debt, and they can't find good-paying jobs. for example, we have seen in our home state, according to the oregon employment department, that the overall unemployment rate last year was 9.4%, but was 19% for workers age 16-24. and i would also note that we have seen again most recently that the labor participation for young people has declined as well. so we have an enormous array of challenges in front of us, and the reason that this legislation, the stop student loan interest rate hike, is so important is that it allows us to achieve two important objectives. first, it puts us in a position

to hold the line on student debt. if our a sophomore, for example, if college, and you've already incurred some debt, you're thinking about finishing college, you'd like to get a degree in a field where you could get a job that pays a good wage, without this legislation, madam president, you are going to incur still more debt. so this legislation ought to be supported because it holds the line on debt, and by doing so, it helps us achieve a very important objective with respect to opportunity for young people. and that is it increases the opportunity for young people to access higher education across the country. and whether historic -- historically whether it's been pell grants or stafford loans and the like, we know that it's

been important, and families around kitchen tables and living rooms have said this for years, we've always said to young people try to get to college. work hard in high school, try and get to college, we'll support here in our country policies that increase access to a good education. and by holding the line on debt, we take steps to achieve an important part of higher education policy, and that is expanding access to higher education. the second part of this legislation in my view is by holding the line on debt, you increase the opportunity for young people to get more value out of their education. and the reason i bring this up, mr. president, is my sense is

that future policy in the higher education field is going to be about marrying these two objectives. let's support this important legislation, s. 2343 to expand access, and use it as a foundation to move on to the next step of education policy, which is to get more value out of the education that a young person pursues. the reason i feel that way is that all over my state, mr. president, i'm going to high schools and community colleges and talking about students who are thinking about both of those principles: access and value. at blue mountain community college, for example, in pendleton, i met a young man who is taking 20 credits at school, he's working at arbee's full time as a manager, he's

already concerned about the debt he's racking up and he said to me how will i know as i get my education that i've laid the ground woimbg -- groundwork for being able to get a good-paying job? and i told him just as i'm suggesting to the senate today that i'm going to support efforts to expand loans and make sure that we hold down debt for young people, and i described what we're dealing with on the floor of the senate, and then i said i've also introduced a piece of legislation with our colleagues from the other side of the aisle, marco rubio, called the student right to know before you go act. so that it is possible for students all across the country to get information about the expected average annual earnings after graduation, the rates of

remedial enrollment for a particular field at a particular college, the average cost both before and after financial aid, and the prospects of a student earning a good wage after achieving a particular degree at a particular school. and with this legislation, mr. president, we lay the foundation for what i think will be the education policy of the future. ensuring that students have access and ensuring that they get more value out of the education and in many instances, the loans and other programs, that they have to pay back. and the two go hand in hand. without this legislation, mr. president, if you're a sophomore at a college -- and i ran into students who are already juniors, for example, at colleges in my state who

would already owe $60,000 -- without this legislation, that junior, for example, is probably going to reup for a loan again and they're going to have to pay more, which means that that's going to reduce their access to higher education. and if, for example, they have to, you know, pay more, it seems that also is going to reduce the opportunity for students to buy a bit more value out of their education as we look at getting them information that they now find hard to get with respect to the value of various kinds of degree programs. and suffice it to say these two judgments, both with respect to debt and the value of what they have pursued in terms of their college degree, are going to color judgments for the rest of

their lives. the students that i met in oregon recently, as i talked to them about this issue, one was interested in getting a medical degree. and as we talked about health care issues and the president of the senate and i have both been very interested in this subject over the years, one of the questions that he asked me was how he was going to be able to get a medical degree initially and what would happen to him when he got out of medical school with all this debt hanging over his head. and i really didn't want to chill his enthusiasm, but we know, mr. president, if a young person comes out of medical school with an enormous amount of debt, there's a pretty good chance at some point they're going to have to pass some of that debt on to their patients, which means that we're going to see medical, you know, costs for a lot of people in our

country escalate still higher. so the fact that we have these debts, the fact that it is hard for young people to purchase value in their education is going to have remarkable ripples all through our country for years and years ahead. and i'm going to close simply by way of saying we've seen what young people, you know, contribute to our economy, and the president of the senate shares an interest with -- with this senator in technology. technology has been a big source of jobs in states like minnesota and oregon. this has been a real economic engine for our country. think about who brought us facebook and google and twitter and youtube. the disproportion matter nat amount -- disproportionate amount of the creative talent

has been young people. and if we don't take steps to hold the line on debt first of all, and that is to pass senator harkin's bill so we don't say to college, you know, sophomores and juniors, we don't care if you rack up any more debt when we know how much heartache it's going to bring to them, and then move on to the next step, which is empowering students and families to be able to get the maximum amount of value out of their education, i think we will have let the country down in this area at a crucial time. we understand that higher education is one of the principal, if not the best, for many students, paths to success. not for every student, but certainly for millions. and it has been and why i describe particularly what young people have contributed in technology, a real spark for our economy.

so i see other colleagues waiting to speak, and i only urge colleagues to pass this legislation, 2343, to ensure that we don't heap for debt onto the backs of students in college now who might be looking at reupping on those loans and wondering if they can afford it and then as we expand access, let's look at taking additional steps to ensuring that our young people get more value for their college educations, senator rubio and i have teamed up on a bill that i think addresses that question. the student right to know before you go act. and to me, going to that next step of adding more value to a young person's education when they're armed with the facts requires that you lay the foundation of access to a good education, which i think

requires at this time when so many young people are hurting and i went through the statistics, it requires that we pass s. 2343 and with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president,? the presiding officer: the senator from north carolina. mrs. hagan: i come to the floor today to also speak about preserving student loan interest rates from doubling from 3.4% to 6.8%. i'm disappointed that partisan gamesmanship is threatening the financial futures of students in north carolina and around the country. in north carolina we are very proud of our 16 excellent public universities and 58 outstanding community colleges. in addition, dozens of the best private colleges and universities in the nation also call north carolina home. our excellence in higher education sets north carolina apart. business owners i talk to routinely tell me that our

highly educated and highly skilled work force is what attracted their companies to north carolina. and there is no doubt that the strength of our economy going forward depends on the continued system of our education, on the continued strength of our education system. however, the cost of college continues to rise in north carolina and across the country. and if congress does not act before july 1, more than 160,000 north carolina students will be saddled with an additional $1,000 in student loan debt. according to the project on student debt, more than half of north carolina's 300,000 students at four-year colleges and universities borrow money to pay for their education. and on average, these students graduate with more than $21,000 in debt. that debt has real consequences for our graduates and for north carolina's economy.

with this debt to pay off, young entrepreneurs are less likely to take a chance starting a small business, they're less likely to buy a new car, less likely to buy a home. this only hurts our economy. keeping interest rates low will go a long way to ensuring that young people can afford their student loan payments when they graduate. i recently heard from a freshman at u.n.c. charlotte about how concerned she already was -- this is a freshman -- about the debt she was piling up when she graduates in four years. she can't imagine what would happen if interest rates double. perhaps she would have to drop out altogether. a student at western carolinaa university wrote me while studying for finals asking that we please prevent a doubling of his student loan interest rates. so in the midst of preparing for final exams this young man was

worrying about the final bill that he'll receive after graduating. he said doubling the stafford loan interest rate would severely hurt his ability to continue his education. he wants to study cell biology. at a global 21st century economy, the sciences are exactly the types of fields we need students to excel in so we can compete with china and other foreign countries. we should be helping these young people succeed, not throwing up barriers that get in the way. i'm also hearing from parents. a mom with three children emailed recently her older child will be starting college in two years. she is already worried about the debt that her children will incur. and certainly is requesting that we not double the interest rate on this debt. our students deserve a fighting chance when they graduate. we shouldn't put them thousands

of dollars behind before they even reach the starting line. i will do my part to ensure students in north carolina have the chance to thrive after graduating, and i urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this legislation that will prevent student loan -- student interest rate loans from doubling. thank you, mr. president. i notice the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from new mexico. mr. bingaman: i understand we are on the motion to proceed -- the presiding officer: we are actually in a quorum call. mr. bingaman: i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bingaman: mr. president, i understand we're in -- we're debating a motion to proceed to s. 2343, the stop the student loan interest rate hike act of 2012, is that correct? the presiding officer: that is correct. mr. bingaman: mr. president, i came to the floor to urge my colleagues to vote to proceed to this important legislation. i was disappointed to see that

many of my republican colleagues voted against allowing debate and amendment on this legislation. i have heard senators from both sides of the aisle acknowledge the need to prevent the july 1 rate increase on the stafford loans, the subsidized loans, so it's difficult to understand their unwillingness to even consider the bill and have a thoughtful debate and an opportunity for amendment, which will allow us to keep these interest rates low for college students in all of our states. members may disagree about the best way to pay for keeping rates at 3.4%. but we need to go ahead and proceed to the legislation and pass legislation to accomplish this. if senators have different proposals, they can offer them, but by blocking debate, we

obviously cannot get to a solution on this problem. the democrats have proposed to pay for the legislation by closing a tax loophole that people use to avoid paying social security and medicare taxes. that is the so-called s. corporation payroll tax loophole. this proposal would close the loophole for s. corporations for which 75% of the corporation's income is attributable to the sources of three or four shareholders. this loophole allows, for example, a -- an individual lawyer or a lobbyist who set up an s. corporation to make millions of dollars in fees and to not pay payroll taxes on nearly all of that income. all he has to do is to give himself a cash dividend from the

corporation instead of paying himself wages, and this is not a fair arrangement. to be clear, not all small businesses are gaming the system in this way and are not permitted to game the system in this way. this loophole is not available to businesses that are organized as sole proprietorships or as partnerships. those small businesses are paying their fair share of taxes. by contrast, to this way of paying for the continuation of the low interest on student loans, my republican colleagues have opted for a very different approach. they offset the cost by using the prevention and public health fund. in my view, this is a misguided approach. the prevention fund is not a slush fund as it has been called

by many. instead, it is a fund to help reduce chronic disease such as diabetes and heart disease and to fund immunization programs for children. this is a critical fund that is used to lower long-term health costs to improve health outcomes. in my view, eliminating this fund would simply increase health risks and ultimately increase health care costs in this country. it's very clear that democrats and republicans have a fundamental difference in our approach to how we should maintain student loan interest rates. however, as i said before, it is important we get to the bill. we proceed to vote for cloture on this bill so we can discuss the path forward and consider amendments, if individual senators wish to propose amendments. preparing students for an

education is essential for this country's global competitiveness. it is imperative we provide students the tools they need to succeed in this very fast-changing economy. this includes access to a high-quality education which will enable us to train the next generation of americans for jobs in high technology fields. mr. president, i spoke to a luncheon that was put on by a foundation that supports one of our community colleges in new mexico this last tuesday, and it's clear that we have many students who are working very hard to make ends meet and to stay in school so that they can obtain the skills they need to earn a good wage, to pursue a constructive career, and there are many areas of our economy where these types of trained workers are needed.

one area which is obvious in my state and nationwide is in health care. we need to train more nurses. one statistic i used in this talk last tuesday was that over the next eight years now, between now and 2020, we are going to have to add 700,000 more nurses to the health care field in this country to meet the needs of the baby boom generation. and in addition to those 700,000, we're going to have to hire an additional 500,000 just to replace those who retire from the nursing profession. so we have got 1.2 million nurses that are going to have to be hired in this country over the next eight years. we need to train those people. there are many young people in this country who would like to have that training. they need student loans in order to be able to cover the costs of

that training, and that's why this is such an important debate. student loan debt has for the first time in our history surpassed credit card debt. today, this debt exceeds a trillion dollars. the average college graduate leaves school with more than $25,000 in loans. according to the bureau of labor statistics, college costs at state schools are rising and have been rising at an alarming rate. these increased costs far outpace the increased costs of medical care. we are often giving speeches here on the senate floor about the high increase, the excessive increase in medical care costs. in fact, the cost of college for many students is rising even faster. the same thing can be said about gasoline. i see my colleagues rush to the

floor whenever the price of gasoline begins moving up, and with good reason. it is a major burden on u.s. families and americans everywhere. but these costs pale -- the growth in these costs pale in comparison to the growth that we are seeing in the cost of education. the cost of tuition and fees has nearly sextupled since 1985. this is particularly troublesome for students from low-income families. if we allow interest rates to double, there are 7.4 million students nationwide who will see an increase in the cost of their student loans beginning on july 1. this has a direct impact on students and on families because subsidized stafford loans are need based and they are typical

ly designed and focused on helping low and moderate income students. in my state of new mexico, about 40,000, the specific number i have been given is 39,875, but about 40,000 students will see an increase in interest rates if we do not take action before july 1. there are nearly 10,000 undergraduates at new mexico state university who will feel the effects of doubling rates, and there are thousands of students at the university of new mexico who will also see these increases. this is true of our smaller schools in new mexico as well. the school i was speaking at last week was eastern new mexico university in roswell. there are 222 students there who took out stafford student loans during this current academic year. the department of education estimates that the average student would pay as much as an

additional $1,000 per year for their student loans unless we can keep this interest rate where it is. not only would incoming students be affected, current students would also feel the increase as they originate a new loan for the new academic year. the additional burden on our students would be substantial. students and families understand the additional increase in costs. in the last few weeks, i have been hearing from constituents all over my state asking us to prevent this rate increase. one student from gallup, new mexico, wrote to me saying -- quote -- "give a break to the future of this country and to the millions of students and families who need the relief from the debt of college." another family in albuquerque wrote to me saying -- quote -- "i write to urge you to vote so that student loan interest rates do not go up in -- go up.

in this recession more than ever, people are depending on education as a means of gaining employment and at least in part by student loans." so our constituents are asking us to take action. by doing so, we can continue to provide students with stability as they enter and complete their education.h a high-quality educational system unleashes the potential of our students and we need world-class problem solvers and thinkers if we are going to remain competitive. by investing in american students, we can grow our economy and build the middle class. let's move ahead with consideration of this bill. if a majority of senators wish to change the way the bill is paid for, then we can consider that amendment. but we should not refuse to allow the bill to come to the senate floor for debate and amendment. mr. president, i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a

quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. barrasso: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. barrasso: thank you, mr. president.

mr. president, i come to the floor today, as we have week after week since the health care law has been passed, with a doctor's second opinion about the law that i have great concerns with. and i do that as a doctor who practiced medicine for 25 years, took care of families all around wyoming, was involved with a number of different programs aimed at prevention, prevention of disease, early detection of disease or early treatment of disease. so i -- i come to the floor today to talk specifically about a portion of the health care law that's been discussed quite a bit in the last week or two on this senate floor. congress has talked a lot about the so-called prevention and public health fund which is included in the president's health care law. and, you know, when i looked at this health care law initially and continue to look at it today, i continue to ask the question: is this health care law the best to give patients the care they need, from a doctor they want, at the cost they can afford?

and i believe it has failed in so many ways to do that, which is why i continue to work to try to repeal and replace this health care law. but when we get to the specifics of this public health fund and -- and prevention fund, the president and democrats have claimed that the purpose of the fund, the purpose was to promote wellness, prevent disease and protect against public health emergencies. well, all of us want to promote wellness, prevent disease, and protect against public health emergencies. i know how important those things are, as a doctor. i know how important it is, to the point that for over two decades in wyoming, i was medical director of a program called the wyoming health fairs, where we provided low-cost health care screenings to people all across the cowboy state. it's very important program and people continue to write letters to me over the decades, the fact that by going to a health fair, by -- by learning about -- about how to prevent diseases, by

early detection of problems, they feel that either they or members of their families have had their lives saved as a result of these services that were provided all throughout the communities aimed at prevention, aimed at early detection of problems. tests like blood pressure, p.s.a. test, people learning about how to examine themselves, how to get a mammogram, a low-cost or free mammogram, all of these things aimed at giving people information for prevention. and these gave people the tools that they need, the tools they need to make decisions about their health and their health care and not just the patient but also to help their medical providers. so i -- i come to the floor today to say that instead of helping americans prevent health problems, the -- the president's new law actually uses this so-called prevention fund as a washington slush fund. in fact, the new health law provided about $15 billion for this fund from 2010-2019, and

then beyond that, about $2 billion every year in annual appropriation of funds received to go toward this same slush fund. forever. $2 billion a year forever. who's going to control the fund? well, the secretary of health and human services. and even though this law has only been in place now for two years, we've already witnessed how the obama administration officials have allowed this money to be wasted. among other things, we hear of a health clinic using the funding to spay and neuter pets. that's right, to spay and neuter pets. another state's department of health used $3.6 million to create at least four regional food policy councils. and taxpayers are going to be happy to learn -- not so happy, of course -- to learn that their hard-earned money helped one

county in california secure a ban on new fast-food restaurants well, you know, i -- nothing against a food policy or spaying or neutering pets, but when the united states government is borrowing approximately 40 cents out of every dollar that we spend, when we have a national debt in the -- in the area of $15 trillion, washington should not waste americans' hard-earned taxpayer dollars. but we continue to do it and this fund is a key example. according to the nonpartisan congressional budget office, eliminating the prevention fund would save about $13.5 billion over the next ten years. the fact is, congress already funds many prevention programs, prevention programs with a proven track record of success. examples include cancer prevention, tobacco prevention, host of other problems.

so republicans have supported and will continue to support these critical prevention programs: cancer prevention, tobacco prevention, working on heart disease. however, the record is clear that the so-called prevention fund in the health care law is wasteful and duplicative. it doesn't help the people stay well or become well. now, senator alexander from tennessee has introduced legislation that would eliminate this slush fund and use the savings to maintain student loan interest rates at 3.8%. under current law, students who receive subsidized stafford student loans will see their rates increase shortly to 6.8%. now, unless, of course, congress acts, and i'm ready to act -- congress act, and i'm ready to account a. whether you're republican, democrat, liberal or conservative, people generally agree that preventing this rate increase is an important priority. the difference, is how do we pay for it?

the majority leader wants to raise taxes on small business owners. he says that is the better way forward. i disagree. there is a better way forward than raising taxes on the people who create jobs in this country at a time when we have over 8% unemployment and last month's job numbers are abysmal. only 125,000 new jobs created but almost three times that many people quit looking for jobs completely. so for every new one job, three people quit looking for jobs at all. so to raise taxes on people who are creating jobs in this country is the wrong way to go. senator alexander's proposal stops the rate increase, which we all want to do, by eliminating this prevention slush fund. his bill uses the rest of the funding for deficit reduction. and i've cosponsored that legislation. i think it's also important to know that -- that the president, president obama, has already agreed to use his slush fund to

offset other spending. in september of 2011, the president proposed reducing the slush fund by $3.5 billion. in february, part of the payroll tax cut signed by the president contained a $4.5 billion cut from his slush fund. finally in march, the president's 2013 budget proposed cutting the fund by another $5 billion. so it's -- it's ironic, mr. president, that the president of the united states and washington democrats now oppose using money from their so-called prevention slush fund. if the white house and democrats in congress really want to ensure the student loan rates stay low, they'll cut this wasteful program and use the money to help the next generations of americans. what we do know is that young people coming out of college today are, on average, having a debt of about $25,000, and whether the interest rate is zero or 3.4% or 6.8%, they are still coming out with a huge

debt at a time when we know 53% of people coming out of school can't find a job or can't find a job consistent with their level of education. we read that 40% of them are actually going home again to live -- to live at home, returning to home instead of going out into the workplace. so it's time to focus on the economy, it's time to focus on getting people back to work, and time to agree that we need to keep the interest rates low and we ought to pay for it with money that is there, that can easily be used and we shouldn't be raising taxes on job creators at a time with the country in this sort of economic condition. and so, mr. president, i continue to come to the floor week after week to talk about findings in the health care law, some things unintended consequences, some things money tucked away for other purposes, because it's -- i think it's hard for americans to ever forget nancy pelosi saying,

first you have to pass the health care law before you get to find out what's in it. and the more the american people find out what's in, it the less they like it, to the point that most recently, 67% of americans felt that the health care law ought to be found totally or at least partially have it -- totally or partially found unconstitutional as the supreme court looks to make their ruling in the next weeks and months ahead. this is a health care law that in my opinion is bad for patients, it's bad for providers, the nurses and the doctors who take care of those patients, and it's terrible for american taxpayers. and this is a time we need to repeal and replace this health care law, and now there is a way to use one of the provisions within it to fund and make sure that we do not raise interest rates for the students in this country so they can get the education that they need and find -- hopefully find a job and not punish those who are trying

to provide those jobs to these graduates. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. mr. kerry: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. kerry: mr. president, what's the parliamentary situation? the presiding officer: it's concerning the motion to proceed to s. 2343. mr. kerry: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent i be permitted to proceed as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kerry: mr. president, i -- i do want to speak for a few minutes about our colleague, senator lugar, and i -- i would ask that my comments be separated at this point. i want to make a few comments about what the senator from wyoming was just saying on the

health bill. so i'd ask that my comments be separated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kerry: mr. president, let me just say very quickly, i couldn't disagree more with the senator from wyoming's comments a moment ago with respect to the health care bill. and, in fact, just this morning, we had a meeting with secretary kathleen sebelius, who was outlining to us all of the gains that we are making with respect to health care in america as a result of the legislation. what's really interesting is our colleagues who keep coming to the floor and saying repeal the health care bill, repeal the health care bill, never offer an alternative to americans. i mean, i hope americans who are sort of buying into this notion that somehow the health care bill doesn't serve them because they're angry about one thing or another will stop and really take a look at what the health care bill does, because in point of fact, if you were to repeal the health care bill -- and they have no alternative to replace

it -- here are just some of the things that happen. number one, you immediately add $2 trillion to the deficit of our nation. $2 trillion -- bang, done deal. that goes right away because the health care bill is judged by the c.b.o. to reduce the deficit. it has savings, specific savings, in it. and if you get rid of it, those savings go away and, bang, the deficit goes up. that's number one. number two, 47 million, 50 million-some americans who have no health care, or who didn't have it before the bill, will return to the status of having no health care. now, if everybody in america thinks it's better to have 50 million-some americans walking around without health care who walk into a hospital or get hit by a car or have an accident and go to the hospital, they're getting care and everybody's paying for it but

they're paying for it in the most inefficient way possible. and so the burden is being paid for by people who have the health care. it goes into their premiums. it isn't shared by people buying their insurance and sharing the risk of getting sick. so all of a sudden you get rid of the health care bill, you return america to the days when millions of americans had no care and guess what happens when they have no care? they jam the emergency rooms because that's the only place to go to get the care, the emergency room becomes your place of primary care. they don't answer that question. they never deal with reality. they deal with politics, with ideology, and they throw a lot of baloney at people. the fact is that if you got rid of the health care bill, all those people who used to get sick and get a letter from their insurance company saying, gee, sorry to hear you have terminal

cancer but you're not covered, that's what happened all the time in america. people were thrown off of policies they've been paying for for years and all of a sudden they have no coverage. they don't answer that. then there's another issue: preexisting conditions. again and again and again people would be denied the ability to buy health care coverage because they had a preexisting condition of some kind. so if ten years ago you had cancer, even if you were cured of your cancer, they could either refuse you or charge you a whole higher set of premiums even though you were denied coverage, didn't get it. women who are pregnant applying -- oh, sorry, that's a preexisting condition, you're pregnant. we're not going to cover that. and so in america, we drove people into poverty for a long period of time because you had to sell your home, you had to sell down everything, you have to become impoverished in order

to get to a point where you might be able to get some help. what about kids in -- in school today? under the health care bill, if you're -- up until the age of 26, you can now be covered by your parents' program. it's not free, you've got to pay for it, but you can be covered by it. that would be eliminated. so all of a sudden you have a whole bunch of people who are automatically eliminated go out and fight to get insurance in the marketplace. what else happens? let me tell you what else happens. there are a whole bunch of reforms to the health care system that our friends never talk about. today, kathleen sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, laid out for us the enormous gains that we are making in medicare fraud. we're beginning to make huge savings for people. the average senior is now saving over $4,000 on their health care bills because of what's been put in place by the health care bill.

there are a whole series of things. i don't have them all here at my disposal now because i wasn't planning to talk about this when i came to the floor, but there are a series of reforms about how we pay hospitals, bundling the payments to a hospital, requiring greater accountability from hospitals. i mean, don't we want greater accountability from hospitals? that will vanish. that will be gone if you do away with the health care bill. we also have greater coordination of care for patients from the beginning of their private care through their admissions into their discharges what happens today is there's no coordination of that care and so a lot of people are discharged and the readmission rate is staggering because there isn't the coordination between their post-operative, post-surgery care and their primary physicians and the hospitals. now there are a number of different pilot projects in place to help coordinate that. similarly, we are coordinating

the care of what's called dual eligibles, the people who are eligible for medicare but also eligible for medicaid, and that care has not been well coordinated so we have huge duplication, enormous costs that we don't need and the results are a waste of money. all of that is being eliminated and/or reduced to a significant level. there's so many other examples, mr. president. let me give you an example. the senator was talking about wanting to take money out of preventive medicine. preventive medicine? we are told by the doctors, who are the experts, who deal with diabetes that if we had early screening, which comes by having health care coverage, we could eliminate an enormous number, maybe as much as $100 billion of surgery costs and dialysis costs

as a result of people not discovering that they have this this -- this ailment until it's too late for the treatment by the more -- more accessible and easier means, like there's some oral medication and other things you can do to deal with it but you have to get there at the early stage. if you get there too late, then you winds up having to do amputations of limbs or you have to wind up on dialysis, all of which are far more expensive. there are also -- there are also pilot projects in the health care bill for getting people to be able to take care at home and not be forced into a higher-priced care environment, like a nursing home or a longer-term care kind of thing, so that they can get the care at home and be in the dignity of their own home and independent

and obviously with much less cost. all of those things would be wiped out by this notion that you're just going to kind of get rid of this bill. and what this -- what this whole notion is built on was the early negative branding, very effective negative branding that took place wrapped around the so-called death panels and the other things, none of which are in this legislation. it's not in it. so this is political. that's why they call it obamacare not health care. they call it obamacare to make it a pejorative and to do their best to try to wrap it up in the negativity of the politics in our country today. and it's just -- you know, it's a tragedy, because it doesn't do justice to the kind of thinking that ought to go into and did go into this bill in terms of how do you do things that really create competition in the marketplace and allow people to be able to get better health

care. what's astonishing is we spend something like, i think, $15,000 per patient in america -- that's i think the average cost. there are countries spending half of that and a lot of countries spending around $11,000 a patient. and, mr. president, i am sad to say, they are getting better health outcomes than we get in the united states of america. the united states of america is not number one in health outcomes for the money we're spending in the system, and there are a whole lot of reasons for that and that's part of why this reform is so critical to our country. now, i could say a lot more about it. i'm not going to say it now. but i think every time we hear from people who are just talking now about how are you going to get rid of it, we've got to stand up and make it clear to people why this is good. a lot of americans have not heard enough about how this legislation works for them, works for the country, will improve our system.

is it -- is it the cure-all -- no pun intended -- of the health care system? no, i don't pretend it is. we'll have to do more. we'll have to tweak it. but it's a beginning step with critical components that take four and five, six years to put into place so that we can get the full measure of their impact. but i will tell you, mr. president, we have it in massachusetts. we have it now. and businesses are not complaining. in fact, we have one of the best economies of any state in the country. i think our unemployment rate is now down around 4.9%, 5%, somewhere in that vicinity. so we have this program, we've had it for a few years now. 98.6% of the people in our state are covered and it's been mandatory since the beginning and it's working. and it's beginning to bring down

costs in the individual marketplace. the premiums have gone down by something like 45%, 50%. so i think we have to look at facts, as we do on a whole lot of issues here facing this country today, rather than continue this silly, talk-past-each-other, completely contribed political ideological debate that is calculated to win power and not calculated necessarily to serve the best interests of our nation. so i hope we're going to engage on this over these next months, and i look forward to defending this health care bill because i think this bill is good for america. i think this bill, while it obviously will need some refinement, some changes, some tweaking here and there, has accomplished an enormous amount already and is on track to accomplish an enormous amount going forward. i think the administration has a much better story to tell about it than has been told and i'm

glad the president has said he looks forward to going out and talking to the country about it, because i believe that as the country learns more about it, in fact, they will say, wow, that makes sense, that seems like a pretty sensible thing to do. and our -- our opponents who want to just get rid of it have an absolute obligation to put the full deal on the table about what they're going to do in return. not just medicare, with the ryan proposal, which -- which, you know, makes it more expensive for seniors and undoes medicare as we know it, not just that part of it but the whole part of it. how are they going to cover the uninsured? what are they going to do to take care of all those medical institutions that are struggling to teach for the doctors of the future? how are they going to hold those folks in a way that continues medical education in our country and so forth? they owe it to the nation to answer those questions. so, mr. president, that concludes the portion of my remarks that i just wanted to make in response to the senator. and now in a separate portion, i

wanted to take and share a few thoughts this morning not about the results per se of the election last night in indiana, but i do want to talk about the consequences for the united states senate of the loss of senator lugar as of next year and particularly for the foreign relations committee. it's no secret that dick lugar's loss last night is going to be particularly felt by all of us who've had the privilege of working with him on the senate foreign relations committee, and that's whether he was the chairman of the committee -- and i've served under him when he was chairman -- or whether he's been a member of the committee and the ranking member, as he is now, and as i've privileged to serve with him. whether you agreed with him or not, whether he had the gavel or whether he didn't have the gavel dick lugar had an approach to the senate and to governing that was always the same. he was serious, he was

thoughtful, and he refused to allow this march to an orthodoxy about ideology and partisan politics to get in the way of what he thought was the responsibility of a senator and, indeed, the need of the country to have people come together and find the common ground. he dug deeply into some of foreign policy's most vexing issues, and his expertise on complicated issues that were honed over 36 years really can't be replicated. that's something we're going to lose. the institutional experience, the judgment and the wisdom of the approach on some of those issues, the constitutional questions that he would call into account when no one else would, the questions of not being stampeded by popular opinion with respect to the use of force in one instance or another. all of those are essential to

making this institution live up to its full capacity. already, since last night's news, we have been hearing again and again on some of the news shows and elsewhere about the senator from indiana's work on nuclear nonproliferation. and it's no secret that his nunn-lugar efforts have become almost shorehand for bipartisanship in foreign policy. and they should be recognized. but i want to emphasize here now, that's not all that senator lugar contributed to the -- to this field of foreign policy. he's a league expert on some of the urgent issue as that are -- leading expert on some of the issue as that are off the beaten past. from food security, the eradication of hunger worldwide, his work with joe biden, and then his works i'm privileged to say, with me to try to change the relationship with pakistan. and to help prevent their economy from unraveling, to help to encourage them to cooperate with interests that were vital

to america and, indeed, to the stability of that region. to establish what he called a deeper, broader long-term strategic engagement in pakistan. uma privileged to say, p -- i'm privileged to say, mr. president, for me, the personal journey with dick lugar began before that, and i think it epitomizes sort of who he is and why he'll be missed here. it has nothing to do with ideology. back in 1980, shortly after i came here -- i was elected in 1984 and i started on the foreign relations committee in 1985 -- right away we began to work together on the issue of the philippines, of free and fair elections in the philippines. and i had traveled over there a number of times as a freshman senator. i had met with ferdinand marcos. i was concerned about the torture taking place and the political prisoners and other violations of rights, and yet we

were sort of aiding them notwithstanding our values and our standards. well, dick lugar joined with me in that effort, didn't have any reason to join with a, you know, freshly minted senator, wet behind the ears. but he did. and together we sort of became a team that started to focus on the philippines and figure out how do we hold marcos accountable? and he was serious and he was fair-minded and i saw firsthand during our trip to the philippines, which we made at the time of the election, after we had done a whole lot of groundwork to set up an accountability system for that election, that he had a very personal and special understanding of what the united states meant to the rest of the world with respect to our values. and that cause animated this man, who we all know is dignified and reserved and

humble, but who proudly came back and recounted with some animation to president reagan the ditches tha difference thatd states of america makes when it gives voice to people's aspirations for freedom, and in this case particularly, the people of the philippines. the fact is that it was that discussion with ronald reagan and the results that came out of the accountability in that election that forced ferdinand marcos to leave, saw corey aquino come to power and the philippines come back to general democracy. last year we worked together on the new start treaty -- that was two years ago, i guess, now. his wisdom and patience was invaluable in laying out the case, particularly in building support across the aisle so that we could find the path to 71

votes. and i said then, and i say it again today, given the bitter, divisive, partisan, continual political squabbling that seems to dominate the life in the city today, 71 votes is probably the equivalent of the 98 votes we used to get on those kinds ofests. and so i --- --on those kind of efforts. and so i am grateful to his work on that. he gave members more time to work through problems, solve individual objections and it reminded me of the way you actually work in what is now sometimes, unfortunately, sarcastically referred to as the world's greatest deliberative body. he deliberated. and he helped us to deliberate. i thought it was one of the finer and prouder moments of the

senate in recent years. mr. president, i am confident that dick lugar's record on our committee is going to be one of those that's remembered for a long time. sadly, last night it is remembered in the context of senator fulbright who also came to lose a primary in the end and paid a high price for his concern about global affairs and his involvement with those issues. but i think that he's also remembered significantly today for his -- for the enormous legacy that he built about american foreign policy and how you make our country stronger. dick lugar does that, and i think he's made it clear. there's no towbt in the mind of anybody -- there's no doubt in the mientdz of anybody on our side of the aisle that dick lugar is a conservative. and his votes through the years have shown that. he is a proud republican.

but i think probably because he served as a mayor before he came here, he applied what we call the laguardia rule to foreign policy, which is the rule that laguardia applied to doing things in new york. it didn't matter, you know, whether you were a republican or democrat as long as the streets got clean, the potholes got filled and they didn't have any labels on them. and that's pretty much the way the foreign policy out to be. we used to say, politics ends at the water's edge. only in the last years here in the senate have i seen a complete diversion from that, where unfortunately, as has been true on both sides, that politics has entered into the choices people have made with respect to major issues of conflict, potential war and peace, and interests of the security of our country. so about four years ago this

time, dick lugar received the paul douglas award just off the senate floor over in the mansfield room. and he summed up his approach to the senate. and i think after last night, it's important for all of our colleagues to be mindful of his words and to think about them as we go forward into these next six, seven, eight months. dick argued that bipartisanship isn't an end in itself, and it's sometimes mistaken for centrism, compromise, when tsk i in fact s really the way of what he called being a constructive public servant, it is the way they approach their job, with self-reflection, discipline and gauge ifaith in the good will of others. particularly destructive is the misconception in some quarters that governing with one vote more than 50% is just as good or

better than government with 60% or 70% support. the problem with this thinking, he said, is that whatever is won today through division is usually lost tomorrow. the relationships are destroyed and the ill will that is created to make subsequent achievements that much more difficult. a 51% mentality deepens sinnism -- cynicism and depletes the good will critical to our survival in hard times. that's actually about as fundamentally, philosophically as conservative, i think, as you could ask for. i think every one of us who has seen the difficulty of the last few years of our politics here who have been frustrated by the sheer inability of the institution to work would agree that there's nothing liberal or sceivive or moderate -- or conservative or moderate about what dick said.

it's just common sense about how human nature works, about how people work. mr. president, it seems to me that we would do well to get back in touch -- i often hear people talk about how we need to change the rules here in order to get something done. actually, we don't. these are the same rules that we operated with when everett dirksen was here, when bob dole was leader, george mitchell was leader. in the 1990's we balanced the budget of our nation four years in a row without a constitutional amendment. it didn't take a piece of paper to tell us to do it or new words written in the constitution. it took the common sense and courage of people on the floor of the senate to do what was right. we don't have to change the rules. we have to change the thinking. or change the people who don't want to do it. every great moment of this institution when people look back in history with pride and point to the missouri compromise or point to henry clay or daniel

webster, all these great senators, or ted kennedy more recently and others on the other side of the aisle, when they do that, they're talking about people who operated by the same rules but found a common ground because they had the intelligence and willpower to put the country and its interests ahead of fg else. that's what dick lugar's loss last night means us to. i don't know who will replace him. we don't know -- we certainly know the cross-currents of some of the campaign and we certainly know what senator lugar chose to say last night about his opponent's quest for more partisanship, not less. so the alarm bells have been sounded, i think. my prayer is that this election this year is tb going to help pe this country of this incredible waste of opportunity that we are

living through here. now, this congress isn't over, and for those of us who were here and remember 1996, it bears repeating that even in presidential years, a congress can actually defy conventional wisdom and get things done. that's why i know that dick lugar is going to finish out his sixth term in the senate with the same determination and effectiveness that has marked every year of his service here, and he's going to have a lot more contributions to this institution that he reveres and that respects him so enormousl. thank you, mr. president. mr. durbin: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: first i want to thank senator kerry, chairman of the senate foreign relations committee for coming to the senate floor and speaking about our mutual friend, colleague nor dick lugar, who serves as the ranking republican on that senate fr foreign relations committee. i am a new come her to that

committee but i am not a newcomer to my knowledge of dick lugar. 16 years ago he was well-known throughout the mid-west for his service as mayor of indianapolis where he combined and made more efficient local units of government and i think the rebirth of indianapolis is attributed to those early steps by dick lugar. loretta, my wife and i, came to snow dick and his wife through an institute. i think we need to encourage where members come together to discuss foreign policy issues. dick lugar was there and always a major contributor when it came to issues of importance. before i arrived in the 123459 when you were still here, senator kerry, he teamed up with senator sam nunn to deal with an issue that related literally to the peace and security of the

world. what would happen as the soviet union crumbled to all of those nuclear weapons? would they fall into the wrong hands, would they fuel into disrepair? and what could we do about it? sam nunn and dick lugar stepped up and said we're going 0 work together on a bipartisan basis to deal with that. time appeared time again throughout his career, dick lugar has really focused on issues of strategic importance to the united states. and i can't agree with senator kerry more, he looked for a bipartisan approach to so many things. we always knew that you weren't going to push over anything ha n it came to dick lugar. he would always listen and he was always, always a gentleman. always. what a disappointment last night. once you've been in this chamber for a few year, you reflex on the lions of the senate who have come and gone, some because of the decision in the electorate,

some because of the passage of time and then fateful decisions. we think back on some of these great people, john chafee -- john chafee and dick lugar were soul mates in terms of their view on the republican side of the aisle about how you work across the aisle to get things dong. our mutual friend and your close personal friend, senator kennedy. senator kennedy's success has always reached across the aisle. and sometimes to the frustration of those on the democratic side who said, we've got enough votes, ted. we don't have do this. he would reach across. bob byrd who used to sit right next to where senator kerry is sitting now, you twhai will the senate be like without these great lions? it will go on. will we have learned from their example? will we take their life and career and build on it to make this a better snrais o or are we going to succumb to making this place more partisan, more

high-bound, more dedicated to obstruction than moving forward? i know that dick lugar in the remaining months will be an extraordinary servant of the people of indiana and the nation. i look forward to seeing him here back on the senate floor working for the remainder of his term. but it is a loss. it is a loss to the senate that he's leaving. and it is a sad day on both sides of the aisle that dick lugar won't be part of the future of the senate in person. but he can add to the senate and what it can bring. i'd like to speak about another republican senator while i have the floor. my colleague, mark kirk. some of you have seen the video. mark had a stroke in january. he wrote about it in this morning's chicago tribune. 52 years of age, the picture of health, a navy reserve officer, a united states senator from illinois, actively engaged in our state, going back and forth county to county, city to city. we worked together on so many things, and then on that fateful day he was stricken. and with the stroke, suffered

some very serious damage. i was a little bit disturbed when his physician-surgeon came out and said here's what we can expect. i'm not going to go through the graphic details, but they were sobering to think he would be limited in any way by the stroke. i was upset because i thought he doesn't know mark kirk. that isn't going to happen. mark is going to fight back. he is going to be back. and he is going to defy the odds in terms of stroke victims. yesterday he released a video. it is inspiring, and i hope that everyone gets a chance to see it. i'm sure it's readily available. showing him going through rehab. showing the efforts that he's making to come back to the united states senate. mark called me earlier this week. we've talked on the phone a couple times since his stroke. he's been actively engaged mentally in everything that we've done since the stroke occurred. but every day he tells me that he spends on a treadmill.

you know, miles and miles of walking on a treadmill so he'll be able to come back. i told him we're on a different treadmill here. i'm sure he wants to get back on it with us in the united states senate. but he will be back, and he said something that i think we all ought to remember. he said he asked his staff to count the steps from where he would park outside the senate chamber up to the senate chamber. they counted the steps, and they told him 45 steps. and he'd be back in the senate. and he said the day is going to come -- and i'm sure it will be soon -- when he will walk those steps. and there will be many, myself included, from both sides of the aisle cheering his return to the united states senate. so for mark, his family, his doctors, medical staff and all, thank you for this battle. thank you for your efforts, on behalf of our state. we look forward to your early return. mark and i have a joint town meeting, republican and democrat, every thursday morning. and the people sit there

politely when we discuss issues and love it whaoe disagree because we do it without getting angry with one another. he'll be back soon not only with those meetings but also covering the state of illinois as an effective, engaged united states senator. mr. president, i would like to make the following request on floor privileges. mr. reid or his designee on behalf of senator cornyn. mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that floor privileges be granted to caroline goodbody and amanda mandoza, two legislative staff members during today posts session. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: i ask unanimous consent the time between 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees and all quorum calls during that period also be equally divided. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the

senator from maryland is recognized. mr. cardin: thank you, mr. president. i take this time to urge my colleagues to allow us to move forward on the consideration of the stop student loan rate hike act so that we can allow the interest rates on student loans to remain at its current level rather than doubling, which will happen on july 1 unless we take action. mr. president, i come to the floor to express the views of many marylanders who i have talked to about the cost of higher education. we cannot allow the interest costs to go up. it will affect seven million students and their families. we already have too much college debt families have to incur as a result of the cost of college education. we are not competitive with the rest of the world. we look at countries that we compete with and we look at the cost of higher education in their country, compared to what our students have to endure, we

start off behind because of the enormous cost to a family to be able to afford a college education for their children. we know how important it is. you need to have a college degree in order to be competitive in many fields today. and that number of fields are increasing every day. well, let me tell you, we have crossed the $1 trillion mark in debt held by families in order to afford a college education. two-thirds of that debt are held by people who are under 30 years of age. here they are trying to start out in life, trying to have a family, trying to buy a home, trying to do things, and they start off with this large amount of debt. college debt now exceeds credit card debt in america. it's not unusual for a person graduating from a college to have $20,000, $30,000, $40,000,

50,000, $100,000 in debt and even higher. if we do not act by july 1, the interest rate will add to that burdensome amount of. the cost of college education in america is too expensive. if we want to be competitive, we've got to get the cost of college education down. the president in his state of the union address talked about ways we can encourage colleges and universities to be more affordable for the american public. but one thing that we can do is to make sure the cost of borrowing is not increased. that's why it's particularly important that we pass this legislation. it is affecting families' decisions as to what schools children will attend because of the high cost. we have -- we are just turning our economy around, starting to make our recovery. and now families are struggling to figure out how they're going to be able to afford college education.

we need to reduce the cost, not increase the cost to families. we need a trained workforce. we need to be competitive internationally. let me tell you one other thing that it's affecting. we have some very talented people who are graduating from college, and they want to go into the field that they believe they're gifted in, where they can make a real contribution to our community, our society, to make a difference, to answer that call of community service. that's what they want to do. but when they're saddled with this much debt and if it becomes more expensive to pay off of that debt, they have to make a pragmatic decision about their career path rather than following where they believe they can make the greatest contribution to society. that's what these large debts and the cost of paying off the debt is affecting our country. you might have a great researcher, mr. president, who can find the answer to one of our diseases as to how we can keep healthy. a person may want to go into

research, but they know what the return of research will be when trying to pay off their college loans. now if we don't act by july 1, that will even be larger. that's what we're confronting. and that's why it's so urgent. that's why we need to be considering this legislation rather than stuck in this filibuster. i urge my colleagues, let's move forward. let's be able to do what the senate should do. consider amendments. let's move forward. let's get this process going. i tell you, it is absolutely critical to our entire country, but let me talk a little bit about my experiences with marylanders. i've traveled the state of maryland. i've talked to a lot of our college students. i'll generally talk about a lot of different subjects and then ask what's on their mind. they'll talk about the cost of college education. they'll talk about the fact that we need more grants. they'll talk about the fact that we need more affordable loans. and they certainly will tell me that if you're going to increase

the interest cost on their loans, it's going to have a major impact on their ability to stay in college, on their ability to follow the career choices that they want to in life. let me just share with my colleagues two marylanders who have contacted my office who have contacted me in the last few days to tell me that this bill that we are hopefully going to be able to consider will have a direct impact on their decision. catherine ames, a 22-year-old single mother to four-year-old son jaydon. catherine has decided to go back to college to pursue her nursing degree and currently attends hey tkpwers town community college in maryland. she is attempting -- she is going to be a full-time student. catherine also works part time at a minimum-wage job, all while juggling her responsibilities as

a single mother. student loans are necessary. she needs to take out student loans. it's the only way that she is able to afford her college is by taking out loans. she has stones in order to be able to stay -- she has student loans in order to be able to stay afloat and realize a better future for herself and her son. if student loan interest rates were to double, catherine would be in a financial turmoil and her future aspirations in jeopardy. let me quote from catherine. i think it's so telling and hope my colleagues are listening. "i want to be able to close my eyes and see a bright future for my family and my son. however, if these interest rates increase, all i see from this point forward is a hole. i don't think i'll ever be able to climb out of it." some of my colleagues say what are we talking about, another 3% interest charges. people will be able to afford it. let me tell you about the real world.

let me tell you about the world of catherine ames. that's the real world. that is people who are making career decisions now as to whether they're going to follow their dream or not. she wants to become a nurse and be able to help our community, help her family and her herself. and we don't make college affordable, if we add additional costs to it, we're going to lose more people in this process. and as a society, as america, our competitiveness will all suffer as a result of it. we need to do better. we need to pass this legislation to help the catherine ames that are out there. let me talk about another marylander. ariana fisher who wants to be a doctor. she wanted to be a doctor since she was five years of age. through hard work and determination she's been accepted to georgetown university's medical school. attending will require her to take out a significant amount of student loans. that's the fact. most american families are going to have to take out loans if

they're going to be able to reach their dreams. she already knows how much this is going to cost. she says compounding this with an increase in interest rates hinders her ability to pursue her dream. she has the will and passion to become an excellent physician, and her aspirations should not rest on what we do here in making it more economically difficult for her to be able to afford that education that will not only benefit her, but will benefit our community. mr. president, we are talking about our children. we are talking about whether our children are going to be able to pursue the american dream, whether they're going to have the education they need to be able to help themselves and help our country. we are talking about america's future. this is about whether this nation is going to be able to continue to lead the world in economic growth. we need to take up the stop the student loan rate hike act that is currently pending.

but let me just explain, it's subject to a filibuster. yes, it's a filibuster. we tried to say let's at least get on the bill, which required 60 votes in order to be able to break this filibuster. and we came up short. i hope the majority leader will schedule another vote shortly, and i hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will remember what this means for the future of this country. the stories that i related with regard to catherine ames or ariana fisher are not unique. i'm certain you would find similar examples in new mexico, in any other state in this country you're going to find similar examples of people who desperately need us to act so that college costs do not increase. and then let's work together to bring down the cost of college education. college and postsecondary education is a vital gateway to helping students around the country achieve the american

dream. we need to stand up for our nation's future. we cannot allow higher education to become unaffordable for millions of americans who have the desire and the ability to learn and succeed. let's end the filibuster. let's work together as democrats and republicans. let's keep our future, america's future in mind. let's keep the american dream in mind. let's allow americans to be able to reach that dream by making college education affordable. let us pass the legislation that is currently pending that would stop the increase in the interest rates on college loans. with that, mr. president, i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from new jersey. mr. lautenberg: mr. president, today -- the presiding officer: the senator is advised that the senate is in a quorum call. mr. lautenberg: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that calling of the roll be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. lautenberg: i thank you, mr. president. we arrive here at a moment when we once again have a chance to view the differences in thought and perspective are exhibited in

this institution at this moment in this institution. today we're talking about college education. we're talking about preparation of young people, people to get an education, go to college. for generations, affordable college education has been an essential tool for providing opportunity and building a strong society. now, i know from personal experience that government plays a critical role in making hire education possible. i served in world war ii, and when i joined the army, there was no prospect for me to go to college. i was 18 when i enlisted and when i finished my army service

having been in europe during the war, things looked bleak, but there was an opportunity that loomed in front of me, and that was an ability to attend college. now, my family was a -- was faced with poverty, and there wasn't much money in the family, but there was something called the g.i. bill, the g.i. bill, government issued. standard meaning. it gave me the chance to achieve a dream. i joined with a couple of friends to form a company. the company is called a.d.p.

the company that prints or produces the labor statistics every month that this country and the whole world sees, that i was able to start with two other fellows. none of us had any money. the two of them were brothers. we didn't have any resource at all. we had to start with nothing. and in the days that we had the chance to get going, the future was brightened a little bit by the fact that an education was possible to have. that company that we started with nothing today employs more than 50,000 people around the world. and again, is the company that

supplies the labor statistics that we see every month, a.d.p. you see it on tv. the country invested in my generation by helping us pay for college, and that investment helped create decades of prosperity. as a matter of fact, that generation post-world war ii was called the greatest generation ever seen in american history. eight million people who served in the army out of 16 million got college educations through the g.i. bill, and thus this generation, it came up that started us on a track for prosperity that this country had never seen. the investment that the g.i. bill made in people sets when

you have a chance to educate people, to get them to go to college, to get them to attend the university is the way we create the next great generation , but attending college has never been this expensive. the cost of tuition at public universities is higher by 37% more than just ten years ago. think about that. the college ten years ago cost $40,000. it now costs over -- well over $50,000. and as a result, more and more students are taking on massive loans that will plague them for years. i use the word plague because it's very difficult to get started in life and business and family and be facing heavy debt

at the same time. 66% of new jersey students graduate with loan indebtedness. the average loan burden for new jersey graduates is more than $23,000. so no wonder we hear that technology companies are hungry to hire but can't always find people with the education and skills that they need. the price tag alone puts college out of reach for too many people. and the clock is ticking on even higher college costs. unless congress acts, interest rates on many student loans are going to double on july 1, less than two months from today. for many students, doubling rates will cost them a thousand

dollars a year more for each year of college, but instead of standing with students, our friends on the republican side are playing politics. now, they have made it clear that student -- keeping student loan rates low is a priority. they don't see it as something being worthwhile. two republican senators have introduced budget proposals that would allow student loan interest rates to double. and yesterday, we saw 44 senate republicans vote to prevent the senate from even considering our bill, from getting to work on it to keep student loan rates low. how heartless, how thoughtless it is to punish our country this way. college is already too expensive. why would we put up obstacles to

get an education? republicans should listen to people who are suffering from the high cost of college. 1,400 people have written me through mail or facebook to say don't let them do it, don't let them double my rates. a single mother from new jersey helping her daughter pay for college wrote to say that any increase would create enormous hardship and inability to continue to provide for the family. another new jerseyan says that america will not be able to compete with the rest of the world if college is accessible only to those who have the ability to pay for it. and i -- i agree. we will not be able to compete if we don't have the educated people necessary to fill the

jobs that are available. now our republican friends say they want to prevent the doubling of interest rates, so why don't they step up to the plate? i don't understand that. say one thing on one hand, oh, yeah, we don't want to increase the rates. on the other hand, we're not going to help keep them at the lower rate that they are now. they say in order to pay for keeping rates low for students, we have to cut vital funding for programs that keep people healthy, that provide answers for them when they're ill. or when they need help for their physical condition. their bill would slash funding for prevention and public health funds. programs dedicated to stop devastating diseases before they occur. chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, take

more than a million lives every year and account for 75% of our nation's health spending. but that's why prevention and public health funds has invested $226 million to reduce chronic illnesses. the president's budget also calls for using this program to protect women's health by providing breast and cervical cancer screenings to low-income women. but it won't happen if republicans continue along their way. the republican bill would also cripple programs that keep kids from smoking and help smokers to quit. and we've all see ads, the ads, real people telling real stories about how tobacco has affected their lives. we look at this chart and we say

don't be shy about telling people not to smoke around your kids. and we see a picture here of a mother and a child. republicans don't care about educating people on the dangers of smoking. who are they protecting here? certainly not our children and certainly not our students. it's unconscionable. republicans profess that they want to keep loan rates low but only if we sacrifice programs that protect children from smoking addiction and help women avoid breast cancer and other deadly diseases. the democrats have a better solution. the bill that majority leader reid has introduced pays for keeping student loan rates low by eliminating a tax convenience that millionaires and billionaires use to avoid paying payroll taxes. but rather than choose to close

this loophole, the republicans choose to take this opportunity to talk it to death. they would rather see interest rates double for students than force the wealthy to pay their fair share of the country's obligation. student loans open the door to opportunities. interest rates have to be kept low to protect graduates from a mountain of debt. mr. president, i call on my personal experience again, if i might. i finished college and my family -- my father had passed away while i was in the army. he was only 43 years old. he left my mother a 37-year-old widow to care for herself and my sister. and as luck had it, i got an education at columbia university

at the business school there, and started the company that i mentioned before, a.d.p. a.d.p. has 45,000 employees, provides services across the world. for those companies who need help in doing their payroll accounting and other recordkeeping that one must do. and it's had enormous influence on things in our country here, again, the a.d.p. produces the statistics that we see every month on job -- job billing, unemployment, average rates, hourly rates, things of that nature. and it only happened because i was able -- we were able to get our educations through the g.i.

bill. zero cost to those of us who served in world war ii, and even some money to pay for books and for other necessities. and so i call on my republican colleagues to stop -- stop the obstructionism, stop the politicking, stop throwing obstructions in the way of young people who want to get an education and make a contribution to the society as well as to themselves. and elevate america's ability to deal with the competition that we see in this cyber world. so it's time to do that. i'm not suggesting that my

republican colleagues don't want progress. they do. but when we try to move a bill that says keep interest rates low on college loans, keep it low so that when people get out of college that they're not so burdened by debt that they can't get started in life, i say keep them low so that america competes as it should, right at the top of the ladder with educated people, people who want to succeed, don't have the tools necessarily until they finish the college education. why put obstacles in the way? it's incomprehensible. because there are a lot of good people there on the other side. but why, why, they persist in obstructing the opportunity to even discuss it, want to

filibuster it to death, filibuster for those who are not -- who don't know what the term means, it means talk, talk, talk, talk. do anything but make progress. and so i hope that we'll say to those who have been successful, do your fair share. let -- let your contribution to the well-being of our country educate those who can learn and not make it so expensive, so out of reach that few will be able to take advantage of it. i ask them, please, let's move this bill along. let's let the american people at least know what you think about this -- this legislation to keep interest rates low. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. mr. enzi: first i would ask unanimous consent immediately

following mine that senator udall be allowed to speak. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. enzi: mr. president, i've been listening to these speeches for the last couple of days. three days, actually. and if you listen to the other side of the aisle you'd think that republicans were against college education. i don't think there's a person in america that believes that. it also -- you'd also believe that we want to raise the interest rates from 3.4% to 6.8%. there shouldn't be anybody in america that believes that, either. we really think that the rates for one year ought to stay at the 3.4% rate and maybe even beyond that. but the real issue isn't the interest rate and you can tell that from the speeches given. the real issue is the cost of college. are we doing anything about the cost of college? no. does congress have anything to do besides debate this

particular issue? evidently not. we're being called the do-nothing congress, but evidently we don't have anything else to do. it would be possible to go to something else but instead we had one vote on this, we still weren't given an option for this side of the aisle to put out a vote for their idea, and now we're going to get to vote on that same issue from tuesday once again, maybe sometime this week, maybe not till next week. instead, we're going to stay right on this issue that if we stay at exactly this point in this issue it will fail again. and then that side can say, oh, those republicans, they just want to raise interest rates. not true. but i hope that the american people have noticed that any bill that goes directly from the president to harry reid to the floor doesn't pass. a bill that goes to committee regardless of where the source

is, has a chance of a bipartisan solution. i'm the ranking member on the health, education, labor, and pensions committee and we have a user fee bill that passed nearly unanimously out of committee. and we have the support of the stakeholders, support of the companies, support of the republicans and democrats and we've even talked to the house people about it. that's a bill that ought to make it through here pretty quickly and i suspect that it will. and when it does, i'll bet you don't hear any comment about it because that would make us look like a do-something congress which is what we ought to be doing. you can't tell me that this is the only issue that needs anything done. but we're going to spend a whole week on this issue when both sides agree that it ought to be at 3.4%. what we're disagreeing on is how we pay for it and i got to tell you that the real answer isn't either side's answer.

but it could be worked out if it went to committee. now, i was told that this was going to be a bipartisan, jointly discussed issue just before we left for the recess. then this bill was put forward and no further conversation was allowed on it. our committee was left out of it. and we bring it to the floor where they say we'll have a fair and open debate. yeah, look at this. there are two of us on the floor and he's waiting to speak. he's not listening to what i'm saying. and there isn't anybody else listening to what i'm saying. well, they might be back watching the television and picking it up there, and i certainly -- i certainly hope that they are. but where you get the real discussion is in the committees. small groups of people intensely interested in the issues that come to those committees. and we work it out. senator harkin and i will get amendments a couple of days before the bills to be marked up in committee to find out what

everybody's ideas are for how it ought to be changed. and we sit down and we look through those and we say, well, look at this pile here, they're all pretty much the same amendment but people from both sides of the aisle that are interested in that. why don't we just get those four people or those two people or those five people together and see if they can't work something out. it's really surprising. they usually can come up with a few changed words that solve the problem that they're both interested in. that's the way you get things done. that's not the way we're operating. i'm on the finance committee. the finance committee is smoaft be handling taxes. let's see. how many markups have we had this year? i don't think we've had a single markup. we have not looked at a specific bill and tried to come up with a solution in committee. nothing has been assigned to that committee to finish. do you think we got any tax problems in this country? i think so. we keep talking about tax reform. but we're not doing anything on

tax reform. instead, we're talking about this interest rate on colleges, which is extremely important to the 40% of the students that have a sub sized loan -- sub decides loan -- subsidized loan, extremely important to them. we talk about the cost of college but are we doing anything about the cost of college? no, we're not. that should be disappointing to america. we ought to be covering the big issues. now, i've got to say that our committee did a bunch of hearings and i asked for those hearings to be on the cost of all college education. instead, what we did was beat up on private colleges and we did hearing after hearing after hearing and some of those were a little suspect because i know at least one of the people that were called in to testify, sells short in the market and was able to run down the private colleges and thus make a lot of money off of his testimony. that's not how it's supposed to

work. but we could have looked at all college costs and found some ways to drive down the price of college. but we didn't do that. so now we're standing here and saying those darn republicans aren't interested in the cost of college. how wrong can you be? now, we started this debate on monday, we voted on it on tuesday, and then we decided that we would reconsider the vote. that means that the pollsters said this is a pretty good issue for that side of the aisle and if they can drag it out longer, they can do better. that's not what congress is about. congress is about solving problems. now, there are two sides to this thing and in the debate earlier i said, well, if you'd just allow us side by side so you get a vote and we get a vote, we could move on -- get something done and move on. and the senator from iowa, senator harkin, said, i'd let us

do a side-by-side. the next thing i know, the media is saying, you were offered a side-by-side but you didn't take it. not true. we were offered an opportunity maybe to put a substitute amendment in at a future time maybe. that's not the same. that's not the same as getting the same kind of a vote on the same kind of an issue. and that's always what's been done. we've always allowed side-by-sides. but not on this one. we'd rather have the debate going on and try and convince america that both sides of the aisle are doing the wrong thing. so not only are we giving the impression that we're a do-nothing congress. we're giving them the impression that there's nothing for us to do. let's see, we didn't do a budget and we haven't done an appropriation yet, and there are 12 appropriation bills that have to pass this body and it takes at least a week for each appropriations bill. and we have the authorization bill for defense which we debate

each and every year and about a hundred other issues that need to come up here. but instead, we're not voting this week except the earlier vote on this particular bill and another re-consideration vote. and if you keep doing the same thing, you ought to expect the same kind of results. now, one of the reasons that we're voting against the bill that's on the floor, hasn't been to committee, it's got a lot of flaws in it. i mean, this is a poorly drafted bill. now, here's -- here's kind of how it works. we have said that dentists and doctors and other professionals that are in small corporations -- we're picking on small business here -- that are in small corporations are cheating on their taxes, they're not paying a payroll tax on their dividends. now, there is a law against that

and the i.r.s. can enforce that law and does enforce that law. and the examples that are given are times that they actually caught people doing that and enforced it and won. but to do an audit on this, it would probably take a maximum of 30 minutes of computer time to find every corporation that might be cheating on their payroll taxes. but instead of doing that, we're going to use it as a pay-for and we're saying it's only doctors and dentists and lawyers and accountants and other professionals that are doing this. well, there's a whole bunch of people that are small business corporations. small business corporations are an important way to finance small businesses. and it's a little less complicated than the big corporations. but we usually don't pick on them specifically and we usually don't separate them into

specific groups. this one is just the professionals, it doesn't cover the rest of them. and i asked the question earlier, i said, does that mean that you're saving the others for a pay-for for something else? you know, if there's a problem, we ought to solve the problem. but the problem can easily be solved by the i.r.s. by just doing the proper job of auditing, if that's the case. but theses these small business corporations are declaring that a lot of their profit is a. >> dave: den. now, here's an interesting part. the -- we're not talking about the income tax they're paying on that. they're having to pay the income tax. and unlike a big corporation, they're paying the income tax on their personal tax form the minute that it's earned, not when it gets distributed, actually distributed. and most of the small business people have to pay the tax on it but leave it in the business so that they can grow their business.

i've been there. i've had a small business corporation, and i know that while you'd like to take the money out, if you want your business to succeed, you've got to keep reinvesting, reinventing, reinvesting. that means you don't get to take the money out. now, if we were being fair, we would say that anybody that makes over $250,000 in dividends a year would include that as payroll toox -- payroll tax. in other words, this is another warren buffett thing. how many millions do you think that he makes in a year that come into him as dividends? now, if those didn't count as dividends, he'd have to pay a medicare percentage tax on every dime of that. that's what we're talking about here with the professionals that we're going to discriminate against in a bit. we're saying that anything that counts as a dividend for them, they're going to have to pay the medicare tax on. why just pick on the

professionals? why not pick on all small business? of course, small business is the job creator for the country so we shouldn't be picking on any of them. we should be making sure that they're paying the taxes they owe. but that's not what we're doing and we're saying warren buffett's a special case out there, even though we like to talk about a warren buffett tax every once in awhile but we're not going to in this case. so what we're really talking about is the tax that would be for social security and medicare and if they're really not paying that, they ought to be paying that. but we're saying that that's a good pay-for. now, how many times do you think that we can take the money that's supposed to go to social security and medicare and spend it on something else and hope that social security and medicare continue to exist? that's what we're doing here. we're saying we're going to make the money from the doctors and

the dentists and other professionals and we're going to make them pay a social security and medicare tax but we're not going to put that into medicare, we're not going to put that into social security. instead, we're going to give it to college students so that they have a reduction in their loan. now, it's kind of interesting. the federal government borrows their money at 2.1% maximum and they're loaning it out to college students already at 3.4% and the law says that july 1 it's supposed to go to 6.8%. where do you think that profit goes? well, we already spent that on other projects. that's why it needs to go to 6.8%, so that we can pay for what we promised we'd pay for. but when we do this, we still have to pay for things, so what we're going to do is we're going to take money that ought to go to medicare and we're going to

give it to college students. now, the -- so it's -- it's a dilemma. you know, we want to make sure that the rate stays at 3.4%, but this body debating back and forth here without getting any votes is not going to resolve it. and even if we got to do an amendment or two -- that's a big deal around here, you get to do an amendment or two on the floor -- we still wouldn't be able to resolve it because we wouldn't have gotten the people from here and the people from there together in a small group to work out a solution. that's what the leader ought to be doing. that's why you send things to committee. but we're not doing that. now, the other side has assured me that even though we're not putting this money into the medicare trust fund that the medicare trust fund will still have all of its money. let me tell you how that works, as the accountant in the senate -- and there are only two of us now. for 15 years i was the only one. but there are two of us now.

and here's how it works. when the money comes in, a bond is put in the medicare drawer that says that the federal government owes medicare that amount of money. but we go ahead and spend the money. now, they say, well, you know, this trust fund still has -- it's still intact. no, it only has debt in it. it doesn't have money in it. and i discovered that trying to get some money out of a trust fund once. they said, well, you can't get it out unless you put money in. what kind of a bank account is that? what kind of a trust fund is that? well, that's what social security and medicare are, they're a bunch of bonds in a drawer that the federal government says we're good for. well, the way we're spending, we may not be able to be good for that. people ought to be concerned about that. so that's -- that's where we are. we're talking about taking the medicare money and the social security money, putting bonds in a drawer, using the money and

saying that all's well in the world and everything is paid for. so our side has said, there's a health care slush fund and there really aren't any criteria set up on it. there's some broad categories that it can be spent on but there are no real criteria on it and it has more than enough money to pay for this. and the only person that gets to decide how that money's given out is the secretary of health and human services. and she has a lot of flexibility on that and a lot of money coming in, maybe at least $2 billion every year that will be allocated to that. and there's already money in that fund, as it started with more. and i think the estimate was actually $80 billion over the life of the health care bill. and the president himself has helped himself to that when we did the -- when we did the payroll extension, that's where

the money came from for that. so our side has said, why don't we do that again? you know, that's supposedly real money. but one thing both sides are doing, they're saying okay, we're going to freeze the interest rate for one year but we're counting revenue that's supposed to come in for ten years. now, how many people in america can say, well, i'm going to have this salary and i might have it for ten years but i need to spend it all this year? and if i spend it all this year, how do i live the other nine years of the time? that's what we're faced with every time we do a ten-year payout or a ten-year receipt of money in exchange for a one-year spending project. and we're doing that more and more and more. but again, under our accounting system, that doesn't go down as the same kind of liability and debt situation that increases the debt ceiling or increases the debt for the country, so it's a very clever tactic to use but it's not honest with the american people.

now, yes, i'm upset that we're spending all this time on this reconsideration of a vote that we had. when you don't make any changes, you can expect the vote to come out exactly the same. but it allows us for days to harangue on each other, and that's the wrong way to do it. i've asked the leader to pull this bill down, send it to committee, give them a limited amount of time to work on it and see if they can't come up with a solution that both sides would like and one that doesn't have a lot of loopholes in it. loopholes? well, when we're talking about these small business corporations for doctors and dentists, et cetera, we said that if they make more than $250,000 a year and if the small business corporation has three stockholders or less. now, i don't think they're cheating to the degree that they say that this money would come in. but if they are, i can see the

wheels turning out there and saying, let's see, i've got three people in my corporation. oh, my son isn't in the corporation yet so we'll make that a power to one. when we get the fourth person in the corporation, we're exempted from this. how much money do you think is really going to come in through that proposal? that's what can be worked out if it goes to committee. and i asked the leader to send it to a committee, give them a limited amount of time to work on it and see if they can't come up with a solution that both sides will like because both sides said the interest rate ought to be 3.4% for the next year. and then we ought to take a look at the cost of all college so that, as all the people have said, college is important. education after high school is important. we had one hearing on that in the "help" committee too. and when we were scheduled to have that, i was -- i make a weekly trip out to wyoming ask travel around the state so i goat talk to aa lot of people

and happened to be talking to some sixth graders. and i said we're going to have this hearing and the title of it is -- is education after college -- after high school important. and you know what, those kids all said yes. now, we had to bring in some people from harvard and stanford to convince us of that. [laughter] we could have been talking about the cost of college, which would get more people going to college. and not just college but some of the tech schools, too, because we're going to need a lot of different professions in the future years. so let's get this thing to committee and get it resolved and get on with some of the issues that we really need to be working on, some of the ones that are really big money, that really affect all of america, not just 40% of the students at about a cost of $7 a month. so with that, with that plea, i yield the floor.

mr. udall: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from new mexico. mr. udall: thank you for the recognition, mr. president. let me just say, i have been sitting here listening to my colleague, the senator from wyoming, and i think he makes some good points. i think we do need a more open process. i think we need to try as much as possible to work with each other in the committee process. i don't think there's any doubt about that. i think we need to allow germane amendments and have a good, robust debate on the bills that are on the floor. but the thing that i wanted to talk about today is the fact that we're in a filibuster, and

if 52 of us wanted to move forward on this bill and 45 of us didn't -- that's why we're locked in this situation. and i rise with regret today -- and there is of to r regret abot yesterday's vote on the student loan bill. first, i regret the false choice between helping students or funding preventive health care. most americans support student loans. most americans see the value of preventive health care. and yet my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would ask that we sacrifice one for the other. an affordable education should not be held hostage to cuts in preventive health care. this -- that is not a choice; it's an ultimatum. have we really come to this. we teach our children to set

goals, to set priorities. it's like a bus heading toward a cliff. we could turn it around and we ought to be able to do so without throwing students under it. the other side says they care about our nation's students, too. perhaps, but there is caring and then there is devotion. and once again there is -- their devotion is for the wealthiest among us and not for the 7 million students worried about how they will pay for their education. so back to choices. as any bright college student can tell us, it always comes down to choices. how do we protect the stafford student loan program? by further cuts to preventive health care? by weakening research to prevent disease? by cutting our response to public health and emergencies? no, of course not. we do it by closing a tax

loophole, by requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share of payroll taxes. mr. president, i would submit this is not and should not be a tough choice. but apparently it is. in fact, it's so tough that the other side doesn't want to talk about it any further. the result: yet another filibuster, which brings me to my other regret. once again this senate is broken, in limbo, stuck. once geng th again, the americae look on in dismay. the u.s. senate was once called the greatest dlikiv greatest dey in the world. now it reminds me of that song "the sound of silence," and no one dare disturb the sound of silence. that is what we hear more and more -- silence, no debate, no discussion. yesterday's vote was the 21st

filibuster by republicans of a democratic bill this congress; the 21st and the year is young. this ugly parade of tibbles, an- this ugly parade of filibuster, and for what? to not help local governments pay for teachers and first responders and to prevent a minimum tax on households earning more than $1 million a year, and now student loans, another filibuster, more sounds of silence. i have previously joined my colleagues and friends to push for fundamental renorms in how the senate operates. the reason then and even more abundantly clear now is that the senate was broken. this is tragic at a time when our country needs us to act, we

do almost nothing. it is no wonder that congress's approval ratings are at an all-time low. instead of working to solve the major problems that our country faces, we retreat to the shadows. in order to have real change in the process, the senate has to change the way we go abou about business. i have advocated and will continue to advocate that the senate at the beginning of each congress should adopt its own rules by a simple majority vote. the constitution clearly gives us this authority, and it's time to exercise it. yet at the beginning of each congress, the senate, unlike the house of representatives, does not vote to adopt its rules. the senate simply accepts the rules of the previous congress, rules that lead to the unfettered abuse of filibusters, rules that have made the senate a graveyard of good ideas. when we fail to reform our

rules, their abuse becomes an eentrenched part of the senate's culture and that is where we are today. after years of filibuster abuse, we have turned the senate into a supermajoritarian body. to do anything in today's senate requires 60 votes. yesterday vote on the student loan bill was a prime minister example. we can't even get on to the bill. 52 senators voted notif to move forward, but 45 senators filibustered. minority obstruction prevents majority rule. that's not democratic and is not how our founders intended the senate to omplet this has to change. a new congress will begin next january. right now we don't know which party will control the house, the senate, or the white house, but it shouldn't matter.

the senate must reform itself. regardless of which party has control, not for the good of the democrats or the republicans but for the good of the country. the senate will have many new members next january, and i think most of them will want to become part of a functioning legislative body, one where they can bring their best ideas and have them debated, a body where all views are heard and considered but majority rule is once again the norm. that institution cannot exist under the existing rules. and we continue to prove that on a daily basis. the reforms senator harkin, merkley and i proposed at the beginning of this congress had strong support but did not pass, and so here we are 21 filibusters later. and the line of americans who want for a congress that works that actually gets things done, that comes together to find

solutions, that line just got longer by 7 million students. several of my constituents have watched, as they've seen this filibuster proceed, and they've written me on my facebook page, and i thought i would share a couple of those comments because they real gli to the heart of -- they really go to the heart of what's happening on student loans. here tracy edwards writes me, "student loans are vital. my daughter graduates this saturday from unm. without student loans this day would not have come." her daughter wouldn't have graduated without a student loan. "in six months we will start repayment of those loans. i am not asking anyone else to pay my daughter's loan, but why should we be punished with an increase for trying to ensure our children get a solid

education? if a bankruptcy is filed, you could lose your home, your car, your credit, but student loans are mandated for repayment -- no matter what. is it too much to ask for a fair interest rate? i think the 1% will not be happy until it is a world of haves and have-nots. thank you, tracy, for that comment. donna writes, "i gray. my daughter is a single mother of three kids and working on her degree to teach elementary school. without financial aid, she will have to work for a minimum-wage job and get welfare indefinite indefinitely." thank you, donna for that comment. as we know, this issue is absolutely crucial to seven million american students who don't want to see just a couple of months from now those interest rates skyrocket -- i

believe the estimate is about $1,000 per student. they can't afford that. we need to get this bill on the floor. we need to cut out the filibusters, and we need to settle down and do the amendment process, do the debate, and produce a bill. thank you, mr. president. i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. coons: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. coons: mr. president, i rise today to talk about where we are right now -- excuse me. mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the proceedings under the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. coons: thank you, mr. president. i rise today to share my views on where we are procedurally here in the united states senate on the issue of student loan debt, of the interest rates that we charge those who take out stafford loans but also the larger question, of student loan debt and how we make the highway the pathway to higher education

for america's students clearer, fairer, and more predictment. education is not the filling of an empty bucket but the lighting of a fire. educateducating our young people is one of the most important things we do as a society. lighting the fighter of imagination, of enthusiasm, of creativity through education, particularly higher education, is one of the things that distinguishes the united states from many other countries around the world. we've long had an enormous advantage in having one of the world's greatest educational systems, but as you know so well, mr. president, in your home state of vermont, in my home state of delaware, there are so many working families who today deeply question whether their pathway towards higher education for their children will be as predictable, as fair, as straight as it's been for the generation past. when i meet with business owners all up and down the state of delaware, these job owners have

the same message. they're ready to hire people with the education and skills to compete and participate in the modern economy. so today with more than 12.5 million americans out of work, with more than 30,000 delawareans in my home state out of work, the question becomes, how do we make higher education, which includes skills training and vocational college, more affordabled and accessible? one thing we have to do is address the staggering debt that lingers with graduates sometimes decades after completing school. we're faced today, mr. president, with two problems, one short-term, one longer-term. the short-term problem is without immediate congressional action, student loan interest rates for millions of americans will double on the 1st of july. if we allow the rates on federally subsidized stafford rates to increase to 6.8%, we'll saddle student borrowers with a future additional $6.3 billion in interest payments.

this could impact in my state more than 18,000 student borrowers, burdening families who are still struggling to recover from the recession with unexpected additional bills. lots of people have contacted my office, they've called, written be, sent me postings on facebook, they'v they have tweeo contact my office and others about their concerns. a recent college graduate from delaware wrote, "i can confidently say that going to a four-year college has prepared me more than i thought i could for success in nigh job search. because of this education, however, and its costs, i'm facing $20,000 of debt, with only the potential of a lower-paying job. shalexander is concerned about e amount of debt. i fully support our efforts 0en this floor to fix this

short-term problem by freezing interest rates on stafford loans. so i'm disappointed that yesterday's yesterday, the failure to invoke cloarchtion the failure to get past a filibuster by the other party has prevented the senate from moving forward and discussing a possible, real list stuck solution. it is important for the congress to confront in rise in interest rates and i hope we can come to a bipartisan consensus. but let's be clear. even doing that will not solve a larger long-term problem. addressing this rise in interest rates won't change how much students borrow, numbers that are only steadily growing. just this week our nation's cumulative total student loan debt crossed the trillion-dollar threshold. $1 trillion. that is an enormous burden on young people just getting started in life in their careers. if we are to really address this challenge, we have to help students and their families make smarter decisions about financing their education. we can empower students to make more informed choices and fully

understand the relationship between the debt they take on, their choice of major or studies and their future career path by providing more and earlier and better information about this. financial literacy: a clear understanding of how or whether borrowing will help raise their potential later is a key part of the real solution to our country's ongoing and exploding student loan debt. we can say creative solutions that look beyond the obvious and work to make higher education more affordable. that's why i'm so glad i've been able to work with my friend congressman chaka fattah in philadelphia, pennsylvania, on legislation to create private investment for scholarships. congressman fattah showed tremendous leadership in crafting a bill to help more kids afford college education entitled the community to college tax credit act, the bill

encourages private donors to support and sustain educational trusts that make higher education possible to all the young people of a chosen community. these private donors encouraged by a 50% tax credit will help fund need-based college scholarships, fueling a new generation of achievement by making higher education more affordable and reducing the need for student loans. equally importantly, in places where these programs are already in place, like syracuse, it changes expectations when young people from the very beginning of schooling, from the first grade, the second grade, the third grade know that there is some possibility, some savings account, some community program that will fund their higher education, the likelihood that they will finish high school and go on to college increases by four to seven times. i support congressman fattah's innovative effort to support community trusts that support higher education. that's one idea for looking beyond the box and working to make higher education more accessible. here's another. the american dreams

accountability is a bipartisan bicameral bill to encourage partnerships between schools, colleges, nonprofits and businesses to develop secure, web-based individual, portable student accounts that contain information about each student's academic preparedness and skills. it also directly tackles the issue of student loan debt by working with students on financial literacy from a very young age. instead of having each of these different resources available as they are now separately siloed, it connects them across existing education programs at the state and federal level. i'm grateful to senator bingaman of new mexico and senator rubio of florida for joining me as original cosponsors here in the senate. this bill is a potentially powerful step toward helping more students of all income levels and background access, afford and complete a college education. it's rooted in my own experience with the i have a dream foundation, which has helped more than 15,000 young people all over the country to achieve the dream of higher education. mr. president, if we want american companies, american

workers and american families to compete and win in the global economy, we have to help our students afford higher education. it really is that simple. i look forward to working with my colleagues to find solutions that promote affordable, accessible, higher education because early action, he -- eary engagement can make it possible for them to achieve the american dream. it is my hope we can overcome this needless filibuster, yesterday's setback, and that all of us can come together and achieve what we say we want to do together: a responsible path forward that avoids needless additional burdens on working families trying to finance their children's education and that we can look seriously at these two proposals i've touched on briefly today that will help our students of the future understand and afford higher education to make their american dream possible. thank you. the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. mr. durbin: mr. president, i thank my colleague from delaware for speaking to some critical

issues. it is a shame that we're not in a position where we can consider your amendments, but as you know and spoke to in your speech, a decision yesterday by the republicans to go into a filibuster, which is what you are witnessing on the floor, which is why there's so few people and nothing really happening aside from some really outstanding speeches, is a decision which they made time and again. this was rarely used in the history of the senate. the filibuster. mr. smith goes to washington, some people remember that movie. the 1960's in the civil rights debate; remember that too. sometimes during the vietnam war, maybe. rarely used, but now it has become routine, commonplace. so that day after weary day people who subscribe to c-span on their cable channels are calling in to the cable providers asking for their money back because nothing's happening on the floor of the senate.

and whose fault is it? it's our fault. when an issue like this, the one that brought on this filibuster is explained to the american people, they shake their heads and say what are you doing in washington? here's what it's about. july 1 the interest rate on student loan debts through the federal government doubles. it goes from 3.4% to 6.8% unless we do something. so we have a bill we brought to the floor yesterday and said let's bring this bill in, let's debate it, let's vote on it, let's change so that we can protect these students and their families. let's change that increase back to the original 3.4%. what's it worth? for someone who borrows $20,000 over the course of college education, it's worth $4,000. if that's your son or your daughter or you happen to cosign with them $4,000 is nothing to sneeze at. pew did a survey of a working families across america, i say to my colleague, the senator from vermont, they did a survey

of families across america and they asked them a very basic question: of you, the working family population, how many could come up with $2,000 in 30 days? two thousand bucks because of an emergency in your home, something, a water pipe just broke, the furnace broke down. my daughter just went to the hospital. two thousand bucks. half. half of working families in america have access to $2,000. so what is $4,000 more in interest being paid mean? for a senator, not much. for an average working person, a lot. so what happened yesterday? we called this bill and said let's move to it. let's start debating it. let's get it done before july 1. we all agree we should. president obama, even governor romney said get this done. not a single republican senator would vote with us. not one would vote with us to bring the bill to the floor. that's why we sit here,

literally wasting our time and the time of taxpayers over an issue that we shouldn't even have to debate. i don't know about you, but, mr. president, but i had to borrow some money to go to school, and i borrowed it from the federal government. called the national defense education act. they created it back in the late 1950's, early 1960's because we were scared to death of the russians and sputnik, and we thought they could take over the world. they've got the bomb. now they're the first in space with this basketball-sized satellite. so we said it's time for america to get up and get moving, and we created for the first time in our history student loans available to non-veterans. we gave help to veterans, the g.i. bill, world war ii. but these were for non-veterans. i got one. i signed up for it. when i graduated from law school in the late 1960's, they added up all the money i borrowed, college and law school, from the federal government, and i remember the day when i brought the letter home to my wife.

baby in arms, another one on the way. and said my student loans have all been added up. she said how much? $8,500. she said, we'll never be able to pay that back. and i said, i know, but we've got to try. we've got a year before the first payment's due. my first job paid $15,000 out of law school, just to put things in perspective. now look what students are faced with today. you're lucky if you get out with the average indebtedness of $24,000. you're lucky. but for a lot of students that isn't even possible. they get more deeply and deeply into debt to get through school. and then they say, you told me to finish my education, so i would have a better life. realize my dream. i can't quit now. i've got to borrow some more money. i've got to finish next year and the following year or i've wasted it all. if i'm a college dropout, what do i have to show for it? no diploma, just the debt. so we asked families across

illinois to get in touch with us and tell us about student debt as they see it in their lives. we know nationally that student debt in october of 2010 for the first time in history surpassed credit card debt. people owe more money in student loans than all of the americans owe on their credit cards, and it's growing. dramatically growing. and when you meet the families, it sometimes is a sobering moment. i was at a college in chicago last week, brought up a student, lovely young lady, majoring in art, which my daughter majored in, so i have no problems with that. she's a great artist and doing well, thank goodness. but this young lady said i'm about to get my bachelor's degree with a major in art and my student indebtedness at this moment is $80,000. but i'm going on for a master's.

i think it will be about another $60,000 of debt. i'll bet she was 25 years old. and think about that. think about what she has just done to herself. first she did what she was told to do, get a college degree. then she got so deeply into debt, she is going to come to realize, sadly come to realize it's going to influence so many decisions in her life. will she ever be able to buy the car, get married, buy the home, have children? each one of those decisions along the way is going to be based on her student loan indebtedness. so is it right for us to keep the interest rate low on student loans? of course. why do we want to make it any worse for her or anyone else who borrows money after july 1? we should be doing this and we shouldn't be squabbling over it. we were sent here to solve these problems, not to go into filibusters. one more republican filibuster. i don't want to get partisan about it, but they didn't

provide a single vote. not one to help us to move to this issue. so on our web site, we ask families come tell the stories. i've talked about the young student. many of those students have parents and grandparents who sign up to help them. we'll cosign the note because we want our granddaughter, our daughter to finish school. let me help her. mr. president, about six weeks ago "the new york times" reported a story where a woman had her social security check garnished for student loans. no, it wasn't a loan she took out. it was a loan she guaranteed for her granddaughter. her granddaughter defaulted. they went after grandma. she now receives a smaller social security check because of the student loan and her goodness in helping her granddaughter. that is the reality of this debt. it trickles through the entire family. families that guarantee loans, when they're in default, mom and dad keep working well past what

they thought were retirement age. i have to say the more i watch this, the more i'm concerned about this student debt bomb that's going to go off if it hasn't already. i worry about what it's going to do to these families and i worry about what it's going to do to the reputation of a college degree. there are people skeptical today about mortgages. why would i take a mortgage on a home if the value of the home is going to plummet? that skepticism doesn't help us build homeownership in communities and neighborhoods. what if we reach the level of skepticism when it comes to education, higher education? so this is part of the conversation. let me tell you some of the stories. dwayne nelson from rockford contacted our office. dwayne's daughter went to a private college that cost $30,000 a year. she's been a file clerk for 11 years since she graduated from college. he wanted to help her but he lost his job in twupbs. he says -- in 2001. he said once you fall on hard times, your credit is no good

and bad credit means no good job. then he decided to go back to school to get his m.b.a. in marketing, still with no decent pay, he couldn't repay a student loan. so he went back to school so he could defer the student loan again. still he doesn't have a job that pays enough for him to pay off his loan balance and help his daughter pay her balance. mom and dad deep in student debt, still struggling to find a decent-paying job. sharon sykes from chicago tells us a story about his son. she lost her son before -- lost her job before her son started job. each semester the tuition went up. the major is in communication. his loans payments are about to kick in. he works as a cook in an irish p*ub. he makes enough for his basic expenses, food and keeping his bicycle running so he can go back and forth to work. she says she honestly doesn't know what he's going to do when

the student loan payments kick in. his state university tuition left the family with more than $60,000 in loan and he's cooking in an irish pub. sharon says she's in her 60's. nobody is lining up to give her a job. she had hoped to be able to help her son pay off his loan so he could get started. she said he deserves a chance to follow his passion without being saddled with years of debt. joe shakeley from rockford. jill started out at a community college. i think a smart decision. go to community college if you're not sure or at least want an affordable first year of college. jill started out at community college, graduated in 2002 and said she was going to pursue a four-year degree. shea didn't have any support from her family, they couldn't help her pay for it so she took out student loans. tuition was $26,000 a year. it added up quickly. she doesn't own a home. makes a salary that some would say is pretty small. she spends a large percent of her salary on her loans.

jill would like to go back to school but she can't take on any more debt. she is worried about how it will affect her future. she says keeping interest rates low will help students like her. who wants to argue against this situation? who believes that we ought to raise the cost of student loans? who thinks that's in the best interests of this country? in terms of encouraging young people to go to school and getting them out of school without a mountain of debt which crushes them. i mean, that's what this debate is all about. and the fact that we couldn't get one single vote from the other side of the aisle, not one to move to this bill to even debate it is a sad commentary. this senate chamber is supposed to be about deliberation, amendment and debate. at the end of the day, we put our fate in the hands of those gathered here and have a vote, up or down, win or lose. i know, mr. president, you have had some that won, some that have lost, so have i. but that's what it's supposed to be all about. instead, my voice echoes through

an empty chamber. the people who forced the filibuster, who stopped us from taking up the student loans are gone. not a one of them's here. last night i was one of the last speakers, and i looked over there to an empty side of the aisle and said of all the people who objected to our going to the bill, not sainl one of them is here. they are all out to dinner. that isn't right. i know that you have been pushing, mr. president, for some changes in the senate rules. it would strike me that if you want to stop the consideration of a bill on the floor of the senate, you ought to park your posterior in one of these chairs and be prepared to take on all commerce to explain why. and if you don't have the time or inclination to do it, then for goodness sakes don't start a filibuster. one of the rule changes that we have talked about says if it's that important to stop the business of the senate, just like we're doing now, you ought to at least have to stay on the floor of the senate to defend your position. is that too much to ask? that you don't go out to dinner, check in the next day to make certain that lunch is going to

be served on time? i think this issue gets to the heart of what our economy is facing, what families are facing and what the senate refuses to face. this republican filibuster has stopped us from taking up a measure that would reduce the interest rate on student loans from 6.8% to 3.4%. in my state of illinois, 365,000 students will be affected if that interest rate goes up. it isn't fair to them. it isn't fair at all, and it isn't fair to be stuck in the middle of a filibuster when we ought to be rolling up our sleeves and tackling this issue. now, the house passed a bill on student loans. just to give you an idea how there is a different approach to things. the house republicans are very little, if any, democratic support said okay, we will lower the interest rate on student loans and here's how we'll pay for it. we will take money out of a preventative health care program. in other words, we will reduce

childhood immunizations, and the money that we save by not vaccinating children, we'll use that to bring student loan interest rates down. how about that for a faustian choice? how about that for a deal with the devil? we'll run the risk that children will get childhood diseases and take the savings from that and help the kids who are in college. is that what it's come to now, your money or your life? that's the choice we have, that's all? i don't think so. why is it that the tax code in this country has become a sacred document? you would think that some people instead of putting their hand on the bible and swearing to uphold the constitution put their hand on the bible and swore to uphold the tax code, as it stands, without a word being changed. i didn't. that tax code is a law written by men and women, some of great intellect and some bowing to

special interests. our job every year is to look at it and see if it makes sense. the way we pay for the student loan interest rate to stay affordable is closing a loophole in the tax code used by accountants and lawyers to avoid paying taxes. they have made out pretty well under that provision for a while here. but why should they have that for life? are they now entitled to that? is this an entitlement they get for life? i don't think so. i think it's a loophole we can close, save the money and reduce sploans. not at the expense of children being immunized against whooping cough and measles. that's what it comes down to. the house seems to think, house republicans seem to think that's a pretty good tradeoff. i don't. let's at least debate it on the floor of the senate instead of getting locked in a worthless filibuster again and again and again. that's where we are. many of us have gone to our web sites, official web sites and invited people living in our states send us your stories

about student loans. i have read three of them here. i can tell you many more from those that i witnessed just this last week back in my state going from chicago to peoria, decatur, all points in between. the stories just come crushing in one after the other, and they are reminders that things that we do on the floor of the united states senate make a real difference in the lives of families across america. i said it before. i wouldn't be standing here today without student loans. the government loaned me the money. somehow or another, i paid it back. didn't think i could, but i did, hoping that the next generation could use that money to get their own student loans. it's part of kind of a trust that we have, one generation helping another. so are we going to let these students down? are we going to let this filibuster be the end of the conversation? i have listened to the republican leader come to the floor day after day and say oh, this is just a political stunt. where's the stunt? what it comes down to is we want to bring the bill to the floor and open it to an amendment

process. to my friends on the republican side, give us your best ideas, put them in amendment form, let's debate them, let's vote. we'll do the same. who knows? we may find some common bipartisan agreement and get this problem solved. we won't get it solved stuck in another filibuster, which is where we are right now. wasting the time of the senate, the time of the taxpayers and endangering a lot of families across america who desperately need our help. mr. president, i would ask unanimous consent to make another statement for the record here and place it at a separate place. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: i was in taswell county, which is peakin, in east illinois last week at the veterans administration and talked to vietnam vets and other conflicts. we talked about veterans unemployment, who was happening with disability payments and education for veterans, things that most vets are really

concerned about. they face some pretty significant challenges, as we know. we promised these men and women if you put up your hand and swear that you will risk your life for america, we swear that we will be there when you come home, just that basic. we have to keep our word. as a nation, we have a sacred pledge to take care of veterans who served. i take it very seriously. i think both parties do, and we should. we also need to honor those who have lost their lives. just a few weeks ago that they buried another soldier from that county. a huge turnout at the memorial service. one particular local resident was doing his part to honor our fallen heroes in an extraordinary way. i learned about him when i visited taswell county. he is from little york, illinois. he is known as the flagman. larry eckart is not a veteran and there are no service members in his family, but in 2006,

larry attended a funeral service for a soldier from his area who died, and he said you know what? there aren't enough flags here. so on his own, larry bought 150 american flags and started hauling them in his truck to military funerals all across my state. as he puts it, i just honestly don't believe there is any such thing as too many flags for a soldier. larry's inventory of 150 flags has grown to 2,200 flags, and he can line them up to 14 miles of a fallen soldier's final journey. traveling in his old 1999 ford van, larry stripped down to one seat in the van to make room for all the flags. he has now graced more than 80 funerals from wisconsin to kentucky and iowa to indiana and certainly in his home state of illinois. last year, larry drove 40,000 miles with his flags to these funerals. he covers all the costs out of his own pocket and a couple donations from friends.

when asked why he does it, he simply said it's my way of giving back. larry rarely uses the word "i". he is quick to praise all the volunteers by all the veterans organizations who helped him put the flags in the ground at all the procession routes. in one instance over a long weekend, dozens of volunteers helped larry install the 2,200 flags to honor a 23-year-old army sergeant during his funeral. after the service, volunteers helped pack up the flags for the next stop. volunteers ranged from kids as young as 3 it, assisting their -- as 3 assisting their parents to an 83-year-old woman who wanted to help out in orchardville, illinois. when she was asked her reason for weathering the tough january illinois cold to help, she said we can only bake so many tuna casseroles. mr. president, this story is what america and the state of illinois are all about.

it is this common man like larry eckart following his heart and taking the initiative to do something extraordinary for our fallen heroes, and it's about a community rising to the occasion to lend its support and honor those who deserve so much of our gratitude. larry may have said it best when he humbly stated -- quote -- "this is my feeble attempt to say thank you to every soldier who has ever served and fought to protect the freedoms that i have." well, this speech today on the floor of the senate is my feeble attempt to say thanks to you, larry, and the countless americans out there just like you who step up and do their part to show our veterans how much their service means to each and every one of us. they embody the enduring spirit and values that make america great and they make me proud to serve in the senate and humble to represent my state of illinois. thank you, larry, and thanks to all the other americans who are doing their part to support our veterans and their families. mr. president, i yield the floor

and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from california. mrs. boxer: mr. president, i ask that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. boxer: mr. president, yesterday i spoke on the floor about the democratic bill to reduce interest rates on student loans. and i was lamenting the fact our republican colleagues would not even permit us to turn to the bill, they were filibustering a motion to proceed to the bill which meant that we could no longer work on it. that's why this floor today is so empty. we should have been here working on a student loan bill which is

so critical to so many college students and their families across the country. the interest rates on these -- on these student loans, which are the stafford loans, the federal subsidized loans, is going to go from 3% to 6% and we want to get it back down. and this is important to 7.5 million students and their families. and when i concluded my remarks, senator brown from massachusetts took to the floor and he said he -- he expressed shock that i was concerned about republican filibusters and started to talk about how cooperative the republicans have been, pointing to a few issues where we have worked together. look, i am here to say that working together in a bipartisan manner on a few issues is fine. but we need to work together on a bipartisan manner on almost

all the issues that we work on here because the american people are counting on us. so because there's a handful of issues on which the republicans cooperated, let's not come down to the floor and say everything is perfect and republicans aren't blocking us when in fact they are blocking us. now, the democrats essentially retook the senate in 2007, and since then these republican filibusters have been off the charts. and don't take my word for it. listen to congressional scholars thomas mann and nor man ornstein. they wrote an opinion piece in "the washington post" based on a study and unanimous consent to -- and i ask unanimous consent to put this in the record, this "washington post" article. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. boxer: here's what the title of their piece is.

it says "let's just say it, the republicans are the problem." and they -- they explain that in the past they looked at the congress and thought both parties were to blame. but on reflection as they studied the facts here, not the rhetoric but the facts, it was republicans that are causing all the problems. here's what they write -- quote -- "the filibuster once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations." now, all you have to do is watch the senate or certainly when you're in the senate you realize that these scholars, mann and ornstein are absolutely right.

mr. president, in this congress the 112th congress we've already seen 48 republican filibusters. 48 times the republicans stopped us from doing our work here. but don't get the impression this was new behavior. because it didn't just start in the 112th congress, it started way before. in the 111th congress which covered 2009 and 2010, republicans conducted 91 filibusters, and in the 110th congress, 2007 and 2008, they conducted 112 filibusters. so so far this year we've had 48 republican filibusters, in the congress before that we had 91, and the one before that we had 112. mr. president, what companies does it mean? -- what does it mean? it means that in all those times, all those times, we

were unable to do the work of the american people. because one party stopped it. there have been more filibusters by the republicans in the six years since the democrats took over the senate than there were in the prior ten years. and i want to remember one of those times because i was sitting down there in the manager's chair coming out of my committee, environment and public works, with a near unanimous vote on a little program called the economic development administration. and this e.d.a. has been in place for i want to say 50 years. it's been in place for 50 years, 5-0. not 15. 50 years. through presidents, republican and democratic. it's a beautiful program, because what it does is it takes modest federal funds and it leverages state money, local

money and private-sector money. and it comes into areas that are having difficulty with job creation and invests that money there. and it creates as a magnet all of these contributions. and we have seen hundreds of thousands of jobs created as a result. so i come to the floor to get this little bill reauthorized, having come out of my committee with a strong bipartisan vote -- filibuster. i stood down there for five days i couldn't believe it. filibustering a bill that would create and save hundreds of thousands of jobs. we also say these republican filibusters when we tried to say millionaires should pay their fair share and that would have reduced the deficit by billions. oh, no, they couldn't even stand to have us debate that. they filibustered. they filibustered a bill to eliminate tax subsidies to big oil, big oil and gas companies that are making record profits.

and they're getting subsidies they've gotten for 30, 40 years. no, we weren't allowed to go to that. and then, of course, the most recent filibuster by senate republicans on this critically important legislation to cut interest rates on student loans. they're going to double on july 1st. oh, no, they wouldn't even let us go to the bill. and i just say, despite the protestations of senator brown of massachusetts, this has got to stop. he cited three or four times we worked together. i say good author -- good for that, i'm happy for that. that does not in any way change the fact that we face filibuster after filibuster. 48 times just in this congress so far. now, i hope every college

student in this country who has an opportunity is watching this chamber. this chamber should have been bustling today with people talking and working together, offering amendments so that we could cut these interest rates on student loans. and the college students and the high school students who want to go to college and their parents and their grandparents and their aunts and uncles ought to understand that this floor is not filled today passing this legislation because of a republican filibuster. what we do here matters. we could save students thousands of dollars on the life of their loan. these are student loans for the middle class. more than 75% of the borrowers in the program come from families with incomes below $60,000 a year. this isn't some fun and games. but my republican friends and

their presumptive presidential nominee want to cut taxes for people who earn millions of dollars. they want to give them back an average tax cut of $250,000 a year. a year. and they can't have it in their heart to lower student loans for families that earn $60,000 -- an average of $60,000 a year? so they call for permanent tax cuts for the people who don't need it and they block the way again for us to help the middle-class students just get a break. yes, i hope college students are paying close attention to this debate. and i know some of them from california are, the great state that i represent, because i've heard from some of them and i'm going to put their comments into the record at this time. delmita turner of rancho cordova, california, wrote to me

: me: "i'm a single mother of three children, 7, 14 and 20. my daughter, kendall, is in college and we had to get student loans to help pay for her tuition." she writes, "i am also in college and have student loans as well. an increase would put a tremendous strain on an already stressed budget. "she says, "even" -- she says, "after our family's suffered nearly every type of loss one could, including death, foreclosure, divorce and unemployment -- all in a year -- i decided to go back to school with the hopes of making life better for me and my family." now, how, i ask, american is that? we always strive to be better. now, here's a woman who went through death, foreclosure, divorce and unemployment within one year. she decided she's going to make life better for her family. she began working a year ago last december after being unemployed for two years and so she says, "please consider how this will impact so many of us."

so i am asking my republican friends, as we have another vote on this -- i think it's going to be tomorrow morning -- think of delmita turner of california and what this means to her. and then there's joseph brionas of san fernando, california. he writes, "i am a senior in high school and will be attending college this fall. my dad is unemployed and a cancer survivor, and my mom is working part-time. these conditions put a large stress on myself as well as on my parents to attend my top choice of college, westmont college." he writes, "we did not receive financial aid from the state and we have an immense amount remaining to pay for my upcoming educational years. we are going to be taking out student loans to pay for college. please do not allow the passage of the bill that will increase the interest on student loans. we rely on these loans. it is difficult to pay them back

for some students as it is. please do not make it a larger burden for students to go to college." so tomorrow when we take up this bill again, i hope my republican friends will stand down and think of joseph brinsa of california, san fernando, who is making a very poignant plea that he relies on these loans and he he -- it's going to be very difficult if the interest rates are doubled. then there's rachel zabavarela of san jose, california. she says, "increasing stafford loan interest rates only kicks students and borrowers when we're down. increasing student loan interest is another dirty trick to redistribute wealth to the top and it's disgusting and unacceptable. i want you to vote for students and vote "yes" on the bill." so, mr. president, that's just three stories from my state. i know in your state, your

beautiful state of oregon that has so many wonderful universities, you could have dozens of stories just like this clearly this is not a time to increase loan rates for students. and -- and this should not be a partisan matter. why would every single republican vote "no"? i guess it's their ideology. tax breaks for the rich, rich, rich, rich and nothing for the middle class. if anyone wants to know the difference between the two parties, this is the moment. this is the moment. you know, we used to be a little -- it used to be a little hard to her describe the differences between the parties when i was young. both parties stood here and fought for middle class. both parties fought for students. both parties fought for the environment. both parties fought for women. it isn't that way anymore. it just is not.

if we say we're here for the next generation -- which all of us say all the time in one way or the other -- then you don't allow student loans to double. you don't allow it. and we know how to fix it. we found a very simple way to fix it, a very simple way to pay for this, a way that makes sense closing a tax loophole doesn't hurt anybody. and so look at yesterday's vote. it was not good, it was not pretty. i'm glad that senator harry reid is going to give us another chance to change that. and i hope that my republican friends now are hearing from their constituents back home and i am hoping that when they come here tomorrow, they will cast a "yes" vote. let us proceed to this bill. let us do our work. let us stand for the people who need us to stand for them, the

middle class of this great country. because you know why the country's great? because of the middle class. and we need to make sure that they have the opportunity to go to college and not have this burden on them that's so heavy that it becomes too heavy for them to bear and pretty soon they stop going to college because they don't want to have that burden on their back. we have a chance to do the right thing. i hope we will. so let the record show these filibusters are outrageous, they're historic in nature -- we've never had them before, we've never had such a lack of cooperation from republicans before -- and it is a sad, sad several years where we have seen filibuster after filibuster, even stopping us from going to a bill. and tomorrow maybe we can come together and get on this bill and do our work. thank you very much, mr. president. i yield the floor and i note the

absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. rubio: mr. president, we're in quorum call, aren't we? the presiding officer: yes, we are. mr. rubio: i ask that the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. rube i've followed the student loan bill with great interest. there are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people who are on student loans who are paying them back. so it is totally an issue that affects the state of florida. i have a personal interest in the student loan issue as well. i think it -- i've said this on the floor before. my parents never were able -- they worked very hard but were never able to save enough money to pay for my college. so i relied on grants and loans, both for undergraduate but especially for my law school education. came back to miami to go to law school and i am glade i went to the university of miami. if they're watching, i'm proud

to have gone there. i think the education i got there, my legal education, was very good. it also happened to be very, very expensive and i relied on student loans to be able to pay that, so much so that when i graduated from law school in 1996 i graduated with a law degree and a significant amount of student debt that i had accumulated throughout seven years of studies. in fact, i'm still paying one of those loans today. i think -- i may be wrorntion but i know of only one or senator who is paying student loans right nowvment i paid about $723 a month to somebody nailed sallie mae,, who all joking aside, the service that collects on these loans. so it is an issue that i understand and care about, both on a personal level but also because of the people that i represent. it's also an issues, by the way, this week that's allowed me to maybe use it as a point of illustration to the people back home that are watching this debate. one of the questions i get the most after my first year here is, one of the questions that

people always ask me is, what is it like in the senate? i have i'm honored and privileged to serve here. there isn't day that i don't walk into this building and maybe this very room and not be taken back by the history that's been made on this floor, by the great men and women who have served and by the great men and women who are serving even now. i have bragged to the people i've talked to. i've never had a bad experience with anyone in the senate. and i'm proud to be a part of this institution. but the there are things that trouble me, particularly at this moment in american history and maybe this week allows us to illustrate that better than any other week since i've been here. everyone agrees that interest rates on student loans cannot go up. everyone agrees on this. there is -- there hasn't really been debate on it. i haven't run into anybody from either party who has said, let trt rate go up. the argument is simply this: how do we pay for it?

we have to pay for it because if we're going to keep the interest rates on these federally subsidized loans, if we're going to keep the interest rate down, we have to pay for it. we have to find the money from somewhere to pay for it. and so the debate really and the disagreement, to the extent that it is a complicated disagreement -- i don't believe that it is -- the disagreement is not about the student interest rates. the disagreement is about how do we pay for the cost of keeping the rates low for another year? there is a difference of opinion. i'm new to the senate. i'm not new to legislation. i spent nine years in the florida legislate tiewrdz and two years as the speaker. we dealt with complicated issues there as well. what we would do in those instances where there was a disagreement -- not on what we wanted to accomplish but on thousand get there -- is you work on it. you sit people down and say, it is not that much money in terms of federal standards -- it sounds crazy to pay that because we're talking about billions of dollars -- but from federal standards it is not that complicated anger. let's sit down, get some

like-minded people together and figure out a bipartisan way to pay for it, which we all agree we need to do. that is the normal, regular way to deal with an issue like this. that is not what's happened here. why? why are smarkts well chasted, intelligent people that serve in this chamber, why have they not met and discussed a way to pay for this? because it is not really a complicated. it wouldn't take that long to come up with a way to pay for it that both sides agreen p. why hasn't that happened? and the answer to that question is something people back home are not tbg to like, people that are here today visiting are not going to like it hear, and whoever is watching on television right now isn't going to like. the reason is, because that's the way things have been here since i've gotten here. it's about politics. shocking as that may be, there is politics in this process, and that's what's influencing this here today. a few weeks ago the president made a decision that this was an issue that he wanted to use.

his campaign and his folks a decision that student loan debt and the interest rate was a perfect opportunity to use yet again another wedge issue. the latest wedge issue, and you've seen a series of them -- the latest wedge issue is let's campaign on the issue that republicans are not in favor of students and let's use the student loan issue as an example of that. of course, those plans kind of got messed up when the republicans said we agree with you. we can't let student loan rates go up hearts. the president continued to travel the country and campaign on keeping loan rates down even though no one was against him. he was campaigning against his opponents on this issue, even though there were no opts on this issue. after a couple of days of figuring out, we are going to lose this wedge issue, they came up with a second way to deal with it. that is, let's bring this issue to a vote on the floor but let's build it in such a way, let's put a bill on the floor of the senate that we know will fail, that we know republicans can't vote on.

it wasn't, let's kind of meet and see where we can meet to pay for this. it's let's put a bill on the floor that we know republicans will never support so that we can then spend a week talking about this on the sunday talk shows and speeches on the floonders missives from the campaign. it is about messaging. and in a country where our national debt now equals the size of our economy in a country where we're fiv five-, six weeks away -- in a country where we learned that job creation is stagnant, where workers have been out of work for a year or longer, where are workers have stopped looking for work, the united states has waisted yet another week on a show -- on a show when in fact this is an easy issue for us to have come together and solved.

this is not new, by the way. this has been the moved oppose reagan administration -- the mode of oppose reagan administration here for most of the weeks that i have been in the united states snavment the campaign of the president decides on an issue that they want to use to divide americans. the senate offers up a bill they know republicans will vote against and then they spend a week giving speeches on it. the only difference is they're doubling down on this one. we're going to vote on the exact same thing a second time just to drive the point home. here is why this bothers me. number one, because there are real issues this country faces, issues that deserve a sense of gangs, issues that deserve every single person that serves here to solve them. this is one of them, by the way. we don't have time to waste on shows. it bothers me. the second reason why it bothers me is these are real people that are being impacted by this issue. there are real people out there, that because they can't find a job when they graduates, they've dot to get a forebearance, which

means they've got to call their lender and say, i can't pay. you know what happens when you get a forebearance? it compounds. they give you a grace period, but it compounds. the interest rate is added too the principal. and so by the time you start paying it, your loan is even bigger than the loan when you took out of college. there are other people that can only afford to make "x" a payments a month because they're not making enough money. maybe they didn't find the job they thought they would have. so all they can do is pay the interest on the loan. that means by the time they finish off paying these loans, their kids will be in college. and met me tell you what it means in the real life of someone that has a loan because i had these loans and i still have one. what it means in the real life of a person who has a loan like this is the following cloosh you can't save for your own kid's college. what bothers me about this issue is that instead of solving it, we have spent the week playing a

game with it, while real people are out there scared to death. real stints, real parents, real families who are facing the threat not just of this increase in the interest rate but of an economy that doesn't have a job for thevment you think the interest rate is the biggest risk that these people are running? it is not. the interest rate is a problem. not having a job is a catastrophe. the interest rate could be zero. if you don't have a job, how are you going to pay it? and that's the number-one issue facing these graduates. and no one is doing anything about it. now what i would suggest, if this was a place that was really working to solve problems, what we would have done -- what we would do right now is stop this process, go back there somewhere, get a few people that know how to solve this together. here's what else i guarantee you clierntion this is going to get solved. you mark my words. a few weeks from now they'll come up with a deal or a bill

that will have enough votes to pass the house or senate and this will get solved but not before we score political points, right? this will get solved but not before the people that care more about politics than policy score their political points on this issue. now, look, i've been around politics. i understand that there is an election year and election-year stuff is going it havment but why radio we playing with the lives of real people? these are real people that are hurting here and their lives and their experiences and their worries are being used as a pawn in a political game, and it's wrong. and i'll make another prediction to you. next week it'll be another wedge issue of the week. next week we'll be right back here debating another bill that was designed to fail on purpose so that we can give another week's worth of talking points on yet another issue. the good news is -- the good news is that people in this city, unfortunately, think they're smarter than they really are. people back home know all this.

they can see it for what it is. people aren't dumb. the american people certainly aren't done. they can see right through this stuff. and they understand exactly what's happening here. so my suggestion would be that on this issue let's come together, let's say this is one of the issues that is so important, that impacts so many people in such a significant way that it should be above politics. let's get together over the next 48 hours -- it doesn't sound like this place is overworked. if i look around the room here, what are we doing all week? what's going on all week? we voted on a few judges and we've given a bunch of speeches. why don't we go somewhere and get a group of people to work on this issue and come back with a solution. this can be solved. but what's going on now is a disservice to the people that sent us here. they deserve better. they really do. the american people deserve better, the people that we represent, the people that hired

us to do the job we have now, they deserve better than this sort of theater. the senate's become a theater, become a show. and that's why people get grossed out by politics. that's why people watch the news at night and just don't understand this whole thing. they have a right to be frustrated. they have a right to be upset. they have a right to be impatient with us, because nothing is happening on the issues that matter to their real lives. i hope this pattern will stop. look, i get it, there's still going to be plenty of issues that we're going to have an argument about in this election. that's good for our country that we have a good debate on the issues of the day. but on the ones that we can solve, on the ones that we agree on, on the ones that we tpwrae on that impact the real lives of real people, stop the games. let's get something done. thank you. i yield the floor. and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from new jersey. mr. menendez: mr. president, i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. mr. president, i cannot believe that we have come to the floor of the united states senate at a time of economic hardship and recovery for millions of families, a time when jobs are scarce, the need for a skilled workforce is critical and student loans are about to double. only to have those on the other side turn this into yet another filibuster, another capitulation to those on the far right of their party. those who are so far right that when they look back along the political spectrum, can see only the small image of their hero ronald reagan fading in the distance. they have gone so far to the right, they can no longer see any heroes, not even their own. and so here we are, mr. president, with our side

once again debating the obvious and the other side defending the indefensible position of the far right. we are looking for common sense, reason, and fairness. we are, that is, looking to govern fairly for all. they are looking to play politics that benefit a few. we are asking to stop interest rates on student loans from doubling for seven million americans by closing a gaping tax loophole that those who have benefited most from this economy can drive an "s" corporation through. my republican friends on the other side are once again saying "no." they are once again attempting to govern from the extreme, once again demanding that even closing an obvious tax loophole that benefits the wealthiest is an unacceptable govern

intrusion, but that ending preventive care for those who are struggling with rising health costs is the best option. can they be serious? can we be standing in this chamber saying that the most reasonable option to prevent student loans from doubling is not common sense tax reform but ending breast cancer screening for millions of women. is that the view from the far right of the political spectrum? i ask my colleagues on the other side, do you really believe that that's a fair option? have we run through all possible options to have reached a opponent where we can now say that the only arrow left in the quiver is to end preventive care as we know it. have we already ended all out raepblgs tax loop -- outrageous tax loopholes for the wealthy? have we already ended subsidies to big oil that will make $1 trillion over the next ten years, and yet we give them $24

billion of tax cuts? have we ended the bush tax cuts for the top 1% and now have no other option than to end preventive health care for women and for millions of americans whose health depends on it. unfortunately, it seems our republican friends have once again put partisanship and politics first. their budget prioritized tax breaks for the wealthy over keeping college costs down for middle-class families. and only when they realize that this wouldn't play well politically did they reverse course and drop their objections to keeping student loan rates lower because they said no, that's not the government's role. but then they said, well, okay, we'll climb on board with that idea, but only under certain conditions. rather than close a special interest loophole that only a small minority of wealthy businesses can exploit, they would rather cut funding for

children's vaccines, mack grams and other kreut -- mammograms and other critical services. this is the classic case of giving one one hand and taking with another, and all without asking the wealthiest americans, those who have reaped the most rewards and benefited the most, particularly in tax breaks they received over the last almost decade, to help the country. simply to help the country at this critical time. mr. president, if that doesn't tell you about the priorities of each party, i don't know what will. these preventive health services not only improve people's health and their lives, they also reduce the cost of health care. that's because it's a lot easier and less costly to treat illnesses when they are first detected, when women have access to affordable mammograms, their doctors will be far more likely to catch breast cancer in its early stages, when it is most treatable and least expensive to cure. when we give a child a simple

inexpensive my sells vaccine, we -- measles vaccine, we don't have to worry about expensive treatment for measles later on. when we help people quit smoking, we dramatically reduce the cost of treating that individual for a whole host of illnesses. the saying an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure could not be more appropriate to this debate. for a party that loves to preach about fiscal responsibility, it boggles my mind that they would fight to cut preventive care that will reduce health care costs but allow tax loopholes to stay open. republicans decided to make a target of these programs not because of substantive issues -- i would respect that -- but just because, plain and simple, they were included in the president's health care bill. and as we know, as the distinguished minority leader said, it's all about the feeding

the president. the problem is -- it's about defeating the problem. it's not about the president failing. it is about the nation's failing at one of the critical times in its history. they lost the health care debate in 2010 and they have spent every day since trying to refight that battle. now republicans will try to scare people into thinking that closing this corporate tax loophole will kill small businesses. that's the mantra we hear every time. but actually according to citizens for tax justice, they say -- quote -- "closing this loophole will actually help most small businesses, which are currently subsidizing the minority who abuse it and avoid paying payroll taxes." isn't that interesting. so most small businesses, they're out there meeting the economic challenge every day, they pay payroll taxes. but those who are taking advantage of this loophole do

not. it seems to me it would be giving small businesses a far better competitive advantage. let's be clear, the vast majority of small businesses pay their fair share into medicare, but this loophole affectionately dubbed "the edwards-gingrich loophole" has allowed certain professionals like former senator john edwards and former newt gingrich to avoid paying millions of dollars into the medicare program. technically they weren't wrong to take advantage of this loophole. we were wrong to allow it, for it to even be available. but enough about the details on how we pay for it, this debate is really about people, all about families struggling to pay for college. as the first person in my family to go to college, who had to rely on federal grants and loans to pay tuition, i have a firsthand appreciation of the

importance of giving all students the opportunity to pursue their dreams. for students struggling to pay for college and racking up debt, this is not an academic argument. the extra thousand dollars they'd have to pay each year is not theoretical money. it is the difference between being able to repay their loans and entering the workforce with good credit versus being overwhelmed by debt and going into default. recently i had the pleasure of having a round table and speaking to students from montclair state university in my home state of new jersey of how the interest rate would affect them. i heard from emily delgado, a first-generation american and the first person in her family to also go to college. she just completed her freshman year at montclair, and debts paoeut working for the -- despite working for the college as a student mentor, emily will still be saddled with approximately $20,000 in debt by the time she graduates.

and if she decides to go on to graduate school after that, that will rise significantly. she told me she can't even bring herself to calculate how much the interest rate hike will cost her, because in her words -- quote -- "it will just crush my dreams." nick webber works three -- not one, not two, but three part-time jobs to help pay for college. and despite these three jobs, nick only makes around $175 per week, which is about how much extra he'd have to pay in interest every month if we don't act now. ep doesn't think that's -- he doesn't think that's fair, and neither do i. a student by the name of jamie summer, who dreams of one day becoming a professor, works part time for the school, but her income hardly puts a dent in her debt, and she fears she won't be able to afford graduate school, will never realize her dream.

emily and nick and jamie and all of the other students who are struggling to pay for college deserve to be able to realize their hopes and dreams and aspirations. and it falls to us, all of us in this chamber to do all we can to keep those dreams alive. these students deserve our support. they deserve the common sense of a community that understands that we have to reduce the deficit, that we cannot balance the budget on the backs of the next generation, we cannot cash in on their dreams and let those with the most cash out. we need a fair solution, not political dogma. these students have worked hard. they deserve better. they're not asking for a handout. they studied hard in high school, got good grades, took out loans and got jobs to pay for college. they're working towards a better life, doing what every parent dreams of for their children, to do well, build a decent life for

themselves and their family, and give something back to their community and to the economy. they epitomize everything we want our young people to be, and all they're asking in return is fairness. not a political sleight of hand that helps them with their student loans, but in the process takes away their health care. all they're asking is for us to not make it harder for them, for us to not add yet another stresser to their lives. and certainly it is our obligation to not shut down their dreams of a higher education, for it is in their dreams for a better life that the economic future of this nation will be built. we are globally challenged. globally challenged for the creation of a product or the delivery of a service in terms of human capital. the boundaries of mankind have largely been erased in pursuit

of human capital. an engineer in new york is not an indian sent back at the fraction of the cost in new york state. if you have your problem with your credit card, as i recently did, you end up with a call center? south africa. in the pursuit of human capital for the delivery of service, we are challenged for the nation to continue to be a global economic leader, it needs to be at the apex of the current of intellect. the most highly educated generation of americans the nation has ever had. well, we cannot achieve that if we had students who have to forgo not only their dreams but the ability to help the nation compete globally by getting a world-class education. we owe them every chance to achieve their dreams and to help us make this another american century. isn't that the least that we can do? and isn't the choice really clear?

let's choose closing a tax loophole that is actually creating challenges to small businesses who are paying their payroll taxes, and let's preserve the preventative health care that will improve the quality of lives of our fellow citizens and at the same time save our health system hundreds of millions of dollars. i think that choice is pretty clear. it's a choice the senate should take clearly on behalf of our students of our future and of our country. with that, madam president, i yield the floor. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon is recognized. mr. merkley: thank you. thank you, madam president. earlier today, just a few minutes ago, actually, i was presiding where the senator from minnesota is now sitting. i was listening to my colleagues speak to this issue of interest rates on student loans, and i was particularly interested in

a -- in the speech of a colleague who came to the floor and said this bill is designed to prevent interest rates from doubling is all political show. the concept of it being a political show is difficult for me to get my hands around. quite frankly, the president didn't set july as the date that student loans would double in cost. that date was set by legislation that was passed here in the senate and in the house and sent to the president. it is the date just two months from now that is driving the urgency of addressing this issue. presidential campaign or no press dengs campaign. also, -- or no presidential campaign. also, it is important to recognize that this is not a debate at this moment about final adoption of a bill. it is about beginning the

process of debating the bill. it is the motion to proceed. and for those unfamiliar with senate process, while this is a motion that says this is an issue that because of the urgency should be on the floor now for us to work on and everyone here on this chamber knows that it cannot pass without 60 votes. so as the debate unfolds, people bring amendments, those amendments are debated, and hopefully a path is found that will produce the 60 votes necessary to send it on to the house and send it on to the president's desk. and so i differ with my colleague, a colleague actually that i have collaborated with on a number of projects, but my colleague sees this differently. he sees this issue as one of politics. i see it as one of urgent need in america for our students to have a chance to go to college

with affordable financing and that that affordable financing is set to expire just a few weeks from now and it's incumbent upon this body to take up this issue and find a pathway to prevent that from happening. i'm struck by the voices i am hearing from oregon. i was out doing town halls in oregon and people expressed this concern about the affordability of college and doubling of interest rates. i'm receiving letters from students about this issue and from other oregonians. this is really a kitchen table issue. this is the family sitting around the kitchen table and saying how are we going to make things work? is our child going to be able to go to college? are we going to be able to afford? we can contribute a little. hopefully our son or daughter will also get some grants, but you know they're going to have to borrow some money. and if they have a huge debt load and a really high interest

rate, wow, is that going to be feasible for them or will they have to take a year or two off? trying to find a job in the service economy or two or three to save the money to go back, realizing that money will only buy them less than a quarter of school, and then what? so that's why these student loan rates are so important. it's about the opportunity for our sons and daughters to have the course in life in which they are able to pursue their dreams and realize their potential. that's what this debate is about. that's a pretty big deal. it's certainly a big deal for students in my state of oregon and it's a big deal for the parents and it's a big deal for our future economy that needs to have our children here in america well trained in order to drive the success of that economy. but here we are facing the republican filibuster that says we don't want to talk about this issue because that's what a motion to proceed is.

are we going to debate it, are we going to not debate it? my colleagues across the aisle said no, we don't want to debate. i disagree with them. let's hear it through the voice of some of those folks on the front line. a sermon from noma county writes dear senator merkley, today i'm writing about student loan interest rates. i do not want to see these rise, even double, when legislation expires in july. please fight to keep these loans at a low interest rate so average americans can have a chance at an education, a better life without crippling debt. he continues, i was just accepted to the university of oregon's graduate program in architecture. i have applied for loans as i do not have the money to pay for this education. my husband and i will have to scrape by when i quit my job to go to school. once i graduate and find employment, i am confident in my ability to pay back the loans, but raising interest rates would make this very difficult to do

so quickly, adding $5,000 in interest to my five-year payback plan. please stand, she continues, please stand with middle america, average americans and support legislation to extend the low interest rates on student loans. kaylee from pope county writes to me senator merkley, i am currently a freshman in college. i have taken out a substantial amount of student loans in my own name to make my goal of obtaining a college degree obtainable. being 18 and having more than $20,000 in debt is scary, especially with the insecurity of today's economy. but i strongly believe that i am making a necessary investment to not only we are my -- better my own future but that of the u.s. society as a whole as well as generations to come. kaylee continues, as it stands right now, a college education is something that realisticcally not everyone can achieve purely from an economic standpoint, and the legislation to raise interest rates on federal

student loans would only make attending college all the more difficult for some. please do myself, my peers, my future children and their grandchildren a favor and help to keep student loan rates as they are. she concludes, help to make college more affordable for all people so more of our citizens can realize their dreams of higher education while simultaneously building a better country for future generations. doesn't that just sum it up, her final point here? help make college more affordable so more citizens can realize their dreams while simultaneously building a better country. i think she got right to the heart of it. caroline in benton county writes i am an oncology nurse presently working on my master's degree in nursing. like many others, i have student debt. if we are to have an educated work force, we must ensure that the high cost of education

doesn't leave students in financial ruin. that's the end of her letter. and indeed, the fear of financial ruin from heavy debt burdens and high interest rates is a significant factor in dissuadeing people from pursuing higher education. cynthia from columbia county writes if we expect to compete in a global marketplace, our children must have affordable access to education, exclamation point she puts on it. i have two kids in college and the debts we are incurring are already topping $50,000. is it right that only rich people can send their children to college? what kind of country is it where we can spend billions on -- quote -- independent security contractors in iraq and afghanistan but not on our own children's educations? she concludes please support a plan to stop student loan interest rates from doubling this july. i want to dwell on the point she made there for a moment.

we spent $120 billion in afghanistan last year on a misguided nation building abroad while we're letting nation building at home suffer, both in terms of investment in our infrastructure and investment in education. so cynthia wonders what is wrong that we are failing our children when we have billions to spend on misguided war overseas? atlanta -- alanna writes i am already working to pay off my student loans now, which is hard enough. now my family is trying to send my youngest sister to college and is finding it hard to afford and we are in the upper middle class. if we can barely afford an education now, how will anybody be able to do so if the interest rates go up? please support the plan to stop this. this is a critical investment in the success of our middle class.

well, i think that these folks from oregon, sermon and kaylee and cynthia and alanna, they have pretty much hit the critical points here. they may not know the finer points of senate procedure, but the fact that the good portion of this chamber is voting to block having a debate on consideration of this bill because the bill doesn't start in exactly the format they want to pass at the end is pretty difficult to explain. i would say to my colleagues who have come and said they don't like the bill the way it is, i ask you why not bring your amendment? the bill still can't pass in the end without supermajority. why not bring your amendment? why not collaborate with others to bring an amendment forward? now, there is a fundamental disagreement at the beginning on how we pay for this extension.

now, it wouldn't surprise anyone that i would say let's end this war in afghanistan, let's pay a third cutting down our deficit, a third on infrastructure and a third on education, including keeping student loans affordable. that's not the plan we're debating today. i would be glad to propose that plan if some colleagues would like to join me in it and create the supermajority needed to pass this out, but i would do so as an amendment after we're on the bill because that's the way the process works. you introduce a bill, you debate it, you amend it and you have a final vote. you can't get it done out of this chamber without a supermajority in the end. the bill as introduced says we're going to close a loophole that is a tax entitlement for the very well off. i have heard many of my colleagues across the aisle talk about entitlements for the poor. i would point out they should be equally concerned about wasteful

entitlements for the best off. in fact, they should be more concerned because one is a fundamental safety net for those who are struggling in an economy where there are few jobs. the other is a big bonus for the best off who are at the very top of society. doesn't it strike my colleagues that the safety net is better than the big bonus for the best off? well, my colleagues across the aisle have said no, no, no, we want the bill to start with our payment plan which is to strip health care prevention from children and parents. i guess they weren't raised with the same story i was raised with, which is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. it is simply better to inoculate children than to hospitalize children with whooping cough. it is better to prevent measles

than have children suffer with measles and be damaged by measles. it is better to manage diabetes than it is to amputate feet and provide guide dogs because folks have gone blind from diabetes. prevention is better than cure. an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. so i disagree with the plan to strip prevention as a strategy when we have options. let's take that money from nation building in afghanistan, let's take the money from bonus breaks for the best off in our society, those tax loophole entitlements. let's do that because those do not rip a big hole in the safety net for americans.

i come from a family, a working family. my father was a millwright and a mechanic. they weren't sure how i would be able to go to college. they were determined that i would go. they raised me to believe in getting education necessary to have opportunities in life. but they didn't have the money. and despite the fact that i worked a job in college, that wasn't enough money. and i got substantial grants, and that wasn't enough money. i had to take out loans. and i had to pay back those loans. and the interest rate matters. so i would say to my colleagues and your filibuster, come here as senators, present your amendments, debate this bill and if you don't like the bill in the end, vote against it, but do not block this debate on

an issue of fundamental importance to the success of our children. thank you, madam president. madam president, i ask unanimous consent that welcome carroll, a detailee in the senate help committee majority education office be granted floor privileges for the duration of s. 2343, the stop student loan interest rate hike of 2012. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. merkley: thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. madam president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from minnesota is recognized. mr. franken: madam president, i ask that the quorum call be vitiated --. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. franken: i ask permission to speak for 15 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered.

mr. franken: thank you, madam president. madam president, yesterday my colleagues, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle stopped the senate from reducing the enormous burden of debt that students take on at a time when college is more expensive than ever, this body's inaction would increase each student's borrowing costs by about a thousand dollars for each year of schooling that -- $1,000 for each year of college. and that is no small amount for most american families. that's because on july 1, the interest rate on new subsidized stafford loans is scheduled to double from 3.4% to 6.8%. we've been talking about this all day. the students who qualify for these loans are from middle-class and low-income

families and if the senate does not act soon, we will make it even harder for them to receive the education and training that they need for jobs in a 21st century economy. high school students and adults looking for new career opportunities realize just how economically necessary it is to attend college. in my generation, if you had a high school degree, you could get a good manufacturing job that paid decent wages and gave you health care and a pension. today, you need postsecondary training and strong computer and math skills to operate the equipment in most manufacturing facilities. but it's not just manufacturing. it's many of the fastest growing jobs in the united states, it's computer jobs and health care jobs be. a high school diploma simply

longer is a ticket for a job that pays family-supporting wages. and with an increasing number of jobs requiring some level of postsecondary training, we have a significant skills gap in minnesota, the state that the presiding member, the president, and i are proud to represent. 70% of the jobs in the next several years will require postsecondary training, yet only 40% of working-age minnesotans currently have a postsecondary degree. most of our states have similar skill gaps. the united states used to lead the world in the percentage of adults with a college degree. today we're number 16. if our nation is going to prosper in a global economy,

and continue to grow economically, we need to provide pathways for students to attend and pay for college so that we can close those skill gaps. now, a number of students are lucky enough that their parents can provide these pathways for them and help pay for college, but most other students have to work, part time, maybe even full time. i had -- the presiding officer will appreciate this. i had students from minskew board, top students who came to visit us. i'm sure they visited you, too. they're -- there were about 15 or 20 of them. they represent minnesota's colleges and universities. and i asked them, i said how many of you work at least 10 hours a week while going to college? all of them. how many of you work 20 hours a

week? most of them. how many of you work 30 hours a week while going to school? a lot of them. how many of you work full time, 40 hours a week, while going to college? a number of them. that's -- that's no way to go to college. and when you work 40 hours a week, can you take the full course of credits? maybe not. so maybe it takes you six years to graduate. so they are also taking loans. and often huge loans. now, we take it for granted these days that you can get a student loan. 50 years ago that wasn't true. students could get scholarships, but that was about it.

my wife's family did it on pell grants and scholarships. at least until 1957, when the russians -- or the soviets at the time launched sputnik and suddenly the soviets had nuclear weapons and were ahead of us in space and as a nation we were terrified. it woke our nation up to the importance of better educating americans and getting them skills that they needed to compete with the soviets, and that meant that more americans would have to go to college. i was 6 when sputnik was launched. my brother was 11. younger than the pages, a lot younger. my parents sat us down in our living room in st. louis park, minnesota, and said to us you boys are going to study math and science so that we can beat the soviets. i thought that was a lot of

responsibility to put on a 6-year-old. but my brother and i were obedient sons and we studied math and science and wouldn't you know it, my parents were right, we beat the soviets. so you're welcome. but to get there we had to put in place new federal programs to help average americans afford college. just the year after sputnik was launched, congress passed the national defense education act to help put america back on top. this was actually the predecessor to the perkins loan program and offered students low-interest loans to go to school with a preference for low-income students. this was just the beginning. soon we gave student loans to medical students, grate created a federal work study program and in 1965 created the guaranteed student loan program. this last one was later renamed

the federal stafford loan program. so we're talking about today, and made more money available to students to offset rising tuition. all this really because of sputnik. today, there are two main types of federal loans, subsidized stafford loans are awarded based on need and unsubsidized stafford loans are available to all students. the overwhelming majority of subsidized loans go to students from middle- and low-income family. the federal program was created to open the doors of higher education to more americans and provide them with stable, low-cost loans to pay for their education. and it originally did so to help americans compete with the soviet union. we may have beaten the soviet union but we now face new economic threats from rising powers like china and india.

and in our interconnected world in which it's easier -- easier than ever to outsource the quality of our work force matters more than ever before. so with college costs increasing, increasingly out of the means of many american families, in 2007 congress decided to help lower and motorcycle students -- lower -income students. the rates declined to 3.4% this past year. but because this program is so expensive, the 2007 legislation would sunset on july 1 of this year, and interest rates for subsidized stafford loans would double, going back up to 6.8%. now, allowing this to happen just doesn't make sense.

interest rates on mortgages and treasuries are far lower than they were in 2007. when no one had any inkling of the turn that our economy would take. no one could have predicted that we would be experiencing near-record low interest rates, and that it would make no sense to double them now to 6.8%. and, of course, the threat we face from global competition, it has not waned in the last five years, it's greater than ever. so with the july 1 deadline rapidly approaching the time to act is now. most high school seniors have already had to decide where they're going next year. now they're figuring out how to pay for it while students are wrestling with these tough decisions, it's not time for to us get in a procedural fight

here in washington. i'm hopeful that we'll vote again this week. to move the bill. and that this time we'll put our differences aside and represent all the families in all of our states who can use any bit of help that we can offer them. i'm glad to hear that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle agree that we should stop the interest rates from going up, and we agree that we should be fiscally responsible and pay for it. we just disagree on how to pay for it. i'm proud to have joined a number of my colleagues in putting forward the legislation before us with a responsible, commonsense offset. now, let me take a drink. i think we can all agree that if you're going to direct social security and medicare --

collect social security and medicare, it's only fair that you pay in what you owe. and yet some people have found a loophole that allows them to game the system using subchapter s corporations to avoid paying some of those taxes, some of their social security and medicare taxes, some of their fica. now, most small business owners are not only honest but incredibly civic minded and so they pay all the payroll taxes that they owe. unfortunately, a small percent of individuals have found a loophole. if you have an s-corporation, which is basically a passthrough, which means at the end of the year the profits are passed through to you as your income, if you have that,

whatever profits you make at the end are considered income by the i.r.s. they're income. so if you make $300,000 in one year, you pay income taxes on all of that. either way, on this -- you pay income taxes on all your income. here's the loophole. you decide, i don't know what i'm going to do. i'm going to -- i'm going to pay myself an artificially low amount, $40,000, and call that my salary and i'll pay fica -- you pay fica on that amount so that you can qualify for social security later on in your life. then at the end of the year you get the passthrough of the other $260,000. now, you still pay income tax on

all $300,000 because it's all considered income. it's not capital gains. it's still income so you pay income taxes on it. but because of an ambiguity in the way the law is written, you can avoid paying fica taxes on the $260,000. again, this money is indistinguishable from the so-called salary that you took early -- earlier. you could have paid yourself $30,000 so it could be $270,000 that you harbor from fica. all of this is active income you're making because of active work that you have done. it's not capital gains. so you should pay fica taxes on all of it. there's simply no excuse for not paying fica taxes on all of your

income. it's medicare taxes on all the income and social security taxes on up to $110,000. that's what anyone making $300,000 would do except for this anomaly that was accidentally written into the tax code. this is exactly the kind of loophole we should be closing. i hear all the time that we should be losing loopholes so we can keep the marginal rates down if you can't close this loophole , you can close any loophole -- if you can't close this loophole, you can't close any loophole. there is no reason that this loophole exists, there's no good reason for it, there's no purpose for it -- purpose to it, and there's no reason to keep it. it's an accident that results in people avoiding their rightful

obligation. so our legislation would close the loophole for those individuals making over $250,000 that's it. governing is about making choices and this one seems as clear as day to me. save millions of americans about a thousand dollars for each year of schooling on their college loans by closing a loophole, a tax loophole, that allows the wealthiest among us to avoid paying taxes that they should pay, avoid gaming the system. it just sounds like a no-brainer to me. instead, a minority of senators are stopping consideration of the bill because they object to closing this loophole instead.

they want to repeal a section of the affordable care act that supports prevention efforts. prevention efforts. they want to eliminate the provision that helps stop diabetes and other diseases before they occur, the kinds of coj i can -- kinds of chronic diseases that are driving our health care costs through the room. this is simply shortsighted and, frankly, fiscally irresponsible. but i am ready to have that debate, and let's have it here. let's debate different ways to pay for this legislation. let's stop this filibuster and proceed to consideration of the bill. let's work together to keep america on top and rise to our generation's sputnik challenge. millions of students are depending on us. this bill will provide some relief to those students.

millions of businesses are depending on us to give us the educated work force they need. this bill will take a small step toward helping them as well. it is time to act. i call on my colleagues to work with me to pass this important legislation. thank you, madam president. and i yield the floor. mr. brown: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from ohio is recognized. mr. brown: thank you, madam president. i ask unanimous consent to speak for up to ten minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. so ordered. mr. brown: thank you, madam president. i come to the floor to share some letters that i have received about the importance of freezing the 3.4% stafford subsidized college loan program. it's important because there are 300,000 students in my state alone in ohio, some 380,000, to be more precise, who are in the stafford subsidized loan program

and many of them will see as they continue their college education, whether it's at sinclair community college in dayton or youngstown state or hyram college, where their -- their costs are continuing to go up. we know the average ohio college graduate has about $27,000 -- four-year college graduate has $27,000 in student loans. that's much higher than people had a decade ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago when -- sort of when my generation was in college. the federally subsidized student loans have been a reliable answer for so many in my state and so i -- i'd like to encourage people to tell their stories. some of my colleagues in the senate are doing this also. but i would urge people in ohio to go to brown.senate.gov/collegeloan stor ies. brown.senate.gov/collegeloan stor ies and tell your story about how important this is.

the disappointment, madam president, is that five years ago, this was bipartisan. president bush signed a bill that many of us here sponsored in both parties, in a democrat house, a democratic senate but good bipartisan support, signed by a republican president to lock in for five years this 3.4% interest rate. if we do nothing, if we can't get our republican colleagues to join us on this and then do the same in the house of representatives to continue this 3.4% subsidized stafford loan, it's going to mean that come july, the average college student will pay about a thousand dollars a year -- will pay about a thousand dollars for each -- more for each year of college. and that's just unconscionable when college student loans are such a burden. it means that people that have these student loans and -- and -- that -- at this level simple when they get out of school, they're less likely to buy a house, less likely to start a family, less likely to start a business. so, madam president, if people will bear with me, i'd like to read four or five of these

letters that i've gotten on our web site. neck from beaver creek, ohio, "i'm a college student at xavier in cincinnati studying chemistry and biology. one day i hope through my education i might be able to make a stronger nation through innovation and technology. i would not be able to pursue an education if it were not for student loans from the government. on behalf of the future of science in this country, i urge you to reach a bipartisan agreement that would prevent interest rates from doubling. it seems that student debt is unavoidable for the average college student. it's already an expensive investment that shapes our personal finances for the rest of our lives. i ask that you in behalf of those who are already burdened by debt to find a way to reach across the aisle and stop interest rates from rising. i ask that you find a way to lighten our load. we would not forget that if you did that for us. we would greatly appreciate policy that opened up -- opens up avenues to higher ed for ourselves as well as for those future seekers of such an education." justin from cincinnati in southwest ohio, "i'm the first

person in my family to attend i'm on track to completing my bachelor of science in experimental scalg psychologic. i plan to to straight into a ph.d. program and the prospect of loan rates doubling is absolutely horrifying. i work full time to support myself. still have about $15,000 in student -- i still have about $15,000 in student loans, and that's before graduate school and before interest rates might go to 6.8%. "by no means does this compare to others who have much more in loans but allowing the interest rate to double is unacceptable and severely limits individuals such as myself. lower tuition would boost the number of students attending college, making life better for everyone." i don't suggest that everybody should go to college. i know everybody doesn't want to go to college. but i do know that people often need a technical education or a four-year degree, a two-year degree at a community college or a -- or a technical degree or a four-year degree at a liberal arts school, a state university, a private school. the choices in my state are --

are -- the -- the choices are huge. the number we have literally dozens and dozens of small liberal arts schools and four-year and two-year community colleges and -- and institutions of higher learning. students should be allowed, if they choose, to be able to have access to college. increasingly it's more difficult for students to do that. lori from west jefferson, ohio, "i'm a full-time working mother of three teenage boys. i'm a full-time college school at ohio dominican university in columbus. i certainly have $40,000 in student loans. i have one year to go before earning my bachelor's degree. by that time, my loan balance will be around $50,000. my oldest son about the time i finish college, my oldest son will be beginning college and the student loan process will begin again. he'll be the first of three children that we will put through college." i mean, listen to the definitive. she has decided she's going to make sure her kids get a chance to go to school right away. she didn't get a chance to go until she was older and

apparently -- i don't know her but apparently began -- you you know, married with children and has decided to go back to school and is completing her education as her children reach their teen or even mid or upper teenage. "low interest rates would help make this a little less of a financial burden for me and my family. i don't see how raising interest rates does anything but cripple those trying to better themselves." and the last couple i'll read, linda from centerberg, ohio, "we're grandparents of five grandchildren. we're a middle-class constituents who live in a rural area close enough to columbus to commute. please do not let the interest rate for the stafford loan increase in july. our oldest grandchild is preparing to start college in the fall. she's fourth in her class. she shows great promise. but our children are finding that paying for college is going to stretch their budget. please don't put a further burden on our grandchild by increasing the interest rate on the loan she may need to finance her future." these last two letters are interesting in that it just

doesn't affect a college student. this affects the parents, it affects the grandparents. it's important that this is -- you know, this is -- they don't -- they don't want welfare, they just want an even shot. they just want a break here and that's so important for this grandmother. and, you know, it really is -- people understand that this is -- this is going to help everybody if they get to go -- if they get to go on to college. last one i'll mention is carla from steubenville in eastern ohio along -- near the ohio river. "i'm very concerned about the raising of interest rates for student loans. i'm a mother in a middle-class family working to help put my sons through college. i don't expect a handout but i've worked hard to acquire my position as a teacher. my husband and i have exhausted our savings to pay most of our son's expenses. even with the support of subsidized and unsubsidized loans. i've put out over $80,000 into my eldest son's college. please, let's help those that help themselves. if not, then the economy's going to fail. -- continue to fail. the middle class will go bankrupt just trying to pay for these kids'