Date: 2006-02-08
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

I am just looking at some of the facts and figures that our staff has put together for us. and sometimes I have difficulty thinking about thesize and scope of what it means to have the largest deficit in American history and a debt that combined with the previous 224 years is greater than the debt from those years. It is easier to deal with that information in nuggets. so let us talk about debt andits impact on individuals for a moment. And since this is the 30something Working Group and we often try to highlight the difficulty our generation is having or what our generation lives through. let us just go through some facts and figures comparatively for our generation thrcugh the years. Since 199293. the average college grad student loan debt has grown from $12.100 to $19.300 in 2003. just 10 years. Over 25 percent of college graduates in 2003 had a student loan debt higher than $25.000. which is a 7 percent increase from 10 years ago. In 2002. 1.4 percent of young adults reported that student loans caused them to delay marriage. which is up from 7 percent in 1991. One in five said their debt had caused them to delay having children. up from 12 percent in 1991. Forty percent reported they delayed buying a home because of their loans. compared with 25 percent in 1991. And 17 percent significantly changed careers because of their debt. about the same as 1991. The policy decisions that are made here. Mr. RYAN. the culture of corruption that translates into special interests and the wealthiest few being at the top of the heap here as opposed to the average working family or the average hardworking recent college graduate being put first or being considered at least on the same level has caused real strife. real difficulty. Imagine being in love. finding the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. knowing you want to have children. knowing that you could potentially buy that house that you would love to live in and have the dream of homeownership. essentially the American Dream. and you have so much debt that you are saddled with because your government. your Congress did not at least provide the ability for you to get a higher education because it was more important to provide tax cuts to the wealthiest few: more important to provide tax breaks for Big Oil and for pharmaceutical companies and ensure that they are first in line. That is real life. Those are the reallife decisions that real people. our people. have to make. It is just so wrong. I used to think about this in the legislature. too. You come up to Tallahassee in Florida. which is our capital. and Washington here. and we make policy in this body thousands of miles from our constituents. most of us. except those who live right around here. Sometimes I think that is really a significant cause of the insensitivity that clearly goes on in Washington. Because we are so disconnected from our constituents when we make policy. It is not like a city council people. who has to deal with the inyourface aspect of that type. of governing. You know. if there is a dead dog on someones driveway. that city council person knows about it and they will have to deal with that person in the supermarket or you are right up in their face in the dais. We cannot talk to the people that come here and are sitting in the gallery. and so we .are insulated from making those decisions. And perhaps that is wrong. As a result. we make decisions where the people who can get access to us. the people who have the money to pay to get in front of us. they get to be first in line. and I think that really ruins lives for people.