendment currently pending on this legislation there isn't a moment then if i ask unanimous consent that that amendment be set aside and i could send this amendment to the desk and then and of course would agree to step back into line and  to the chairman and ranking member as to the sequence of amendments that will be called later so i ask unanimous consent to send this amendment to the desk and asked that it be read in a different record without objection the core group or amendment i assume is currently pending but i understand of if there's a different sequence that both of these senators would seek and i think your mistress that when we appreciate the senator being willing to allow us to go back to the previous amendment or on to another amendment we have one more that will be presented on that on our side and i think there's another one that we've resented on the democratic side  i do have to oppose this amendment and i i understand the importance the desire but i would i would oppose this is the same thing and i appreciate the time that the senator from massachusetts senator kennedy took to explain to everybody what we were doing in a very general way so that we didn't have to pick one profession over another profession so that we could give some reduced loan repayments and then forgiveness to public prosecutors defenders teachers a whole a whole category of old bunch of service sector people and there was a lot of support although we spent more time debating that part than we did several other parts of the bill showing that there is some discomfort with doing that but also support for doing that but in a general way when we start picking out one particular area of drill service over others what we're doing is touching off a whole raft of people coming in with their particular public service and asking for the same kind of reduction and of course if we do that for everybody we've increased the cost considerably we ought to start with the proposal that's in there and after that works make modifications to it rather than encouraging every specialty of public service to come in and do that as well and i know that the and passed it but it doesn't surprise me that's a special judiciary category if it were a category coming through one of the other committees that dealt with their committee it would get that same kind of support but what we tried to do is come up with a way that we could have fairness between professions and each of the professions that we talked about have some special needs and we would be able to prove to encourage and incentivize people to go into those professions earlier quicker and with less debt if we had the same kind of a proposal for and so i would i would hope that we would resist separating out the prosecutors and public defenders at this point in time  when we have included them in their language with loan forgiveness and although it's not as short a period of time as the senator might like i think it's what we ought to do at the present time and we shouldn't be increasing the program and then  we basically kept the amount that all student borrowers would pay based on the income they receive as i understand the bill that was passed last week which i was happy to support there is a cap at fifteen percent of the discretionary income of graduate students from those loans that are either in the direct loan program or consolidated into the director of the program basically what it means is that chart that i saw that students instead of paying back six hundred or seven hundred dollars a month might face half that amount that they would pay back because of the limit that they would pay each year of fifteen percent of discretionary income which i understand to be gross income less  one hundred fifty percent of poverty for the the student in the graduate in that category the reason that i've come back this week to offer this is because we're talking about a group of individuals who are in an exceptional circumstance they are people who will face an even greater debt than most college graduates in addition to their undergraduate at they have the debt of a low low education which is a i noted here can be substantial almost eighty thousand dollars for those going to public law schools fifty thousand for those in private law schools on top of their undergraduate debt then we find two thirds of these students cannot seriously consider taking any job in public service or government work because of the amount of their debt so we have prosecutors coming in from all over the united states and i would bet from your own state saying we're having some difficulties here we can't attract the kind of talented young men and women from law schools because of their debt to come work as prosecutors and defenders in the criminal justice system and once there we can't keep them as soon as they have a good offer to go with a private firm they leave part of the reason one of the compelling parts of the reason is the fact that their student debt is so high so even though the bill passed last week is a good step it is not adequate to the task these particular graduates face more debt dramatically more debt than ordinary undergraduates or even graduate degree students in america and we of a special need and i'd say to the senator from wyoming i guess you can argue that this is special interest because it deals with our system of justice but i think we all concur that is legislators we can pass the best laws in the world in the criminal justice system but if we don't have well trained and competent lawyers prosecuting those cases on behalf of the people of this country defending those charged on behalf of those who've been named defendants then our system of justice will not work as well as it should i will concede that this really goes after a special group but i think it's a special circumstances that warrants it so i hope the senator will reconsider his opposition to this as i said it has bipartisan sponsorship because i think people realize that if we don't do this we will diminish this branch of our government which is so important to our democracy and i thank the senator for his explanation in that but i would suggest that the phones are probably ringing off the hook over in my office saying my public service profession is just as important as those public defenders and that's probably what this phone call was on the floor over here earlier as well i yield the floor and reserve the balance of my time senator report the senator from oklahoma mr coburn proposes an amendment number twenty three sixty nine at the end of title one of the bill insert the following section one fourteen demonstration in certification regarding the absence of towards transparency in our federal government because what you what you can't measure you cannot manage and this is a very simple amendment what we know is in the last seven years the cost of the four year college of education has doubled it's gone from twenty seven hundred dollars to fifty eight hundred dollars at state universities it's gone from about ten thousand five hundred dollars to twenty three thousand at private universities the cost of double it's the only thing in this country that's rising twice as fast as the cost of health care and we ought to ask ourselves why this amendment is very clear what it says is if your university and your lobbying congress you have to certify to congress that you're not spend intuition money or other federal money that you've gotten for a project for your students or for your university in terms of lobbying to get more money this by the way was excluded from the lobbying and ethics bill that we considered i have some experience on it because last last year as chairman of the federal financial management subcommittee of homeland security i queried five hundred colleges and universities in this this country asking them about their earmarks and i asked them how they spent the money is the  interesting thing is only fifty percent of the reply and of the fifty percent that replied only half of them actually knew where the money went the other half didn't dare reply either because they didn't know where the money went or the money didn't go for the thing that it was so we have a great problem in terms of earmarks let me give you some statistics about what's happening first of all last year in two thousand and five one hundred twenty seven million dollars were spent by universities to lobby our institution to get  hundred twenty seven million dollars divide that up and see how many kids we could educate in this country just with that amount of money that was spent on lobbying what we do know is between one nine hundred ninety six and two thousand and five the number of marks at the department of education increased by twenty nine thousand three hundred seventy five percent i wonder if that has anything to do with this marked increase of fourteen and a half percent per year in the cost of college education those earmarks the overall cost of the earmarks came to half a billion dollars a year last year half a billion dollars in earmarks what we also saw that was in the department of for separate universities and colleges in the same time period increase from three hundred sixty nine to nineteen hundred and sixty four up to two billion dollars a year now you would think that for two and a half billion dollars a year we ought to be able to see where the money spent well to have transparency to see there are several problems with our earmarking and the biggest problem is that we choose to pick winners and losers when we do that on research and development at our universities which are the ones we want to do that when we do it we say that the pair reviewed scientific community shouldn't have any input that's what we're saying and consequently when we spend two point six billion dollars on earmarking specific projects that universities what we're doing is getting a whole lot less value for our money what we do know is if we let the scientists through peer reviewed guidance of scientific discovery tell us where to go next we will get two to three to four times return on our research then when i as a senator from oklahoma decide to earmark a specific research project at the university in the state of oklahoma now the question that we should be asking just like the senator from illinois men but that he has the come the true deficit last year was four hundred thirty four billion dollars that's not what we told the american people but that's how much our debt increased so that's what the actual increase in expenditures over the increase in revenues was if i was a prosecutor i'd love senator durbin's amendment if i would money but the principle we should be thinking about is this why are we having trouble getting the best into the public defenders and the prosecutors because we don't plan what senator durbin's attempting to do is a state function it's an indirect payment we're going to pay off we're going to have loan forgiveness for this group of people when in fact the way we should be  that is having states choose to increase reimbursement for people who fulfill that very worthy task so what we're actually doing is jumping all over states rights because states have an increase those fees as they should because they don't it the way many of the thirty eight co sponsors of the durbin amendment do and waste time out it's not your responsibility we're going to do it's the same type of thing that we have in terms of earmarks this amendments very simple just certify to congress if you're getting federal funds that and you want more federal funds in terms of earmarks or grants that you're not going to spend that money or your students to washington to come up here to get more money what you n they aren't six percent on that that's nine billion dollars a year that they have available funds to them to do research or whatever else they want to do if you take the entire group  twenty pages long what you find is is a massive amount of money spent and that is in doubt why do people give the universities they give the universities to secure their future because they felt rewarded by the gift they gave them of education and yet we have almost a trillion dollars in down months in this country and in universities and we're saying we need earmar we need extra monies but if we do we need extra money for research let's let the peer reviewed scientific community tell us where to go let's put the research at the place that it's going to give us the best return rather than the one that has the greatest political pull that makes absolute sense to anybody outside of washington that doesn't make sense if you're trying to get something for your university and university x obviously has the expertise but you wanted it your university so what do we do we put in the pan double we're going to find one that's not as efficient not as capable and not as successful at the expense of the university that's far greater capable of doing that a lot of the university earmarks came about because it was stated that they couldn't compete on the grant process that the major universities this top twenty five research universities in the united states really could outcompete amol on gra so we did some things when we doubled and i we did allow for things and what has happened is a pox on our house we've gone to this large number of earmarks two thousand earmarks a year for universities and we're not getting our money's worth for i come back one of the reasons that i would like this for us to consider this amendment is how do you tell a student who's working a second job who can afford a tutor his bar and a student loan up to their gills and is trying to make it and a percentage of his university's budget out of his tuitions coming up here to get another earmark that's not necessarily going to be efficient or not going to enhance  at vance his education or her education so it's real simple transparency creates accountability i also would ask unanimous consent to enter into the record four case studies one the university of iowa scott one the university of north carolina chapel hill one the university of georgia and one the iowa state university on what they've done with earmarks and how they've spent i'm fairly really remarkable as you know consent without objection sword and with that mr president will cease to discuss this other than to state we ought to figure out why it is a college education and the cost of our girl on twice as fast as health care which is four times as fast as everything else in this country something in writing and transparency is the key to getting accountability for that problem to vote against this amendment saying you don't want the universities to be transparent you don't want to be accountable i believe they should be accountable and a certified of us that not one penny of tuitions not one penny  federal money is spent back up here one hundred twenty seven million dollars was spent last year to lobby this body on university grants and earmarks we ought to change that segment with the senator be good enough to answer some some questions and i was reading through the amendment as the senator knows we have at the present time on the bill the byrd amendment title thirty one of the u code which forbids what i imagine is much of this event under the law recipients of federal funds whether through grants contracts cooperate or agreement to barred from using those funds to lobby to obtain extend or modify a federal award so i'm trying to understand a little better what you include that his amendment does not include but let me ask the question if if a university  the president of the university or the government affairs of the university called a member of congress about the student loan program with that considered to be part of a a lobbying kind of effort sen take federal funds that those funds are not used to in fact pay a lobbyist when a university president calls you he's not calling the lobbyist he has the right to lobby this isn't into the so martin my meme it's fairly narrow in that those funds aren't spent to lobby lobbying payments if there's a government affairs at the it one of our final touch universities in touch with us about loan forgiveness and the government and government affairs they've got they have a very interesting a program where they had a good deal of forgiveness for students and they were calling and asking about how their program fit in with this program but it was a government affairs figure would call us about this and signaling that they thought their program actually was better than the one that we had is that considered government affairs and if they were inquiry about in the no child left behind on the special needs of disabled children or they lit wanted to find out about various bilingual programs what about grants from the and i say they terms of and i h in terms of the future does it affect any of those there's even though their universities may be affected by these a these cuts so is it is it just is it the the lobbyist i'm trying to if it is  lobbyist it's the hiring of the lobbyist and the lobbyist then speaking to the member and then some other i'm trying to get to what you're driving at the if the senator would feel yes i yes i guess sir candy what i'm trying to get to is is this this paradigm where we pay two hundred thousand dollars a year for a lobbyist the lobbyist works to get an earmark for the university back in that's out of the priority of peer reviewed scientific a valuated and at the same time some of that two hundred thousand dollars somehow ends up in campaign coffers for some reason i can't figure out but it seems to so this doesn't stop it what this says is they're just going to certify that the money that they used for that wasn't there it's students tuitions and one other federal dollars that were designed for another perfect purpose in coming back against that so it doesn't mean they can't pay a lobbyist it doesn't mean that they can't hire a lobbyist doesn't mean that anybody in their government affairs office can't contact anyone of us to find inquire about information or to lobby for i particular position which is their right what it is very narrowly defined to say do not spend the money that you get from us or your students to hire the lobbyist to earmark something that is outside the purview well i would think that i might be wrong but i thought that was the point of the byrd amendment but i may be wrong let me ask you in your language you have a page to it talks about any person or entity for affairs person at a university to influence a member of congress i'm a member of congress about as support for the and i age and of and i age funding i hear what the senator wants to do i don't i interested where you got one hundred twenty seven million dollars but i don't accept what what the senator says on this i had thought when we passed the byrd amendment we as senator byrd spoke very eloquently about what i think the senator is dealing with and that is lobbyist getting getting a part of the action when they had the year mark i thought that's effectively it goes further than that but what i am concerned about and i  my my questions is whether you have a person representing a university or government affairs person calling a member of congress about a lot of the matters that we are considering programs the programs dealing with disabled or the disability programs or the limited english speaking what if let me ask you how would this affect a university that if there was a conference by one of the age department of education and they were having a conference on the subject of the higher education can the university says send any individuals they had to express their views on education policy say they they want to go down there they want to see more laboratories built because they want additional kind of research and there they want to say and they speak to the department of education about those kinds of items that it's not designed to limit and anyway well  census responses are helpful i i don't know whether the centers for million with the with the bird amendment and whether he thought that that sort of focus because the more i hear from the senator more i i think the points which the senator if it's not interfering with the colleges or universities or institutions dealing with a wide range i have or some of the fine  schools that deal with criminology wanted to call the justice department a try and get grants to deal with the problems of violence in the communities but that the senator is given assurance that that is not the area that he's trying to get at it's a basically the lobbyist in the in the earlier program for you but to what we're trying to get to is it is true that the byrd amendment makes that illegal the problem is nobody has to so whether it's illegal or not it obviously is happening and yet we don't have any proactive basis on the base of the university for them to certify that they're not doing it that's that's the real difference between this and may be expended by the recipient of a federal contract grant loan or cooperative agreement to pay any person for influencing or attempting to influence an officer employer of any agency a member of congress an office or employee congress an employee of i'm a member of congress in connection with any federal action described in the in the subsection and then it goes on the prohibition in the paragraph applies to one the awarding of a federal contract the making of a federal contract and making a federal loan the en cooperative i meant the extension continuation renewal amendment or modification of a federal contract grant loan or cooperative agreement i don't know whether that if we took if the senator says that this is pretty good language but not enforceable i i would just say that if he had ideas about how we could try and and enforce it i'd certainly open and would welcome welcome that i don't have a problem my concern was the looking at the senator's amendment and seeing that language talking about any person or to pay any person or entity for influence attempt to influence office or employer agency or member of congress and i i have my office has frequent phone calls from universities and colleges certainly as the chairman of the education committee and health committee particularly as we were dealing with this education issue from scores of universities and colleges and one of expressing strong views about different aspects of this  as well as we heard a great deal from the lending institutions we heard from sallie mae and from the other lending institutions about and they have a direct financial interest in this so we are we want to make sure i think that it is to have clarity in this area so that we know what is permitted and what is not permitted and that this was the sum of the areas of concern that i had the senate has been helpful to try to ntended to do is to proactively have this does two things actually it requires universities know what they're doing which is one of the things we found in my subcommittee is that they didn't know what they were doing and they weren't aware of where the money was going or how they were spending the money so number one it makes them look number two it makes them proactively state that they are within the law in terms of how they're spending the money and federal monies that come back to it i appreciate senator kennedy's colloquy on this i nevertheless there is a gigantic problem out there today and not in not the least of which is it's hard to find in the constitution where we should be are earmarking two point six billion dollars a year to a developed research centers at the colleges and universities what we have seen in our committee at that time is the deterioration of laboratories and research centers and we passed a very good bill and we had close to been successful but i've done my best to try and help outstanding colleges and universities that are in the need of terms of research that are doing some of the breakthrough kinds of research that are moving the progress in health in other areas forward try to get some help and assistance i'm proud of that fact and so i wish i share the view that in a perfect world we have the peer review and science in these kinds of areas there's a lot to  what he says but in other areas we do the best we can with the circumstances that we have mr president i will take a look and see what we have in terms of whether an amendment or a clarification would be the best way proceeding absent mr mr president how much time do i have remaining the senator from oklahoma has four minutes and forty eight seconds remaining thank you if i could be recognized and about one out of or three accomplishes something and then not to the level of what you should because most of the money didn't go to the best place to get the research done so i think the senator makes my point we have a corrupted process and how we fun much of the money that goes to universities personally and senator from massachusetts recognizes that i believe that's not necessarily a legitimate role for the federal government but it's one that's there so if it's there it ought to be transparent we ought to be able to hold all universities accountable and we ought to know where the money goes how it's spent and what money was spent to accomplish the receipt of that money in the first place those that against transparency like the status quo transparency you can't fight against the facts for themselves you can't put a political spin on it the facts will be the facts the american people pain actually are american grandchildren who we charge four hundred thirty four billion dollars against this last year ought to have the right to know where their money is being spent and the devil's  the details on whether or not they're taking federal money using that federal money to turn around hire a lobbyist to get more federal money that is a corrupt system and transparency will clean that up i asked consideration the moment they asked for the a appears to be a sufficient second it's my intention to have this been cleared with two managers we're going to have two votes tonight and finish whatever votes we have in the morning it's my understanding in the morning there will be the first vote a document because he's  involved with other things tonight we would give him five minutes if there's opposition to it they can have five minutes or she would split five minutes i say to my friend from wyoming i'm not asking consent now we'll do that later but you have your idea mr president we better have some time to debate those because i don't even know for sure what he's putting it yet so mispresent will will talk of matters more detail about that but likely what we would have it is on the we would have five minutes equally divided and i'm now the other members they would be one minute explanation for and against it and they would be after the first vote that we cannot vote we understand there could be three to five votes in the morning and there could be more but at least whatever has all things in the morning will come in i merely at ten o'clock because of leadership means take place the capitol early on tuesday we can start before then but there will be no morning that and we'll go right to the bill and dispose of these amendments  before we have our regular work sessions on tuesday that sound reasonable to my friend from island that things that sounds reasonable to me i'll check with our leadership y while we wait for senators to come and speak an update on the senate's work today senators working on a bill on student loan regulations some of the elements of this bill one would b lenders from giving student aid loans to schools to get on a quote preferred lender lest the bill first reauthorize the higher education act governing financial aid programs increasing in amount of information schools and lenders must disclose to students number of amendments being debated in this bill and you may have just heard senate majority leader harry reid announced a little while ago that they hope to finish this bill tomorrow and then move on to homeland security spending and debate on the child in charge as possible later in the week this is live coverage of the senate here in c span to and as you see on the screen there senators expect to finish this bill tomorrow it is a bill that reauthorizes the higher education act governing financial aid programs would increase the amount of information schools and lenders must disclose to students and it would bar lenders from giving student loans to schools to get on so called preferred lender lefts would require schools to drop codes of conduct governing relationships between institutions and lenders as several hours of general debate and up to twelve amendments being debated up to a half hour each on this bill and earlier the senate majority leader announced that they plan to finish this up tomorrow and then perhaps move on to homeland security spending you see senators on the floor negotiations taking place and this is coverage of the senate here on c span to durban amendment and i want to thank my colleague from illinois for introducing this important amendment i think gives us an opportunity to provide for equal access to justice here in this country  there is a problem today in our legal system and it's the cost of legal education the average attorney who graduates from law school will have seventy thousand dollars of debt in addition to the sixteen thousand dollars of average debt in the tending an undergraduate school and when you have that type of debt it effects your career choice and today we want to make sure that we get the best qualified turnings going into public interest law whether it is as a prosecutor whether it is a public defender i think senator harkin will be here later tonight or tomorrow to talk about the civil legal services and the average sir starting salary for a legal aid attorney is thirty six thousand dollars a year now for a public defender or for a prosecutor is not much higher than that how can you possibly take it take a career in those fields and still be able to pay off your loans the durban a meme it does something about it it came through the committee i had the honor of serving on the judiciary committee and i think it is a well balanced approach and i know that we'll probably have a chance to vote on this tomorrow we're not going to i don't believe we're going to be voting on this tonight but there won't be debate time available tomorrow and i just really want to come to the floor that urge my colleagues to support the durbin amendment and if senator harkin offers his second degree amendment that would deal with legal civil legal services i would hope this body would also support that amendment and with that mr president i would yield the floor the president and i from illinois and think my colleague from merrill and for support and i might also say that during the course of debate he raised an important aid attorneys these are tourney's who work primarily in the civil area representing people of limited means they're not very well paid many of them come out of law school facing death on their own and we want to make sure that people regardless of their economic status in america have access to good legal counsel so i have pledged to him and i renew the pledge that if there is a way for us to help the legal aid attorneys as well as defenders and prosecutors we should it is in the best interest of our country to have competent counsel available for all americans in terms of our civil and criminal justice systems and i think about how much we count on prosecutors to take the bad guys off the street and keep them off we don't want somebody bungling a trial because of lack of experience or lack of skill so we want the best and brightest as prosecutors similarly if the system is going to work and work well there's a good attorney across the table defending the person who's been charged so there truly is a contest that respectful of our judicial system same thing true for legal aid attorneys whether they're representing people of modest means who are dealing with  daily drudgery of divorce or will or landlord tenant issues or small claims court we want to make certain that those who are of modest circumstances in this country don't lose because the race always goes to the swift that is to those with more money so i think the senator from maryland for his commitment to this amendment and his general commitment to justice in this country like yelp for one moment efforts again i thank you for your leadership on this issue i know you've been working many years to try to get this accomplished and i hope this will be that the vehicle that we can get it done i had the chance to cure the maryland legal services corporation and had chances that chair a commission on looking at services to our population and they're just not enough attorneys that will handle poverty law there's not a lot to qualified attorneys that will handle public defender cases it's difficult to get experience prosecutors today because it's you can go into a private law firm make a lot of money much more than you can as a public defender or as a legal aid attorney or as a prosecutor and your legislation gives us a chance to say we want to make sure that every citizen in our state has equal access to justice in our state and i applaud you for it i think is what we need to do and we have a chance in this bill to get it done i thank you for bringing it to the floor i look forward to supporting your member marilynn i say the presiding officer that in my hometown of springfield illinois we have what's known as the appellate defender program and these are young men and women who handle cases on appeal after the trials and work for a government salary and so when i announced this amendment that we had the possibility of student loan forgiveness to young women came to the press conference and one of them said to me that she has plot of the out how long it will take her working as an appellate defender to pay off her student loan and she said i will be paying when i qualify for social security now that is hard to imagine but it's a fact the debt that these young lawyers incurred to get through to law school unless they're lucky enough to grab the brass ring and go to a big law firm is so large that it haunts them for a lifetime it colors their their life decisions as to where their work whether they can own a car whether they can finally have an apartment of their own and move out of their parents home all of these things are associated many times with student debt so whether we're talking about appellate defenders or prosecutors or public defenders i think that we want to make sure that these young people are spared some of this financial worry and some of this financial burden if they are willing to dedicate themselves to public service that's what this it's about i think that this is a noble calling and i have to recall that it has been but a few weeks since a justice misprint court testified before the senate judiciary committee this justice came and said that he thought the current pay for federal judges was inadequate in america that pay is in the rail realm of one hundred sixty five to two hundred thousand dollars or maybe more certainly more at the supreme court level and we asked how much more he thought these federal judges should receive there is a time limit on this amendment and the sponsor time and you can see senators are gathering on the floor of the senate there shortly votes are expected on several amendments on a student loan regulations bill this bill reauthorize the higher education act a governing financial aid programs some of the elements of the bill are that it would increase the amount of information schools and lenders must disclose to students would bar lenders from giving student aid loans to schools to on a quote preferred lender last and it would require schools to draft codes of conduct governing relationships between institutions and lenders there's been several hours of debate and a number of amendments a short while ago senate majority leader announced that they hope to finish this bill by tomorrow and then perhaps proceed to homeland security spending a surly as tomorrow again you see several senators waiting and we expect votes on several amendments as many as three amendments very shortly on this bill in the senate today this is live coverage of the senate here on c span t again we are expecting votes on several amendments to a bill reauthorizing higher education act governing financial aid programs the student loan regulations chairman of the committee senator kennedy just walked across the floor short moment ago the ranking member mike enzi is in the chair to the right of your screen there and votes on several members expected shortly and work on this bill expected to be done by tomorrow when senators will move to the homeland security spending senate judiciary committee meets tomorrow and is expecting turney general alberto gonzales to testify on the firing of u s attorneys we will have that on c span three and you can also hear in c span radio that's at nine thirty a m eastern the house is in session and you can watch it live house coverage on our companion network c span this is live coverage of the senate here on c span to course with senator durbin he was fine the second agreement this amendment that i just offered would be to provide for loan forgiveness for young attorneys say criminal work prosecuting attorneys district attorneys offices that type of thing which is fine but we also need to for civil legal attorneys also those who are going to legal services they make them on a matter i mean even with the district attorney's office pay them more than what legal services get but i think is needed in both areas right now with the cost of law school and with the need that we have legal services attorneys this amendment is drastically needed right now about fifty percent of the people eligible for legal services which means that they had household income for a family of four of twenty five thousand eight hundred dollars or less ok twenty five thousand dollars a year only fifty percent of them were able to get help from a legal aid program now that's fifty percent of the people that actually went and sought help you can imagine how many more there are are out there that for one reason or another didn't seek the help estimates are that closer to eighty percent of low income americans haven't met several legal needs right now mr president there is one legal aid attorney for six thousand eight hundred low income americans one legal services attorney for every six thousand eight hundred low income americans compare that to one attorney for every five hundred twenty five middle income americans well again the key reason for this is the inability of legal aid programs to recruit and retain attorneys given the financial realities of many law graduates who are able to take positions with legal aid leave after one or two years one midwestern cited the turnover rate of sixty percent over a two year period of time with an average tenure for new attorneys of seventeen months so what i am it does is it builds on the existing loan repayment and retention program for federal prosecutors and twenty nine other government agencies including the department of justice and the congress all we're saying is that if we're to do it for people to come to work here legal services attorney to get that with a maximum lifetime benefit of forty thousand dollars and the amount it authorizes up to ten million dollars to do this we know how many there are the way we're talking about twelve hundred nationwide so we know this doesn't cost a lot if these people don't have access to the civil legal system then they take the law in their own hands they do something else by providing good legal services to low income people  the keep people from doing things that they otherwise wouldn't do if they had some legal help available to them but people get desperate and i can tell you this mr president that the that the  strongest bulwark against against domestic violence are legal aid attorney and what happens is when someone is in a an abusive relationship and they need legal help and they can't afford it that's when you get problems now i can speak about this from experience i started out my life as a legal services attorney that's what i did when i got out of law thought i thought it was a great opening i thought it was just a great thing to do you get the cases that no one else takes you get people that are there at the end of the rope  maybe they've tried to get legal help and they can't get it anywhere else and you're sort of the last hope that they got for settling something civilly and i can tell you from my time as a legal services attorney that we had a lot of people that got in a lot of trouble simply because they didn't either know we were there or they couldn't access the civil legal system so you have domestic violence some people go to jail or you have child custody battles that go on i've i've had cases of landlord tenant cases where people are at the end of the rope maybe they have a dispute with the landlord they can't get it solved and so they sort of take the law in their own hands and do something rash so to me while it's important for encouragement for young lawyers to get into civil and to into criminal prosecution and into that area i think it's a fully as vialli important on you  sir for us to provide for some help for young lawyers who want to be legal services attorneys and i see the senator from vermont has been a great strong supporter of our legal services program in america representation legal aid does a phenomenally good job i could tell you that in for months the wage scale for legal aid lawyer is embarrassingly low and any young person who graduates law school with the kind of debt that you are talking about would find it almost impossible to work as a legal aid salary so i think we should be supportive of legal aid i strongly support your amendment and thank you for offering it i appreciate the senator from vermont and i might say that you can check with the american bar association you can check with your state bar associations they all support legal services because they know that this is this is one way in which we can provide as the senator from vermont said  access equal justice under law we i can remember when i was legal services attorney in the seventy's early seventy's the case files we've got i mean you get so many and you're there late at night you're actually working sometimes you're working weekends trying to get some of these cases and you feel that maybe you're not serving their interests well because you've got so many cases and so many case files so  appreciate the center's remarks and i hope we can get a good support and a vote for this amendment and the time of the senator for this amendment has expired who yields time this is president i send a second degree amendment to the missed this present i don't intend to press this amendment to this evening i talked to the senator from oklahoma and i would hope that we'd have a chance over the evening to work with him to to address the substantive matter of his his amendment that's so i don't intend that we'll have a vote on that then this evening but for the benefit of the membership i want to be able to do at least a filed this i talked to the senator from oklahoma earlier in the about forty five minutes ago we had a good conversation he was working on some language but we wanted to we do believe that we're probably getting fairly close to vote on the brown amendment and i we wanted to be able to at least make indicate to the membership that to this we may very well be a vote tomorrow hopefully we'll have a chance to work through the evening and get a chance to work work that amendment out the reason i offer this amendment mr president is i agree with the senator from oklahoma that federal funds should not be used for lobbying that is the current law and i would support the clarifying language in the law that prevents it but there are very important reasons for institutions to communicate with members of congress and i'm afraid that this amendment would have the unintended consequences that restrict universities and colleges state universities from advocating for research grants and protections for their students it would make it possible for universities to comment on federal regulations for  the department of education may very well have impact about communications with members of congress whether we ought to increase the and i each of funding it would require that universities use private or foundation dollars share findings with congress and this would be especially harm small institution rural institutions starkly black college and other institutions with limited resources so i worry that the senate is amended goes too far so i think it's important to make very clear that federal funding should not be used for lobby and if we need to do more to ensure that it is in force i'm happy to work with the senator from oklahoma to be able to do so and that is what i think th continues says no federal student aid funding may be used to hire a registered lobbyist or pay any person or entity for securing an earmark and then it continues any person makes the expenditure prohibited shall be subject to a civil penalty not less the funds and if report back to the congress of universities are not doing it so we will try and work with the assent to from oklahoma or on it but i wanted to at least include the that second degree as we work with him coburn and then we will be voting on durban and then final passage but we also have this second degree amendment that senator harkin has put in does that preclude anybody from putting in more second degree amendments i thought we had that whole issue done last week when we dealt with loan forgiveness and i think that would have been a more appropriate place to deal with the loan forgiveness and now we have some special cases and i doubt that anybody in public service doesn't consider themselves to be a special case and there are some people who consider themselves to spend a lot of money so i guess that people can turn in amendments second degree amendments for virtually any profession that they want by tomorrow morning and we'll vote on each of those separately between the next two misspeak really divided without objection so ordered wheels time us i asked for support for the brown amendment we know in the last five years that the cost of public education of this country has gone up for a four year degree fifty three percent we know the cost of private education for a four year degree has gone up twenty eight percent we also know that wages in this country have gone up only three to four percent for the average person during this five year period the federal government is not keeping up with helping students get the opportunity to go to college students have said we have seen students have no alternative they have exhausted what they can do with the grants of a dog's austin what they can do either through the direct loan program or other federally insured pro federally backed programs the fastest growing part of their student loan availability is going to private institutions with a sixteen to eighteen percent interest rate this is a man this amendment is no cost to the government it competes with banks we reauthorize every five to seven years the student the higher education act this is an opportunity we shouldn't pass up the problem is only getting worse i ask for support of the brown men thank you mr president we'll time in opposition center from wyoming as senator gregg and i have both explained this this amendment is very problematic it has not been to a committee and has not been heard there has been no vote on it it creates another loan program that creates a different loan program than any we've ever done because this says that the secretary of education will set the loan rate and the requirements on it we've never we've never had that kind of a situation and most problematic the system and of education in this country is successful because it's a partnership between private and public sectors this one moves it all to private off balances the direct loan versus the private market loan and we should not be supporting this the secretary is not in a position to do the kind of decisions that this calls for and we do have to have a private market and this would eliminate it so  we also have a previous example of where this kind of a loan was used back in the seventy's but that was because the interest rates were about twenty one percent in the regular market and the secretary  said it well it wasn't the secretary but the loan rate wound up being set at nine percent people borrowed it for everything except education i ask that you help defeat this amendment the question is on the amendment mr brown mr brownback mr bunn mr mr byrd ms cantwell mr card and mr carper mr casey mrs clinton mr coburn mr cochran mr coleman ms collins mr conrad mr cork mr harkin mr johnson mr kennedy mr kerry misquotes are mr cole mr lay here mr eleven mr lieberman mrs lincoln mr lott mr lugar mr martinez nevada mr roberts mr rockefeller mr salazar mr sanders mr schumer mr sessions senators voting in the affirmative bang him and brown cantwell conrad park and kennedy sanders stabenow now and white house senators voting and the negative alexander bond binding cochran mr sessions mr sessions no mr brownback mr brownback no coleman and mr coleman no roberts mr roberts no collins ms collins now mr nelson of florida  huster warner mr warner no mr shelby mr shelby no are there any senators still wishing to cast their vote if no not on the on this amendment the ads are thirty eight the nays are fifty three the amendment is not agreed to this president senator from tennessee  would ask the chair of the managers is it would it be appropriate now to speak on the bill or would they prefer to go ahead with other business and say that they have senators recognized this is mr president i'd like to ask animists consent that i be allowed to speak for up to twenty minutes and following the senator menendez be allowed to speak for will have the floor for about fifteen minutes or fifteen  to action so ordered thank you mr president mr president i wanted to congratulate senator kennedy and senator enzi and the members of the health education committee for their work on this bill i've i've been around a while but i've not been in the senate for a very long and this may we have order please for the senator from tennessee may conversations be taken off the senate floor so that the center from tennessee may be heard senator from tennessee i think the president mr president so we've been working on this bill for some time and i believe it's gotten better over time it has a number of excellent provisions in it as one major concern that i have which i'd tend to speak on and let me just say what that is at the at the outset before i begin to talk about what i like about the bill i laid friend alex haley used to say find a good embrace and i can do that with this bill but i do have one concern and my concern is the creeping regulation of higher education i believe the single most important thing we can do to help improve excellence in higher education in america which is already pretty good the best in the world is to deregulate not more regulations and unfortunately with this bill we significantly add to the stack of regulations that college and university presidents all over america have to wade through every year in order to accept students who are the federal grants and loans but let me talk about some of the good things about this bill in the first place it was an excellent decision to separate this piece of legislation from the work we acted on last week that what we what we call the reconciliation bill this reauthorize is the higher education act for for for the next five years and it has separate provisions which deserves separate attention for example it increases the amount of pell grants forty three hundred sixty three hundred over the next five years pell grants are for the lowest income students they don't help the middle income families very much because the dollars don't get up to that level those families are eligible for other aid from universities and other grants and loans but sixty three hundred dollars for a pell grant is a significant amount of money for example mr president if you go to harvard it doesn't come close to paying the cost but if you go to the university of tennessee it pays almost the entire tuition for the year and in fact if you go to the university of tennessee with a pell grant you're very likely to show up with what we call a hope scholarship which pays to ition and so you'd start off with a hope scholarship of i think the amount is about four thousand dollars plus or sixty three hundred dollars for the pell grant if you needed that amount of money so the pell grant will be increasing from forty three hundred ten dollars to sixty three hundred dollars and if their families across the country are watching our debate and thinking they can go to college it's important for them to know that that that the community colleges of america cost several hundred dollars a quarter that the great state universities of america typically cost five or six or seven thousand dollars a year intuition now that does not include what one might say that doesn't include living expenses but we all pay living expenses whether we're in college or not into this decision to move the pell grants a sixty three hundred dollars is a big deal and i hope that it sends a signal across this country to families without means that their son or their daughter may start their higher education for example at a community college for two years living at home and paying a few hundred dollars and letting the pell grant pay for the total costs of the tuitions the total cost of the books so there will be zero charge for that family for two years and then after two more years ago onto a state university where the tuition might not be very much more than the pell grant in addition to pell grants would be even larger for students who are majoring in mass science critical foreign languages thereby encouraging students to pursue those fields this congress is taking a number of steps a lot of it out of the public eye really to try to refocus our country's attention on our brainpower in vantage to make sure that we keep that so we can keep our good jobs from going overseas senator kennedy and senator enzi and senator frist last year and change the law in the smart grants to do that and the pell grants do that significantly in this legislation in addition is to present the this legislation in an overdue way recognizes the importance of a year round pell grant many people still have in their mind the idea of the traditional college student on the traditional campus  that life has changed many of the students who take pell grants have to work their older they may be moms going back to school to to get the training to get a better job or a dad doing the same and they may not have time to take the summer off or that might not fit their schedule in the way the law has been they couldn't get the pell grant if there were say three quarters they could only get it for two this is that and senator clinton i would congratulate her for working on this is as well sen a number of senators have worked on making the pell grant a year round opportunity also delighted that legislation night or tuesday again was senator clinton to expand teach for america teach for america attract some of the brightest young men and women in our country who have a passion for service there are many ways to serve our country some of our most valued are in iraq and afghanistan others are in the inner city helping children who haven't had a chance to learn to read learn to compute and learn to have a chance in this country is going to johnson used to say we we want people to be equal at the starting line but we need to help some people get to that starting line and that's what the teach for america young men and women do this will build a core of young college graduates who spent two years in those school and it will expand the group of influential alumni of teach for america who care about our public schools i actually think that what may end up being more important about teach for america than their service for two years in the inner city schools is that will expand these young men and women will grow to be the leaders of this country in a relatively short period of time and they'll always have within their personal missions the idea of giving every student an opportunity to go to a first class public school having a core of them of americans who value education who value public schools especially will do our country more good than almost anything i can think of mr president i believe we have the best colleges and universities in the world we don't just have some of them we have almost all of them have their problems  we should recognize the the assets that they are and one of my primary goals as united states senator is to relieve the overburdened the oppressive paperwork that the federal government places upon our colleges and universities freeing up scarce dollars to spend on improving quality teaching and research rather than paperwork the higher education system mr president and i want to be careful saying  this because i don't want to drive off anybody on that side the out is a republicans dream it's a conservatives dream we have six thousand autonomous institutions some are public some are private some are church some are secular some are historically black some are native american some are tribal some are jewish some are in cities there's harvard there's the national auto diesel collins six thousand autonomous institutions they compete we don't give money directly to those institutions for the most part we give the money to the students and we students take those vouchers one half of america's college students attend our autonomous institutions with a federal grant or a loan that helps them pay for college and they are flat out in value i have introduced several times a pell grant for kids saying that's what a voucher is two twelve it will reserve that discussion for another day but says world war two quite by accident we've said we've said to the world here's the way to organize our education a marketplace of six thousand institutions where students compete for colleges compete for students where government money follows those students to the institution of their choice or the federal research money is for the most part competed for in peril viewed efforts and the rest of the world is scrambling to catch up with our system they are in china deregulating in europe deregulate and creating a more competitive system and trying to emulate this model that we have so mr president what concerns me about our government's attitude toward higher education is the number of forms that each one of those six thousand institutions has to fill out i have a stack of forms this tall and bring on the florida but every single institution has to fill that four mountain ordered to accept students who comply with the who bring with them federal grants or loans which are almost all of those students that means the small church related schools have to hire somebody else they have to go through all of this the president of stanford not a small church related school said that seven out of ten cents of every tax dollar is spent on complying with government regulations would it be better mr graham if we allowed stanford and the small school and national auto diesel college and yeshiva as well as harvard to use more of their money to help students and less of their money to comply with paperwork with the passage of this bill we will require the advisory committee on student aid to review regulations imposed under the act and report to the secretary in congress ways to reduce regulation streamline procedures and simplify for the benefit of students at least that would be one small force moving in the right direction it would also create a discretionary grant program for an institution of higher education to develop and maintain a comprehensive website that keeps track of federal regulations that have an impact on institutions of higher education that might mean a small church related college my only have to hire half of a person or a person to spend half of his or her time keeping keeping up with all these rules and regulations because the website might have done it for them finally we require the secretary to develop an annual compliance calendar for all reports and disclosures required by the higher education act for ease of compliance and these three provisions mr president might seem not very important but i can guarantee you as a former president of the university they can make a lot of difference i'd like very much have spread out before me a calendar from the government has said we have listed all the rules and regulations and forms and papers that you have to file that would mean i knew what it was and that would save me a lot of time in figuring it out despite that good news i'm afraid there are nevertheless twenty four new reporting categories and seventy two reporting categories with hundreds of data points in this legislation according to the american council on education  excuse me according to the american council on education there are currently twenty four reporting categories and seventy four reporting requirements with hundreds of data points that's today my staff has advanced identified twenty six new categories and over one hundred new reporting requirements imposed on higher education with this law and that's even before the department starts its regulation so i hope mr president we can figure out a way to create competitive forces here in favor of deregulation and it's as bad all our side of the aisle as it is on that side of the very often my republican friends say for example prices at colleges have gone up so let's put price controls all over the pilgrims arrived in massachusetts massachusetts and say we know what religious oppression is less practice it ourselves we're the ones we already are who are supposed to be for markets choice and less less federal regulation well let's apply that to federal higher education i have worked hard on a number of provisions that are in this bill that i thank senator kennedy the kennedy and senator enzi for permitting me to to do that working with other senators for example senator gregg senator reed and i have worked with on provisions that have been included that simplify the application form for students who apply for grants or lo as i mentioned earlier i've worked with senator clinton to help allow students who have pell grants to use them year round so they can finish earlier and get back to work back with their families rather than the antiquated requirement that they may only use them for part of the year i mention the compliance calendar to make it simpler for colleges and the teach for america plan which senator harkin and i and senator reid and others have co sponsored there is an accountability research grade and i want to thank secretary spellings for agreeing with this as a result of her study of higher education which pointed out a number of important things we do have a fine system of higher education but it needs to be challenged if we're going to keep our advantage i felt that the secretary in her recommendations was going too far in what i might say federalizing higher education whether it might be transfer of credit provisions whether it might be  proposals mandated from washington about student accountability i thought that was a good goal but the wrong way to go about it and so secretary spellings has agreed to step back and to focus instead on challenging our state boards of education in our colleges boards of trustees in our university presidents and our governors and our legislators to do their job and countability not kick it to washington d c and let us conduct oversight of how they're doing their job rather than try to impose more of a one size or just a few size fits all ideas from from washington and a part of doing that would be to would be grants by the secretary in this bill as provided grants by the secretary to create new measures for assessing student achievement in higher education there is a difference in the harvard classics department and the national auto diesel college i keep mentioning those because harvard classics might be the best department of classics i know the nashville auto diesel the college is the best trainer of mechanics for a car but there's no need for us here to try to figure out what is the appropriate accountability at the nashville auto diesel college and at the harvard classics apartment with great respect to the president and senator kennedy and senator enzi and the u s department of education we don't know that much about at least they know more and we ought to make sure they're doing their job we ought not to substitute our judgment with the  not interrupt the senator from tennessee i thank to you mr president mr president senator from wyoming and yield back the balance of my time center time as you look back i think the senator from massachusetts senator from from wyoming another example of the what i would call the of the the propensity to federalize education is to is is to regulate the transfer of credit quality that policy that individual institutions have now we're going to have a marketplace in of students are going to have choice then it's the job of the students to find out in the colleges and universities what their rules are otherwise we go to a european system or to a chinese system or to a system or like i k through twelve system where we knowing all will tell everybody what to do what the transfer of credit policies might be so i've strongly resist saying that the federal government ought to have anything to say about whether the national oddities of college ought to be required to accept a transfer of credit from the harvard classics department i'm not sure that agr agilent student in the harvard classics would know anything about and he's an engine in nashville and vice versa and i'm pretty sure that we don't need to interfere in that particularly if so much of the excellence in our system comes from this competition and these autonomous institutions and this marketplace that allow students followed by government money to choose and allows researchers to compete to see who deserves the money so my hope mr president is that as time goes on that we can have a serious discussion in the health education labor committees and in the education and labor committee in the house about deregulation of higher education do we all have good ideas about what to do some of them will be voted on as amendments tomorrow but if we all impose our good ideas from here then they add up to another stack like this in our higher education system begins to be smothered i've had the privilege of working at several levels of this when i was prez in the university of tennessee i had a lot of oversight missed when the governor was the chairman of my board the legislature approved the largest share of money that i got i had a board of trustees to which i had to respond there was a faculty council that i paid a lot of attention to and in terms of student accountability the professors graded their students on a regular basis and the dane graded the professors and the trustees and the president and the provost and the tennessee our education commission and the governor and the legislature all had their say there's plenty of supervision of our education based on my experience so we need to be careful here we need to be careful here we have been why since world war two both with our loans and our grants it half of americans used to go to college to say here's the money in the college is accredited you take your choice you may go to notre dame you may go to the community college down the street you may go to the university of tennessee or rhode island that's your choice along as it's accredited and of course some mistakes are made and i'm sure at the fringes some college are teaching some goofy courses and some schools are better than other others but overall mr president we don't have we don't have any enterprise in america that today has consistently outperform the rest of the world as well as our system of higher education not our auto mobile business not our aluminum business not our k through twelve system even our united states senate rarely rises above the level of the baghdad parliament when it comes to getting a consensus on the war in iraq but the system of higher education with all its sometimes stuffiness and with all of its disagreeable political correctness and even with the length the vacations and even with more ten e than probably is deserved as a whole as a whole is by far the finest in the world and regulation as a whole mr president will make it worse not more extreme there's one other provision i'd like to mention and i think i'm glad the committee included this is a statement about the protection of free speech willie morris who wrote north toward home about his days in mississippi  and at the university of texas in new york wrote an eloquent statement about the how the american association of university presidents rose up about the political correctness the time he was a student that was in the one nine hundred fifty s i guess early sixt and at that time the political correctness in that part of texas or and all of texas was segregationist very conservative and oppressive to those who had different points of view what today mr president the shoes off and on the other foot and some deny that but we know that it's true when there are not many conservative speakers at college graduation ceremony and often individuals with the senator's time has expired i ask  unanimous consent for three more minutes without objection and often legitimate speakers with different points of view are booed and not welcomed in the in the academic environment i testified about this before senators before secretary spellings committed on on higher education and i ask unanimous consent to include following my remarks today my comments at that testimony in nashville last year without objection but i would hope my friends in the university community would see in me someone who values higher education who defends the importance of it in our society who is working hard to keep our brain power advantage and in the world marketplace who supports funding it generously but who also believes that the greatest achilles heel of our system of higher education today is political correctness in a failure take it seriously the colleges universities are places where people ought to be allowed to say even outrageous things from the right and from the web it's not a free and academic environment if you're only allowed to say outrageous things from the list so without belaboring that i would like to conclude my remarks by expressing my appreciation once more to senator kennedy in n z this is a first rate bill it will help students it will help our country it has a great many good ideas in it and i hope there are others in this body in the house of representatives who would join me in recognizing that a long political correct the greatest threat to the quality of higher education in my view is over regulation by the federal government and perhaps over time we can find some sensible ways to give it a little more freedom from this big stack of regulations that have piled up over the years i think it's here and i you know colleague to the chairman of the house education and labor committee a true champion for education in our country and senator kennedy's vision for higher education will help make sure that college is more accessible and affordable to all of our young people regardless of their race their class or their n come and it's because of the vision of people like senator kennedy like senator pal before and others that the doors to college have been open to millions of americans who otherwise would not have had access to that american dream and i also appreciate the senator enzi leadership as well in bringing and moving this bill on the floor i salute him for all of his work both on the bill we had last week and now the bill that we have today it's a tremendous testament of what we can do when we join together in common cause as someone whose dreams of college could not have been realized without the grant and without other federal aid i'm proud to be able to support legislation that will open the doors for the next generation of students in this country without the critical assistance i received i would have never been able to be the first in my family to graduate from college and then later from law school and i certainly wouldn't be speaking to on the floor of the united states senate the bill before us takes great steps towards improving and leveling the playing field for all students so that more students are able to access and afford a higher education and today all students do not have an equal chance to attend college is an example of latinos and african americans are less likely to be able to afford college and therefore more likely to qualify for federal financial aid latinos and african americans are forty to sixty percent less likely to earn a bachelor's degree in their lifetime than other students and by also expanding federal aid opportunities for minorities the bill will help improve those numbers and close the gap in higher education my own story of growing up for yet having the opportunity to fulfill my dream of attending college because the federal aid is still true as a challenge for so many of our young people today and it will continue to be for the young people of tomorrow the changes in this bill come at a critical time it is projected that by the year twenty fifteen they sure years from now college enrollment of african american students will increase by twenty three percent and for latinos that number will increase by a whopping seventy three percent moreover seventy five percent of undergraduate students are nontraditional students meanings they either are attending part time and working full time non high school graduates or have dependents among other characteristics the student populations of our nation's colleges will increasingly reflect the changing landscape of our country so this bill is going to help all of our students and more and more of our students will not be the sons and daughters of previous college graduates the student of tomorrow will be a mother who juggles a full time job and it's sends community college part time at night so she can gain skills that will lead to a better job and provide her children economic security of a student of tomorrow will be a naturalized united states citizen with the help of federal aid can fulfill his dream of becoming an engineer and give back to this country by helping build new infrastructure a student  tomorrow will be a foster child was able to attend college with federal aid and fulfill her dream of becoming a nurse so she can not only live a stable life would give back to a system that saved hers the student of tomorrow will be a bright high school student who works part time through college and despite his family's low income can attend the college of his choice because of tell and purpose these are the students that will help to find the future of our nation's first generation students breaking through new barriers parents working to improve life for their children a naturalized citizen building a better life in this country they will each be charting their own path able to realize their dreams because of the opportunity only a college education can provide and how well educated they are will not just determine how successful they are in the workforce but how successful our nation is in the global economy as a nation i am convinced that the single greatest asset we will have in this global economy is our collective intellect and to be a leader globally we will have to be at the apex of the curve of intellect that means the most highly educated generation this nation has ever known to get their education pipeline must be accessible and affordable to a great cross section of young people however rising costs combined with far too stagnant growth in family income and declining federal aid have effectively price many students out even with student loans and work study today's students have thousands in unmet financial needs they often cannot afford to pay as a nation we simply cannot afford to have our students priced out of a college education our nation's future depends on the legislation before us will make key changes to help ensure the doors to college remain open to all not just those who can afford it out of pocket this bill realizes that improving access to college does not just mean increasing funding improving access to college means curbing rising tuition costs so that young people will be able to better afford a higher education this bill will hold colleges accountable for rising tuition costs by making tuitions out of public and available to students and their families can compare costs and by publicizing cost to prospective families hala dj's will need to justify t increases that far exceed those of comparable institutions improving access to college means reforming the student loan system so students get loans that are failing not loans that wash them away in debt outrageous loan debt is forcing bars to do a lot to delay the buying a home in their future or taking the dream job of their choice after college simply because it will not pay enough this bill reverses this troubling trend by not only expanding federal aid but ensuring students are getting the best possible deal when they take out a loan improving access to college also means starting at the first step filling out the forms as someone who had to fill out the fafsa by myself it was pretty daunting for any student facing this process on their own or for families with incomes language or other barriers the financial aid process it's out can be overwhelming by reducing the fast from ten pages to two pages we make it easier for students to accomplished the very first step necessary to get financial aid and by improving access to college it also means helping students get out on the right path early by strengthening and expanding programs like gear up and trios by promoting quality teacher preparation for grams and helping high needs public schools recruit and retain high quality teachers this bill takes low income and first generation students closer to their dreams of college we also need to expand access beyond the undergraduate  i'm particularly pleased that this bill expands funding for minority serving institutions and specifically supports the creation of graduate programs at hispanic serving institutions a proposal i have supported for a long time but they scarily make up less than six percent of graduate students and by expanding opportunities that hispanics serving institutions which enroll more than fifty percent of all latino students in this country this expansion is  ensuring the nation's graduate and doctorate students reflect the diversity of our nation mr president ensuring our students are prepared to be the next generation of innovators the business owners of leaders requires serious commitment to making college affordable and accessible this means making education work for all students that is why we must take steps to increase critical grant aid and strengthen key programs to help open the doors to college all of our young people must ensure our students are getting the best possible deal when they apply to college and that every student i was willing to work hard at the opportunity to graduate from college i believe that in this nation in which this challenge for us globally is so significant in which an engineers report is created an indian transmitted back to the united states for a fraction of the cost radiologist report is done in pakistan and sent to your local hospital read by your local doctor you have a problem with your credit card as i recently did you may end up in a call center in south africa in the pursuit of human capital for the creation of a product of the delivery of the service have globally challenged and that's why this ability to have the generation that has the greatest educational achievement is so important to the nation's competitive future and i want to make sure that the opportunity i  have as someone who had challenges is an opportunity that can be met by every student is willing to work hard has the ability to give something back to their country this bill is going to make that happen this bill i believe takes us significantly in the right lobby wait for senators to come to the floor and update on their work today senators have been working on student loan regulations reauthorizing the higher education act governing financial aid programs some of the elements of this bill  increase the amount of information schools and lenders must disclose to students would bar lenders from giving student loans to schools to get on a preferred lender less would also require schools to drop codes of conduct governing relationships between institutions and lenders and it would bar schools from compiling preferred lender lists and that's one of the amendments to this bill senators have voted on several amendment and they plan to finish up work on this bill tomorrow and then proceed to homeland security spending later in the week they may work on child insurance programs coverage of the u s senate here on c span to the pending amendment of the candidates second degree amendment to the coburn amendment i asked him to consent to return the member i filed earlier without objection the member is now pending and i asked the chair is there a pending second degree amendment by the senator from iowa there as i would say the chair that for those members following that there has been an agreement reached that there will be no objection to the adoption of the second degree amendment to m and then the adoption of my amendment both by voice vote and so at this point i move the adoption of the second agreement offered by the senator from iowa is there objection without objection the members agreed to and now m present i ask for the adoption of the durbin amendment as amended by the second agreement from the senator from iowa as their objection without objection a member as amended is agreed to while we wait for senators to come to the floor and update on their work today senators been working on student loan regulations governing financial aid programs that would increase the amount of information schools and lenders must disclose to students it would also bar lenders from giving student aid loans to schools to get on a preferred lender less it would also require schools to draft codes of conduct governing relationships between institution institutions and lenders senators have debated and voted on several amendments to the belt and expect to finish work on it tomorrow after that they may proceed to homeland security spending and later in the week to child insurance live coverage of the senate here on c span to