one enduring national security challenge, and then a series of crises. a number of these are likely to be more persistent than enduring. so that creates some challenges for strategy as you deal with enduring very difficult-to-solve multiple problem sets. some of you may remember in the late 1970s in the department of defense, we developed in response to the situation in central europe, an offset strategy to counter soviet military power and followed that up through the 1980s with a series of other strategies to reinforce that and bring an end to the cold war. as i look at it today, we need not just one offset strategy but a series of them to deal with these specific challenges. and the final point i want to

make is that also critical to dealing with these set of enduring challenges is the continued economic and technological leadership of the united states, which as former secretary gates and others have said, is national security imperative for us. now i would like to talk a little bit about the relationship between intelligence and national security. we always say it's the first line of defense. this time going forward, we really do mean it. the benefits that it gives us is it informs our national security policy. if you're the president and top advisers and trying to make sense of this wide array of challenges, intelligence is the first thing you need to have to understand the world in which you're dealing with. then for our operators and war fighters, our intelligence capabilities enable what we call intelligence driven precision operation. when directed by the president,

the intelligence community provides additional options in between diplomacy and the overt use of military force. these are very important, as well. then of course, a principle is preventing strategic surprise, very challenging today as we look forward. i would add one other point as we look at this. and that is intelligence is a significant source of advantage for the united states today. and it's an advantage that is very important to us, but it's also one that has to be used aggressively, but also prudently to make sure we're helping our leaders solve problems and not adding to their problems. of course, as you conduct operations, there's inherent risk in them. so the risk gained is something that we look at all the time and continue to evolve.

now i would like to talk about some investments we're making in capability areas to sustain this intelligence advantage well into the future. i have grouped this into five areas to focus defense intelligence and our integration with national intelligence on the defense strategic guidance that dr. hicks worked on so ably a couple of years ago i guess it was and the president signed off, and then our defense review which we just completed and soon to be released national intelligence strategy. i group our major priorities into five areas. global coverage, the ability to operate in denial environment, sustaining our capabilities in counterterrorism operations and adding to them in

counterproliferation. building out our cyber capabilities and strengthening our capabilities and counterintelligence and security. first, global coverage. this enables everything we do across mission areas.

associated architecture capabilities to go with it to have persistence we've never had before, so we can look at things for long periods of time and you can imagine the benefits that will give us. the second aspect that i believe will be revolutionary as we go forward decides persistence is integration. rather than having an overhead architecture, as debtee sapp described it, you can set individual systems with a supporting system we will have for the first time a really integrated architect, and there's tremendous benefits that come from that. we're working to strengthen our

analytic capabilities. and then our national level of defense human capabilities through an initiative we call the defense clandestine service. in the area of denial environment, this is associated with our rebalance to asia and to keep pace with high-end challenges. we're working on assured assistance and resiliency. that's about all i can say. at that point the third bullet is really kind of indicative there, and that is we're focused as a strategy on adapting some of the techniques where we've gotten incredibly precise and apply that to these higher end environments. in the counterterrorism area the

predator and reaper, the unmanned ariel aircraft unaffectionately termed drones have been the signature of our counterterrorism much as the improvised explosive device has been that of terrorists. it has enabled the most precise counterterrorism campaign in the history of warfare and it is our most effective instrument. we are very healthy in this area, but we are looking to make enhancements and some advanced sensors as well as extending the range of our second generation platform considerably. our integration between our operators and intelligence is another key advantage in both of these areas and something we're working to sustain as well, and

then back to the challenges chart. as the ct problem evolves and shifts on us, we're at a turning point not just in national security strategy but also in the counterterrorism arena, the need to rebalance and rethink some of the ways that we've done business, what has really worked, what is adaptable to the evolving threat, what is not, what do we need to invent anew? okay. on cyber capabilities, we're making significant progress in developing a cyber force to defend our networks, to support combatant commanders and to defend the united states if called upon to do so and the associated support structures to go with it, intelligence capabilities as you would in any new domain whether it's space, cyber or others.

key to making that cyber force effectively, and we've had a number of great sessions, including some here at csis, is really our partnerships with industry. our partnerships across the u.s. government with the department of homeland security and the fbi but also with industry in terms of particularly in the area of information sharing. and then finally counterintelligence and security. as a result of wikileaks, snowden, fort hood and the navy yard review -- navy yard attacks, and the reviews, excuse me, associated with those four incidents, we've taken significant measures to strengthen our insider threats whether it's workplace violence or espionage and are establishing an insider threat center going forward. we're also working with the congress and with opm and the

dni looking to shift our -- the way we evaluate people for positions of responsibility and security clearances through a method called continuous evaluation. if you think of rather than snapshots in times where you do an investigation and then you wait several years and you do it again, this is more a continuous stream like you do with credit checks, and we believe it will have a number of advantages. okay. let me conclude by talking about the importance of intelligence with integration. this was the focus of the 9/11 commission and there are four areas i'd like to talk about. some of this honestly pre-dated 9/11 and has been at work in the process of a couple of decades of work and then of course others have really accelerated since then responding to evolving threats. the first one is integration within agencies. the cia i knew in the 1980s is

not the cia of today, it is vastly more integrated. it produces big dividends by doing so. our intelligence agencies work much closer together. it's hard to find a case where a single intelligence agency has been responsible for a significant intelligence break through or operation. the bin laden case, the particular example of that where cia, nsa and nga worked in extremely close partnership to produce the intelligence case that we needed, and that really is the model going forward. director clapper and i have made it a top priority to make sure that our national and defense intelligence program are integrated and transparent to each other. we make a number of joint investments together. we depend on each other's capabilities to do our missions things that you would think of as tactical capabilities,

perform some critically important national missions and our tactical operations in the department depend directly on national capabilities. and then finally the partnership between the department of defense and the central intelligence agency is very important across the board in a number of intelligence areas and in capabilities. with that i'd like to conclude and i'd be happy to take your questions with dr. hicks. [ applause ] >> thank you very much, secretary vickers, for your great remarks, and good morning to everyone. i'm kathleen hicks. i run the international security program here at csis. you covered truly the waterfront, and i think it gives us a very rich conversation opportunity here with the audience. i'll turn it over to them for questions in a few minutes. there are a few things i thought

i would start with. there are two issues on your last slide. you raised one generally on integration, specifically ending on the d.o.d./cia piece. let me take the first part of that. we really have come in the time that you've been in your positions within the department of defense from 2007 to now from the world of trying to transition from need to know to need to share to i hope a culture of need to share. that was the intent. but now of course we've had a series of incidents that test that, snowden being the most recent. i'm wondering if you can give a sense of where you think the community is and where the community needs to be on this issue of how much to share, how to control information, have we swung too far or in fact do we just need to accept that there are risks that come with a need to share culture?

>> thanks. well, the -- we continue to have a strong need to share intelligence. our national security strategy depends on enabling partners. that requires intelligence sharing and to make the national security apparatus effective across the inner agency, both domestic and foreign, also requires a high degree of intelligence sharing while also protecting need to know. so in that vein we are modernizing our information technologies to try -- or information systems -- technology systems, excuse me, across both the i.c. and within the department of defense to try to strike a reasonable balance there between the need to

protect information and also distribute it. in the i.c. it's called icite, which is -- i-c-i-t-e, which is intelligence community intelligence technology -- information technology enterprise and in the department we're moving towards a system called the joint information environment. both are cloud based and will give us some security advantages along with other technologies. so in a way it's the right balance to be struck, but there are some things like bin laden had to be compartmented intensely as you know, others less so, but we can't really move back from the information sharing environment. we just have to do it more responsibly. >> then you ended on the d.o.d./cia nexus and that's an area where you have been particularly effective at

bringing the two agencies together. the president in his west point speech last week reiterated his call to transition more operations, more emphasis from cia to d.o.d. on the counterterrorism direct action piece. i'm wondering if you can speak a little bit about how that transition is going. he had talked about that previously and what the challenges are facing the department of defense as it takes on these missions -- these direct action missions instead some cases have been done by the cia. >> well, i don't want to go into much detail here. let me make a couple points. one, our assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism lisa monaco will be making a speech in the very near future as an update on what has progressed since the president's speech at the national defense university last may and so i don't want to steal her thunder.

i'll leave that to her. also suffice it to say, we have been working since last may and actually before to implement the president's guidance. d.o.d. does precision counterterrorism operations and make sure we have a counterterrorism department across i.c. to meet the president's needs. >> that's good. let me stick with isr moving beyond -- not necessarily unmanned but isr in general. i think you made a compelling argument for an environment as diffuse in its threats and unpredictable in its threats, we can talk about ukraine and

others, but the pressure on isr in that kind of environment is incredibly intense. you alluded to the flat budget. the budget environment is not conducive to a great deal of increased investment in many areas. how well do you think isr fares in that budget environment? and are there areas of particular concern that you have in terms of how we make sure the entire intelligence enterprise is well resourced? >> sure. so as secretary hagel made clear in the quadrienniel review, areas of key focus for him is intelligence surveillance reconnaissance, cyber, special operations forces so we have the priority we believe it requires. that said, as you know, we have to be very focused on our investments and what we prioritize and so in isr or in other capability areas, undersea warfare, long range strike bomber, et cetera, we are

focusing on a critical set of investments that are critical to our asia rebalance. those have been protected in the department. as well as the continuing capabilities we'll need for the counterterrorism problem and the instability across the greater middle east and then the cyber challenges. and so that's why a group of capabilities areas that we have. one of the challenges that we face in isr but really across the department i would say is that now more than ever you have to have an intelligence portfolio approach to investment. you may recall with the different national security challenges we faced in the 1990s, one could think about a joint force that had capabilities that could stretch

either right or left if necessary. we've long since been -- thanks to your leadership, we've long since abandoned that notion in the department so we carefully adopt across the spectrum of challenges we've had a series of target investments in each area, more of an outside in approach, a high end, low end and see what meets in the middle and that seems to be the best way to meet our national security challenges now. with flat and declining budgets it remains a challenge. >> let me press you slightly harder on that. are there areas on the intelligence side that are particularly worrisome to you? i'll give you a complete hypothetical but maybe this is one, you know, growing the required human in the right area with the right language skills and diffusion skills, are there areas that we should be thinking about as a country as we move further into the 21st century on the intelligence side? >> sure.

so for some of these investments, they depend on either technological advances or making sure significant resources are provided for some of our global coverage and anti-axis aerial denial capabilities. for others, it is really more about human capital. it's not a big budget issue as it is a professionalization, language, training, posture, integration, a number of things that take time to transform a force but, you know, it's more in the softer side of business but no less hard because you're changing institutions from one to another. and then in cyber, very, very evolving field and developing the capabilities but then they

depend on other capabilities as well. then also they depend on public/private partnerships. in each case there's a critical dependency that's different, however, in these capability areas so those are the challenges that i try to wrestle to the ground with director clapper. >> okay. let me just ask one more question and then i'll turn it over to the audience. i know we have a lot of folks here who are ready to test your knowledge base across the breadth of what the department is doing, what the intelligence community is doing. let me ask you an obvious question about ukraine. you know, how well prepared do you think the intelligence community was to see russian intent in terms of the annexation of crimea in particular? and, you know, are we now refocusing energy on russia as a result of that action and subsequent activity by russia? >> so i guess i would answer that that, you know, russia's a

complex intelligence challenge and it's something that we have been working since the end of the cold war in the intervening decades but it has been triggered really by -- there's been spikes because of buildup to crises or actual crises. so, for example, the invasion of georgia in 2008 and then -- and then most recently ukraine. the invasion of crimea was done very suddenly and so as director clapper and others have said, the intelligence community did a pretty good job of providing overall warning to the magnitude of the problem but there's things we could always do better in certain areas.

you know, we're very good with once confronted with a crisis in responding to it getting better and better so we've continued to improve the crisis has shifted to, you know, what i described as unconventional warfare in eastern ukraine. and then, you know, the next part of the challenge, which you alluded to in your resource question, is really the longer term challenge posed by this significant change in russian behavior and how we adapt the community to it. so we're in -- you know, it's a work in progress but it's definitely on leaders' radar screens. >> okay. i've left large swathes of the world uncovered so i'm sure we'll have questions on those. i see one all the way over here. please when you ask your questions, state your name and your affiliation. >> hi. thank you for being here today. my name's christine vargason.

i've just returned from egypt as a monitor for democracy international. my question is from a dia defense standpoint. how are you involving policies for intelligence sharing for key international partners especially those with challenging transitions on their hands? >> well, our -- our intelligence sharing is usually done almost always on a bilateral basis, and it is tailored to the specific requirements of that partner and we do it -- our individual agencies, depending on the case, may have relationships with counterparts in a given country, but we do this on an integrated fashion -- approach, what we

call the director of national intelligence representatives. so we funnel both our military intelligence as well as the various forms by our national agencies through this one conduit to a national -- or to an international partner and that applies in egypt's case as well as others. >> we have one right here. >> thank you. i'm from georgia. you mentioned as one of the challenges the russians. i like this role because it largely describes the mood in russia. it's much wider than the ukraine. my question is -- your assessment.

what is the scale -- the geographic scale of the russian -- and where are the areas you anticipate crisis? thank you. >> well, that's why i had that broader challenge of ravanchism rather than russia/ukraine on the slide. i think there are a number of challenges. there is -- you know, as we saw in georgia in 2008 and ukraine most recently on the border and in crimea, there's a power projection challenge in what russia calls its near abroad and former soviet union but then there is also a panoply of other influence names and

unconventional threats that range from energy coercion to cyber to unconventional warfare as we see and those threats may be the greater longer term challenge in a sense because they are highly asymmetric and, you know, they're not traditional military power. and so our strategy with our allies and partners needs to take account of those as well but that's how i see the longer term challenge. >> i have one right there. yes. gentleman right here. >> thank you. matteo, princeton university. i'm a little puzzled by the administration's attempt to essentially set a new rule in terms of espionage saying that

espionage conducted on other -- that state-led espionage on corporate entities done to advantage other corporate entities in one's own country is essentially unfair. i find this puzzling for a number of reasons. few other countries recognize this rule. it would be extremely hard to enforce, not last because if you know another country is conducting espionage against you you have no interest in revealing that you know that kind of thing so i was wondering could you tell us what -- first of all, could you allay some of these concerns? tell us what the rationale is behind this attempt of the administration to set new rules and whether or not you think it has a reasonable chance of being successful. thank you. >> so i wouldn't character -- the president was very clear in presidential policy directive 28 on our signals intelligence architecture that the united states does not and will not engage in economic espionage and

to benefit american companies and international competition. as you noted, that practice is not universally followed by some other countries in the world. i would defer to my economic colleagues on this but, you know, we think a -- a global system that will produce economic prosperity for all is -- you know, would be most conducive to having open international competition without state's stealing private secrets and handing them off to their own national companies. if you follow that logic, then companies bear additional costs that they would have to do to protect their systems that i

think are not economically productive. i'm drawing on some of my economics training from high school. i don't think that's the system international countries should favor. that's true across the border. one, i don't think it is necessarily new but it is definitive on our policy. >> eric schmidt with the "new york times." secretary vickers, thank you. two-part question on syria. if you could explain to us a little bit more about the options the pentagon administration is considering for d.o.d. to assist in arming the syrian rebels and what

operational and other challenges that poses. the second part of the question, at least for insurgents along that border between syria and a rack, it seems to be dwindling. can you assess how iraq can deal with the threat given the support the u.s. has provided to them so far? >> okay. thanks, eric. so, first, on expanded assistance to the syrian opposition, i don't want to go further than the -- than the president did in his west point speech. we are developing options across the administration and consulting with congress on this and i'll -- that's about as far as i can go right now. on the threat posed by isis as you called it or isol we call, islamic state of iraq and labom, it is both in syria and western iraq which is why we look at this increasingly as a regional problem.

this is the remnants of al qaeda in iraq, that most of them -- most of the leadership went to syria after being significantly degraded in iraq. and they have ambitions to pose threats broader in the region and outside the region. so it is a very malevolent terrorist group and one that we're increasingly focused on. they broke away from al qaeda recently. you know, i guess al qaeda was just too nice for them. and then as far as your question on iraq, through our office of security operation, we continue to provide assistance to the iraqis, and across the

instruments of the u.s. government to meet the challenges in iraq. [ inaudible ] >> well, iraq is a -- you know, the conditions that give rise to the challenge there have a lot to do with political challenges they've had, as well as a significant terrorist threat. so there has to be political and economic solution, as well as the counterterrorism solution to this problem. and they have made some gains in beating back in anbar and containing its spread elsewhere. but it's a significant challenge to the government. >> the question was, you mentioned in the context of cyber working with the industry

as a partner, but industry really works across other areas with the intelligence community, as well. given all that's happened in the last three years, how is the department's working with industry going to change going forward, either in subtle or important ways? well, i think it's an imperat e imperative. to be very honest, the current environment hasn't helped that partnership. there's some important legislation moving through the hill right now to set the conditions for that, that we support. and it's just something as a country we're going to have to solve, because the threat isn't going away. >> how about right here? >> sir, george mickelson,

special operations consultant. kathleen, you alluded to the relationship between cia and d.o.d. and mr. vickers, you probably remember at the oss dinner, john brennan got up and said there was not a better relationship than existed in history. how much is that because of your backgrou background? a few years ago, the former vmi testified in front of the senate about do we need to relook at title x and title l authorities and something to codify those relationships under something better like a title lx? >> you know, so the fact that a number of us have worked together for a lot of years clearly helps, but i forgot who the french politician who said the graveyards are filled with

indispensable men. i think we've put enough things in place that it will survive the current leadership. it's a very good way to do business and the challenges we face dictated. i don't think we need a -- you know, we've lost a lot since 2009 and the beginning of the administration and the title ten, title 50, title 60 debate. you know, we are very integrated and go back and forth very easily. that part of the system is working really well. >> right back here. >> peter humphrey, i'm an intel analyst. are you happy with the level of our dependence on foreign intelligence services or maybe possibly should we be using a

fraction of our budget to get our own independent capabilities at times? or are we going the other way just to save money? >> well, we have plenty of independent capabilities. and periodically in some country or crisis, you can find you were too dependent on foreign liaison reporting but we've learned from those experiences in the past. so depend on an international network of intelligence partners, but we have robust unilateral capabilities, as well. one can always adjust the system, but globally i think it serves us quite well. >> okay. how about right here in front.

>> steve winters. i think many computer experts feel that the -- in an attack on a network, the advantages with the attacker and the defender is in the weaker position. i would suggest that in the case of say attacks for espionage purposes on u.s. networks, that there be some type of response to the attacker decides just trying to beef up the defenses and given this situation. so if these experts are right, what is your advice to the administration basically when you have to tell them, we can't really stop the attacks because the attacker has the advantage, what's the policy? various suggestions have been made. for instance, code of conduct about what they're allowed to do

or proactive counterattacks, to attacks, what advice are you giving up the chain on this? >> well, i'll keep my advice up the chain private, but let me try to answer your question. while i'm not sure i agree with the premise that the offense has an enduring advantage in the cyber realm. cyber security has evolved, it's a big growth industry and it's evolved quite a bit. that said, you know, there are a lot of what one would describe as soft targets. so if you're looking to steal something among many things or attack something among many things, that's a hard defensive problem. and it's also, as i mentioned earlier in response to cyber

policy, you forecast an economic strategy, it's not sound economics to have to invest so much in defenses. and then in terms of the appropriate response, even if offense gets harder, it's still feasible and there still will be softer targets to harder targets. so the instruments that you can deploy against that, policy is one, to carry out this kind of conflict, you know, again, this is a new and evolving domain. so some of the policy discussions are in their early stages, as well as potentially other methods, law enforcement, blocking an attack, tailored to the circumstances.

so i think in cyber as in anything else, you need to deploy the full range of instruments. it's abevolving field. >> last question right up front. >> my question is, what is your solution about the cyber security issue in china and what's your response about the new chinese report released on may 26 accusing the u.s. of hurting activities in world companies like microsoft and google? thank you so much. >> can you repeat the last part on google and microsoft. >> yeah, there is a new report from china accusing the u.s. of hiking -- [ indiscernible ] thank you so much.

>> so i'm not aware of a report about microsoft and google. back to the question about cyber norms and cyber policy. we have a cyber working group to work with the chinese on establishing cyber code of conduct and others that is an important initiative and we certainly hope it will continue. >> okay. secretary vickers, you've been extremely generous with your time this morning. we've put you through the ringer, and i appreciate you being as forthcoming as you are able to be. obviously you have a position that is particularly difficult in terms of providing us unclassified information, and we appreciate your willingness to come down here today and talk to us. so please join me in thanking him. [ applause ]

>> defense secretary chuck hagel will be on capitol hill to testify about the transfer of five taliban guantanamo detainees for the release of army sergeant bowe bergdahl. that's live at 10:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span3 and c-span radio. you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. >> with live coverage of the u.s. house on c-span and the senate on c-span2. on c-span3 we show you the most relevant hearings. on weekends, c-span3 is the home to american history tv, with

programs that tell our nation's story, including "the civil war's 150th anniversary, visiting battlefields and key events." "american artifacts, touring museums and historical sites. the presidency, looking at the policies and legacies of our nation's commanders in chief. lectures in history with top college professoring delving into america's past. and "reel america" featuring educational films from the '30s through the '70s. watch us in hd, like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter. president obama this week laid out a plan to try to help graduates tackle student loan debt. next, a senate panel looks at interest rates and debt. this hearing is chaired by senator shared brown of ohio.

>> the meeting will come to order. thank you for joining us. thank you for coming back and become of assistance to us in a number of ways. about a decade ago, we began to see the warning signs of problems in the housing market. a few years later we watched a combination of wall street greed and inattentive regulators helping to destroy our economy. we're still picking up the pieces of this crisis. the topic of today's hearing, student loans servicing are very much interconnected. we've seen far too many homeowners become victims of improper foreclosures, when their mortgager could have assisted them but chose not to. here we are again, outstanding student debt is $1.2 trillion, more than credit card debt, more

than auto loans, student debt is second only to mortgage debt. roughly 7 million borrowers are in default on a student loan. in may 2013, the consumer financial protection bureau described the impact of heavy student loan burdens, and a group of regulators have joined to describe how student loans can interrupt the slowly recovering economy. excessive debt can destroy the dreams of perspective first time home buyers and limit the options of young graduates who might work as teachers and doctors in underserved areas. defaults will have long-term impacts on our recovery. last year, i wrote a letter to some of the largest banks and student loan companies asking about their efforts to modify

loans for borrowers in trouble. captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2008 captioning performed by vitac repayment options best suited to their specific needs when only legalways that experts can understand? i propose a student loan option within the cfp be.

-- within the cfpb. that office has issued reports describing trouble and practices. a borrowers payments in order to maximize fees. facing challenges activating the relative benefits on the relative benefits on their student loans. all borrowers facing options -- obstacles and rolling in the modification programs. come at fdicrrals founded the nation's largest servicer broker in a series of laws. it's been ordered to pay fines and compensation of more than $90 million. it revealed it wash also under investigation. cfp be reports have recommended that congress examine some of the reforms to the credit card and mortgage servicing markets

such as ones related to payment processing and servicing transfers third in order to approve the student loan servicing market. to help address some of these problems would harm borrowers and our economy, i sponsored a number of reforms such as the student loan bar were bill of rights will will provide protections and require workable alternative repayment options for private loan borrowers were at risk of default. notify lenders to borrowers about income-based repayment plans for federal loans and protect our words from penalties due to errors on the part of the servicer. we know the privacy loans generally have significantly higher interest rates, offer omitted payment options and no relief for the many graduates who don't make the amount of money that they expected or have been laid off or even unable to find work. actefinance education addresses this problem by addressing treasury to make the private student loan work more efficient. loan market more efficient.

i look forward to our witness views on student loan servicing practices. let me introduce the four witnesses. we have both at 11:00. -- we have the votes at 11:00. i asked people to stay within the time is much as they can. director of the programming granville, ohio. a grassroots organization that works to improve the federal direct loan program. for years working at financial offices. she has dedicated her crew to helping students afford a secondary education. serves as vice president of external affairs for student veterans of america. considerable experience advocating on behalf of veterans. he joined the marine corps at .ge 17 and i

robert has some students with him here today. he served as a grade level leader and co-faculty o advisor for the gay straight alliance. lindsey burke is the education policy chair at the heritage foundation. she has done extensive research around the government's role in education. ms. hoover, if you would begin. thank you. and members ofwn the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify today. my name is nancy hoover and i'm the director of financial aid at denison university in granville, ohio. liberal artstive

college with an enrollment of approximately 2200 students. i have been the director of financial aid at denison since 1994. in administered the limitation of a direct loan program in year two of the program. denison's endowment allows us to award annually financial aid from our universities funds to 97% of our student body. an average of 47% of our graduates are a federal loans and 4% borrow private loans. the key motive federal overtedness was a little $21,000. the william d ford direct loan program turns 20 years old this here. the delivery process has continued to be efficient, reliable and easy for school s to administer. the direct loan program was first implemented, all of the loans were serviced by a single

contractor. a all correspondence to bar words was identified as the william d federal direct loan program and the logo for the department of education made the servicing contractor for these loans invisible to the students. the department had to expand the number of services to accommodate the increased volume of loan servicing required for the purchase of federally backed loans in 2008 and the transition of all schools to the federal direct lending program. the department issued new deal --vicing contractors contracts of agencies who had experienced servicing student loans in the program and allowed but do not require these new services to co-brand with the department logo. since the servicers logo appears larger than the partners logo, borrowers are confused as to why they are receiving written or electronic correspondence from an unknown agency. services report a large percentage of unopened e-mails

from the borrowers because they believe the correspondent is junk mail or spam. the inherent flaw with the carnival full servicer environment is that borrowers do not understand it was servicing their loans and/or are at a greater risk of defaulting. currently, there are 15 contractors servicing federally held loans. the current federal loan servicing environment needs to be simplified by a mandate that contractors invisible agents of the federal government with identical processes and policies and the number of contractors with limited -- be limited. the bipartisan budget act of 2013 a limited special treatment for nonprofit student loan servicers. when the department of education had the opportunity to renew the servicer contract, it should consult with all of the stakeholders and student loan servicing and open the contract bidding process to other entities and financial sectors outside the previous environment.

our worst need their point of contact for all repayment activities to be a single portal one phoner number -- number. an efficient and robust portal at which students can execute every required process for their federal loans except to initiate the repayment process. student loans.gov can be expanded so students can begin the repayment process of their federal loans instead of going to a specific service or website. i would like to thank you and other members of the committee for your support of the bank on students emergency loan refinancing act. borrowerss assistant with loans and will service or as to refinance all of their loans to have a single servicer. required servicers to

notify delinquent borrowers about income-based options. however, with all of the good , it is extremely confusing for students to understand the intricacies of all the current repayment options. i encourage congress to reduce the current number of payment plans to two. standard and income-based from which students can choose. repayment should be collected through payroll withholding. many borrowers are unaware of service -- their service has been changed until they encounter a problem. many borrowers have filed complaints to correct errors related to the servicing contracts. do loan servicers need to provide notice to bar words about a change in their service like the mortgage services are required to do. think you again for the opportunity to provide a financial aid administrative perspective on student loan servicing and i'm happy to respond to any questions you might have. >> thank you.

mr. hubbard. thank you for inviting student veterans of america to cement our testimony on student loan servicing. it is our privilege to share this on the ground perspective with you today. graduate across the country, we believe that the student debt burden will ultimately be one of the largest inhibiting factors to their long-term success. part, stemsment from a lack of access to information that individual and institutional levels. veterans consistently fight the following challenges. difficulty obtaining accurate information about loans, convoluted pathways to gathering information and that limiting programs and unnecessary roadblocks in place by servicers. despite avid efforts to increase protections against abuse practices, getting service members the right information about the protections at the right time remains a challenge.

service members and veterans have access to protections under these service member service release ask. this does not function cohesively and programs often function independent of each other. we have seen that many service members enter the military with student loan debt. this existing debt is also a major source of the overall debt . existing debt is particularly harmful to a service member or veteran when servicers do not comply with protections afforded by sacrum. misconceptionmon that parents should go to school on the g.i. bill and have a free ticket. you know this is simply not true. as an earned benefit, not only is the g.i. bill not free, it may not always cover the cost of a full education. this is especially true for those attending private institutions or for those

considered out-of-state residents. to prevent situations that may violate a service member or veteran's right, we believe that institutions need to have access to a full range of financial data. for data is necessary institutions to be able to effectively counsel their students about their financial futures. haveiduals should also access to this data to achieve the highest level of consumer awareness. currently, there is no widely used system that would allow any individual with education debt to see all of their loans in a centralized place. tool. could be such a the meteor program has the unique function of providing all itvate lender data in which simply requires the approval of the department of education to access direct loan data. this has yet to happen. while we might not know the full effect of student debt for this generation of veterans, we are beginning to see the first and

second affects today. they are significantly less likely to build their own business, save for a home or save for their retirement. the effect of these issues will impact the economy for years to come. and will continue to distort economic behavior if not taken seriously. in light of the issues we have identified, we have recommended various solutions. of the solutions we have cemented to the record, we would like to highlight one in particular. program coronation. many programs exist to support the repayment of student loans, though very few of these programs are coordinated. ifajor opportunity exists current programs record and streamlined to function seamlessly. putting these pieces together would be an important step forward. in the g.i. bill

becomes an even clearer asset to our economy. when this veterans are empowered with the right tools. i reducing the debt burden on servicemembers and veterans, we can set them up for long-term success. andhink the chairman ranking member and the subcommittee members for your time, attention and devotion to the cause of veterans and i are education. as always, we welcome your feedback and questions and we look forward to continuing our and with this subcommittee the congress to ensure the success of all generations on of veterans. >> thank you. >> mr. chairman and the distinct members of this committee, my name is robert and i'm a social studies teacher at woodrow wilson high school here in washington. i come to you as a member of the american federation of teachers and the washington teachers union. i want to thank chairman brown for the opportunity to testify.

mike's appearances with student debt and loan repayment. i hope that sharing my experiences in the financial aid process makes it easier for students and their families to pay for higher education. island and a rhode family of teachers come i always felt like i could make a world -- make the world a better place by helping kids. i graduated from rhode island college with a bachelor's degree , having double majored in secondary education in history. while i was fortunate that my parents were able to cover my college tuition, i still had to pay for books and other expenses during my undergraduate years. i started my teaching career with some credit card debt. at the urging of my professors come i sought to teach in an urban area and that is how i ended up here in washington. fully to admit, i was not prepared for the high cost of living in washington on a starting teacher salary. after several years of teach ing, i knew i needed to further

develop my skills. going for my masters degree would take my energy from a students and their work. i was accepted into one of the most respected teaching programs , teachers college at columbia university. as able to earn a masters degree in social studies education over three considered summers. the program was the right professional choice for me. attend thisorder to highly regard program, i had to take out several loans despite my full-time salary on top of tuition fees, account for two apartments as i cannot contractually sublet my apartment in d.c. i had to pay for travel to new york, books and other typical living expenses. i like to point out that, while affordability is often on tuition, it was really those other expenses that drove up my borrowing. after three summers come i graduated with my masters degree

an $37,000 of debt. i received some grant money during my program and subsidized loans over $25,000 for three years. an additional $11,000 in unsubsidized loans. i have been puzzled by several issues. i listen to switch providers twice and it has never been quite clear to me why the transfers were made. amount has been debited for my checking account for my monthly payment when those loans were trevor the -- were transferred last time. when i set up an online account for milos come i found that the information about my loan included payoff options and pay updates was available. the information was never provided to me on my paper statements. career.ud of my 12 year my financial life has been put on hold because of the loans i

have taken to stay in the classroom. milos have a current interest rate of over 6% and i will pay over $10,000 in interest on top of the principal. it is hard to see how i can save to buy a home with this debt burden. although i deftly could secure a mortgage at an interest rate of about 4%. i have a car loan that is at 1.9% interest rate. yet, there's nothing i can do to lower my student loan interest rate. with more and more students being forced to take on debt, believe we must make it easier for them by having access to grants and lower interest rate loans. i made a decision to get an advanced degree to be able to further my career and benefit the students i'm committed to serving. after about two years of payments, i am likely eligible for two programs that are lower my monthly payments and shorten the life of my love. i believe many college students would be more likely to pursue if these programs were

streamlined and better understood. i suggest congress find a way to reach out rapidly to teachers about these options. because the process was so convoluted for me, i worry about what would happen to my students. many of whom are graduating as a testify today. i begin this whole process. many will be the first generation and their families to attend college. others have worked hard and have been admitted to the nation's top colleges and universities but will be unable to attend because of cost. i'm afraid some of my students don't understand the ways high interest rates will multiply their debt. i don't want them to be faced with the same lack of transparency and confusion. i hope that congress can find a way to ease the burden on students and families and make attending college affordable. i fear a generation will be to settle -- two saddled with debt

to invest in housing, businesses or make career choices based on anything other than burden potential. i look forward to responding to questions. >> thank you. ms. burke. thank you.>> i am a fellow and education -- a fellow in education policy at the heritage foundation. for many, earning a college degree is the way to climb the ladder. is associatedona with higher earnings. college graduates earn $650,000 more over the course of a 40 year career. while a college degree is not the only route of upward

itility, for many, represents the most promising path for achieving their fullerenes potential. the value of earning a college degree is demonstrable. the cost of earning a degree has become prohibitively expensive for many. average tuition at four-year public institutions for out-of-state students reached when the 2000 -- $22,000 this year. many students leave with a bachelors degree in hand, but burdened with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. many students leave college without graduating, burdened with debt and lacking the paper credentials they hoped would put them on the path toward middle-class stability or better. well-intentioned federal policies have failed to drag down college costs. federal student aid has enabled students to take outsized bulls to loans with little credit check or consideration for their future earnings potential.

some have even argued that such policies have enabled universities to raise tuition. federal higher education subsidies have increased since densely over the past decade. now represents 71% of all student aid. according to the college board, -- the college board notes that over the past 10 years, the number of students borrowing through federal student loans increased by 69% from 5.9 million students write during 2002. -- 60% of students who earned a bouncer's degree of school more than $26,000 in debt. total team and live student loan debt now exceeds print trillion dollars -- $1 trillion. increases in debt have been driven by increases in college

cost. in the last 30 years come inflation-adjusted fees increased by 153%. increase greater than the increase in the cost of health care. tuition and fees suggests that growth in federal subsidies have done little to mitigate the college cost problem. in order to make college more affordable, federal policy should do three things. stop the spending spree, employee care accounting to understand the true cost and the couple federal financing from accreditation. if history is any guide, continuing to increase idle subsidies will fail to drive college cost. the $33 billion pell grant program provided grants to 9 million college deans making it the largest share of federal education budget. congress grew the program by expanding eligibility and

funding, resulting in a doubling of the number of pell recipients since 2008. in order to control higher education spending, pell grant funding should be targeted to the low-income students the grants were originally intended to help. as the federal government finances federal student loans, it should use fair value accounting practices to get inaccurate measure of what those programs are costing taxpayers to ensure the loans. a report released last month, cbo calculated that the four largest student loan programs will cost taxpayers money. a negative subsidy for the federal government. while the report states that the four loan programs will yield the savings of 135 billion dollars from 2015-2024, cbo calculates that using fair value accounting measures, the poor loans would have a net cost of $88 over the next 10 years.

largest student loan programs represent an $80 billion taxpayer financed subsidy. the government is exposed to market risk when the economy is weak because our worst default on their debt obligations more frequently and recoveries from arewords are lower -- bar borrowers are lower. any loan program should use a non-subsidizing interest rate at which the rate for the program breaks even. specifically, the department of education should be required to use fair value accounting estimates calculated by cbo and

adjust loan rates accordingly going forward. this of help determine whether the programs are costing money for taxpayers and where to set interest rates to ensure the programs breakeven. finally, if federal policymakers want to drive down college cost and increase access to higher , the single most important reform that can be made is to decouple federal financing from accreditation. continuing to simply increase federal subsidies will fail to solve the college cost problem. such subsidies shift the responsibility of paying for college from the student who directly benefits from attending college to the taxpayer. transferring the burden of student loan financing from university graduate who will earn significantly more over the to theof a lifetime three quarters of taxpayers who do not hold bachelors degrees.

stop theers should federal spending spree and employee fair value accounting practices and ultimately work to decouple federal financing from accreditation. thank you. >> thank you. my apologies to ms. burke. there was a call i had to take. i know of your story and i appreciate that. i will start with you, ms. hoover. your testimony and others on the that financial futures of students depend on fair responsible servicing practices. students are not able to choose who will serve as their student loan. lenders.selected by talk about that structure.

you don't consider that the right structure. explore with us the better way to do this and an analysis of the structure. the wait is now and the better way to do that. if you would explain your thoughts that way. servicers andthe contractors volume of loan is assigned to the servicers based on metrics. there are three metrics that are based on satisfaction. school satisfaction, customer satisfaction and satisfaction fsa. ss the percentage of loan defaults. those are metrics for each of the servicers to get their volume of loans. the loans are assigned to the servicers -- the student does ert know to whom the servic

their loan has been service. they have done a good job of trying not to have mixed borrowers. they are trying to have all of the loans -- there are some students who have loans that are still not sold to the department. there are still cases where students have more than one service or. what i'm suggesting is that these servicers are contractors -- they can still service the federal loans him up but they need to be invisible to the students. -- as soonent calls as they understand it's a federal loan, to go to student loan stuff got to do everything. .hey do their counseling they should just continue the trajectory of being able to start the repayment of their federal loans. when they go there, if they have an inquiry, there is technology today that would transfer that call to the contractors. the contractors can still be the servicers.

they need to be invisible to the students because students are getting e-mails from the various servicers and they do not understand who these agencies are. they think it's spam mail or junk and they are ignoring it. >> how could your experience after going to get your degree have been better? based on the structure and the way you were treated. i believe the best way would be more information about how much interest i would pay. i was not quite sure about the process, even though i went through interviews, exit interviews -- i was not sure what the total debt would look like at the time. i wish i actually had a of mysation with someone servicers.

yesterday was the first time i actually met -- had a telephone conversation. definitely more in person conversations or interviews. >> you represent a group of people who have had some significant legal issues. if a servicer violates their federal contracts, should there be consequences and what should they be? >> thank you for the question. this is a critical question. many bad, there are actors out there. some are very obvious. others are more under the table. recent sallie mae case was a good example of a clear signal for the industry that these issues will not be accepted. they will not be tolerated. $50 million being paid out as a sign that if you are going to take advantage of the system,

you are going to abuse service members, it will not be tolerated. compliance is a critical step in that process. ensuring that service members are treated with the protection they are afforded under sacrum. bp ms. hoover, the cf the says to loan servicers might consider private -- providing notices so the consumer can notice the transition to ensure there are no servicing interruptions. many consumers were unaware of the servicing change until problems arose. withabout your views servers prior to and following transfers of the cost to borrowers. thatwill have to say experiences i have had with my students have been limited in my students because

have been in the direct loan program and have only had one contractor. i have not had students telling me of significant issues with their servicing of their loans. that is because of my student body. i do believe that the complaints have been registered with the consumer bureau. as we monitor -- as our students begin to be more into this ,ultiple servers or environment i shall be listening to it very carefully. so far, i have not heard that from my actual students. >> anybody else want to comment on that? >> this brings up a very important point. a level of opaqueness in the system. when you're a student and you have different loans, you might know where those loans are. if you go to log on to find out what those loans are and how much you even know, that can be a challenge to figure out

sometimes. having an agri-created view of this load it would be important. thisank you for holding hearing. we should be doing everything we can to help student loan borrowers repay their loans. part of that is improving loan servicing. if we want to make sure people can repay their student loan debt, shouldn't we start by doing what we can to reduce the size of their debt loads? the federal government is 8%lecting loans at 6% and and 9% and 10% and even higher. what i would like to do is i would like to ask a question about whether or not you could talk about the impact on people if we refinanced their student loans down to lower rates. i thought you might start that. >> thank you, senator. it would be a wonderful

opportunity to have the ability to refinance my student loans. 30's, i likeo my to begin a family and buy a home. i would like to be able to have that opportunity. -- youyou talked about said you have a home mortgage at what interest rate? you had a car loan? >> a car loan at 1.9%. many car loans are offered at 0%. >> we want to be careful about that. read closely. it would make sense to me that maybe there are more options available to refinance a lower rate. >> mr. hubbard, could you speak a little bit about what the impacts would be on people's lives if we brought down the

interest rate on student loans? huge problem right now. if you look at individuals who go into the service of existing debt to begin with and then they are in the service and they have deployments, they have lots of protections and they are taken advantage of. are you really thinking about your student loans in the comment combat zone? probably not. you might not have the g.i. bill. you're taking a large loans. with very little information at your disposal and you might have been coming off active duty where it was very difficult to have access to anyone who even knew anything about getting the right information. that makes it very confiscated. you are not able to buy a house when you come out of your education. that impact is, when the g.i. bill -- the investment of the g.i. bill is completely lost when you are mired in student

debt. you see what an individual can do without student debt, it's impressive. it really is impressive. you have 25-30-year-olds by houses for the first time. they're investing in the future. the impact of this is on the larger economy. i would like to point out something that is not often looked at. the issue of security. national security is a big problem with existing debt for veterans. a service member loses their clearance as a result of their high credit. their high student debt. that is a direct impact to the national security of united states. thing that is an issue that would be great, refinance would be terrific for service members. unfortunately, the protections offered are lost when a student desk when a veteran goes to refinance a loan. that is something that has not been addressed. >> a very powerful point.

we're talking about how the impact of student loan debt on and the impact on the larger economy -- we have studies now showing that it's causing people to not be able to buy homes. they are not able to start small businesses. they are not able to start their economic futures. this is why more than 30 senators have introduced the bank on students emergency loan and refinancing bill. we want to lower interest rates so that more people have a fair shot at getting started. i want to pick up on the point you made. , the consumer financial protection bureau put out a report analyzing financial products. a report suggests that private student loan debt collectors may be making misleading or intimidating statements to course veterans into paying their debts.

including threatening to contact a service members chain of command or repercussions under the military code of justice. march, the gao released a report raising issues were guarding the oversight -- regarding the oversight. are you concerned that the federal student loan debt collectors are also using military service members service to pressure them to repay? not only concerned, i am absolutely outraged. this is something that is unacceptable. the sallie mae case was a clear signal that this is not something that will be accepted in our society. when an individual is service, and he or a service or to take advantage and abuse those service members because they don't have the right information. if you have an individual who does not have access to clear information and then somebody calls them offering what they believe is information, taking

advantage of them, that is sadly unacceptable. -- simply unacceptable. >> i remain deeply concerned that debt collectors for the federal student loan program are breaking the rules and misleading far worse -- misleading borrowers. followings must be the law and should not take advantage of people. i think this is an issue that deserves very serious attention. >> senator reed. >> thank you very much. your leadership on this issue is critical. do not just the individual progress, but to our economy overall. robert --recognize you are from rhode island? are you related to kenny jeremiah?

>> no. pee wee football with kenny jeremiah in rhode island. he's your cousin or uncle. after graduating college, he went on to columbia. federal law requires that the individual borrower be informed of his or her rights or repayment options before they enter the program and as they graduate. do you think you get effective advice? that you had the full range of repayment options about public service? >> thank you, senator. yes, i did receive counseling. that was believe

particularly effective. it involves going to the motions and clicking on boxes. that, do youis not have a question? that kind of interaction. i felt like i had that opportunity during my undergraduate years. things were more clear. there were your parents helping out. as we advance in our careers and to teachingooking -- yes, i read through it. it was not clear. someone liker myself who is trying to pay rent and teach 100 students and grade their essays and finish a master's thesis. the tuition is still roughly

$1000 a year. and graduateimit schools. the counseling for graduates have to be more focused -- they are really taking out big sums of money. there is no limit on that. ms. hubbard, thank you for your service and your testimony. there are lots of rights that service members have, but they have to be aware of those rights. how good does the department of defense -- how well do they do in forming those service members veterans?r rights as piecese was a couple of to that puzzle. this is a great question. thank you for that. is department of defense certainly responsible to some

degree for making sure that their people are taking care of. on the other end of things, if a falseer is giving them information, simply lying to them, who's to say that the chain of command is an expert on education loans? they are probably not. there are individuals within the determine of defense who are, but can they reach individual? i doubt it. military toof the be able to reach out and find their own information with an aggregated dashboard -- that would hopefully allow them to over some red flags. those red flags would bring the person to go out and seek that information from that dod education expert and then hopefully that would circumvent the process of those servicers lying to those service members. this is a rough historical analogy. in the old days, used to be able to the places off-limits.

i urge secretary hegel to think about this. maybe there has to be consistent method of unedifying -- of identifying services that are negligent and doing worse. with that dashboard come you can have, don't go there. that's important. can i ask a question -- you go right back to the services. become over reliant on major entities to do the servicing. you have any advice about how we can provide better services to ones that don't try to take advantage of students? >> how we can do better with the

services? indicated in my testimony, i still believe there needs to one place of contact for all borrowers and that the contractors be invisible to the students. student -- if the servicers were mandated to be contractors with identical processes and policies, a lot of this confusion would be limited. a that is where i keep coming to. keep it simple and therefore, when the contracts are renewed for servicing, maybe they would be offered to entities outside. credit cards and mortgage servicers have some excellent technology and don't have the default rates that we have today. >> thank you very much. >> we will try to do a second round before votes. a question for all of you. federal student loans are safer

than private loans because they offer repayment options. we often hear that federal loans lacked comprehensive and consistent servicing standards. i would like each of you to answer a yes or no question on this. the regulators -- do regulators need to establish standards so that our words have more protections? >> yes. >> yes. >> yes. >> no. >> student loan borrowers are typically young, typically history.redit they enter this market place and at the service or not service them quite right, they end up making mistakes and report loans as the late. our words are penalized or -- borrowers are penalized for it responsibly management that, if you will. how do servicers affect credit cards and credit scores?

>> i would imagine that if there were issues repaying, that would affect credit scores down the line and therefore would inhibit ability to make home purchases or car purchases. orn apply for jobs government jobs. about a soldier in combat. you talked about veterans, soldiers and servicemen coming home. and facing student loan problems. just how it's much more difficult to launch their economic lives. talk to me about what a credit score means to current and

former military personnel who may have to ask projects in to get security clearance. >> there are two sides to this point. the security issue and the economic issue. on the security side, if an individual has a bad credit score, they are not going to get a good clearance. that might be critical to their future in the military or their personal future on the private side. >> can you give examples of that? economicatively, the issue is huge. investment that america has made his old badly crippled when these individuals cannot invest in themselves and further on in the economy. when they can buy a home, th at money is lost and it's taken out of the economy. >> in terms of government investment, you see a soldier

now has a lower credit score. see that soldier eligible for a promotion -- perhaps the military is looking to provide security clearance for this new position. they are denied because of their credit score in the government investment then goes to waste in that sense. >> it does. this comes to a question of common sense. we have good individuals were strong soldiers that do well, but they have a bad credit score. what it looks like is they are not responsible. the servicer might have taken advantage of this individual and what outlined to them and allow this person to take out more loans than they were capable of

or just completely inflate the rate on them and they go and come back at $75,000. that is a big problem. >> there is no way for the -- there is no appeal on this. my credit score is lower because of x y and z. >> there are appeals. it does not take away the dow. the doubt tha is hard to scrub. investigatorsed have uncovered serious problems with student loan servicers and collectors. the gao raised questions about federal debt collectors pricking the rules and federal regulators have cited sallie mae for violating federal laws by overcharging service members honest in loans.

when loan servicers break the rules, they push borrowers to do things that are good for the bottom line of the servicer, but not good for the borrower. ultimately, its dunes are not able to repay, is the taxpayers will pick up the bill here. the of the problem is, rules are complex and it makes it hard for bar words to know what they should expect from their servicers. orrower thinks they have not been told the truth or that somebody has broken the law , where do they turn? where do they go now? ms. hoover? the time, the students now are going back to their financial aid office. they are so confused about where else to go. that, sometimes comest in stone do anything.

sometimes, students don't do anything. we continue corresponding with our students who are delinquent so they do come back to us. again, i'm a small school and that is not real distinct for large schools. basically, what you uphold told me is, they don't have any place to turn. >> until we have the consumer bureau of protection -- the students are not aware of that. the lack of not understanding of where to go. i would like to point out one scenario. there was a service member cited by the cfpb on this particular topic. this individual went to lower their loans to 6%.

the servicer look at the loans -- everything below 6% was raised. that 6% did not get lowered. this individual made a call and had all of their loans raised as a result. that is a prime example of what happens -- this particular issue , whichnd out by the cfpb is the primary route for individuals to make that complaint. since they have come out and been soliciting this information, these stories have come out in droves. stories like that make me sick. >> as they should. borrowers should not be bearing the responsibility for keeping servicers in line. at the very least, if bar words borrowers have questions, it

should be clear where they can turn for relief. sallie mae has been touting its status as the federal student loan servicer with the lowest default rate. in february, i wrote a letter to sallie mae asking about the company positive fault prevention strategies. data because not all strategies to reduce defaults are going to provide a successful repayment. mae replied. they did not include the data for their default prevention program. i've asked the department of education to provide default

prevention data for sallie mae and other federal loan servicers. so far, no answer. hubbard, do you believe that borrowers are getting sound advice from servicers like sallie mae at about what to do when they get behind on their payments? bat, the single metric of the lowest default rate is pure nonsense. just because you have low default rate does not mean individuals are not mired in debt. if i make a low payment for the rest of my life, i will be paying forever. i will never get a house. i will never have the money to start a family or a business. i will never be able to put back into the american economy what has been given to me. just because the individual goes to find out information does not mean on the back and it is not being treated harper lay.

withund issue after issue sallie mae, with tons of complaints. they were the number one complaint service or of any servicer of any servicer. will put, mr. hubbard. quarter of sallie mae's loan portfolio is in deferment or forbearance. as you point out, the interest continues to accumulate. this is going to add to their debt burden, and ultimately made to round them. we need real data to tell us which strategies work as a life preserver, and which work as an anchor for borrowers. can help drive stronger accountability for sallie mae and other loan providers.

we continue to push for them. thank you all for being here today. >> thank you, senator warren, and further witnesses. you for your testimony. there will be written questions from members who were here are not here. lee's answer them within a week, if you can -- please answer the within a week, if you can. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014]