Date: 2005-10-20
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. this week new reports from the College Board showed how much. harder it is getting for families to pay for college. Since 2001. tuition and fees at a 4year public college have risen by 46 percent. Today the maximum Pell grant is worth $900 less when adjusted for inflation than it was in 1975 and 1976. This year. students attending 2 and 4year public colleges are already $10 billion short for paying for college. even after grants. work study. savings. and Federal loans are taken into account. As a result. millions of students will be forced -to work long hours to take on additional debt from other sources or- forgo college altogether. What has been the Republicans response? To make American students and families who are already struggling to pay for college. pay even more. In July. during the committee consideration of the Higher Education Act. Republicans voted to cut nearly $9 billion from the student aid programs and raise interest rates and fees on student borrowers. This raid on student aid represents the largest cut to the Federal student aid programs ever. ever. As a result of these cuts. the typical borrower with $17.500 in loan debt when they graduate will be forced to pay an additional $5.800 more for his or her college loans. That is $5.800 additional that they will have to pay over the life of those loans for the college education that they are seeking. While many of the cuts were on excessive subsidies paid to student lenders. such as the 9.5 percent loan boondoggle. the Republicans only agreed to reduce some of these excessive subsidies to large lending institutions after widespread criticism from Democrats. students. and editorial writers. But instead of reinvesting these dollars into lowinterest loans and additional grants. the majority plans to use nearly $9 billion in cuts for the alleged deficit reduction. or to pay for their tax cuts to the wealthiest people in this Nation. They are going to take $9 billion out of the student loan account to pay for the tax cuts to the wealthiest 5 percent of the people in this country. That is their idea of economic justice. But it gets worse. Next week. the majority plans to cut an additional $7.5 billion from the Nations student aid programs. the second largest cuts ever. The first largest cuts were several weeks ago. Now they are back. They are back for $7.5 billion to take out of student loans to again pay for the $1 trillion in tax cuts that they gave to the top 5 percent of the people in this country. To make matters even worse. the Republican leadership has failed to provide real re*lief for college tuition. In fact. in their higher education bill. they would do nothing to make tuition more affordable for the first 5 years after it is enacted into law. Even after 5 years. the bill only requires colleges and universities with rapidly rising tuition to increase their reporting and disclosures. Mr. Speaker. the public already knows- how much it costs. They struggle with it every spring as they try to figure out how to pay for their childrens education. What the Republicans are doing. it is not lowering the cost of tuition. not lowering the rate or the increase in the cost of tuitions. they are adding thousands of dollars. thousands of dollars in additional costs to students and to their families. This is unacceptable. What the Democrats had was a better idea that we would cut those outlandish subsidies to the lending institutions. to the banks. and to others. and we would take that money and we would recycle it into the student loan programs so that we could increase the Pell grant by some $500. We could take care of low and middleincome students who fall short in being able to finance their education. We would lower the cost of that debt to those students. We would make the repayment easier. But the Republicans did not do that. They chose to take now what is almost $16 billion when they are done next week out of the student loan program. to raid this student aid and take that and transfer that to the wealthiest people in this country through the tax cuts that they have already enacted. It is a shameful day. and it is a sad day. when we are being told that it is more important now than ever that students in America complete a college education for the sake of their economic wellbeing and for the sake of - the competitiveness of our economy. and the Republicans have decided to make it more and more expensive for millions of American students and their families. It is a tragic day for these students and their families.