Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act

Madam President, I wonder if I might ask, through the Chair, the Senator from Michigan a question. I notice her chart on 7 million students, and I wonder which 7 million students she is talking about.

My understanding is there are 11 million students who will take out new student loans this year, I believe that 2 million of them are low- income students who get subsidized loans, and that the Democratic Senator's proposal would help those 2 million students by keeping their rate at 3.4 percent instead of 6.8 percent. So who are the 7 million students the Senator from Michigan is talking about?

I thank the Senator from Michigan.

It could be my numbers are wrong. I think the 7 million student figure is actually a very good billboard for why not to support the Democratic proposal but to support the bipartisan proposal because what the proposal of the Senator from Michigan will do is keep rates high for 7 million middle-income students whom her proposal does not help.

There are 11 million students across this country who are going to college this fall. They will take 18 million loans out. They will borrow over $100 billion. What happened on July 1 was that the rate went back up to 6.8 percent for the loans that are for the lower income students--only those. For the loans that go to the middle-income students--and my understanding is there are about 7 million of those-- it stays right where it is: 6.8 percent.

Under the bipartisan proposal, their rates would be 3.66 percent. In other words, the bipartisan proposal would not only create a permanent solution, but it would lower rates--it would lower rates almost half-- for the 7 million middle-income students who otherwise would be twisting in the wind for the next 10 years paying higher rates-- hundreds of millions of dollars of higher rates.

So the number 7 million, I believe, is correct, I would say to the Senator from Michigan, but that is the number of middle-income students who are going to be paying higher interest rates under her proposal. I am glad she brought up the number. If I am mistaken about that, I need to know it before tomorrow's vote because I believe there are 2 million students with subsidized loans. That is who the Senator seeks to help. There are 7 million students who are undergraduates who have loans that are unsubsidized. Those are middle-income undergraduates. They are going to be paying 6.8 percent under the Senator's proposal. They are going to be paying 3.66 percent under the bipartisan proposal.

I would be happy to, Madam President.

It is a fixed rate for the students who borrow the money this year.

Well, if you are 1 of the 11 million students who borrow money under the bipartisan proposal--let's say you are an undergraduate, and that is two-thirds of the loans--your rate would be 3.66 percent this year, next year, and for the next 10 years.

Next year it will be whatever it costs the government to borrow money. The government will loan it to the student, without overcharging the student, in order to reduce the debt to pay for government programs or any other reason. So the formula would be that we would not add any cost to the taxpayers, but we would not overcharge the students to reduce the debt or to pay for a program. Next year the interest rate might be higher. The next year it might be higher. But those would be for new loans.

Then, of course, there are already two caps in the law that would be continued under the bipartisan proposal. One says that any student at any time can consolidate his or her loan at 8.25 percent. So the loan cannot go higher than that.

The second says while you are paying off your loan, you will not pay more than about 10 percent of your income. If after 20 years or so you have not paid off your loan, it is forgiven. So these are two caps that are already in the law.

I would say to the Senator through the Chair, she is correct. The idea of this is instead of Congress playing political ``fix it'' during every election, we have turned this into a sort of doc fix where we are treating students the same way we treat doctors who serve Medicare patients. We run in here and have a big political fight about what we should be paying. Instead of doing that, we have a permanent solution that is based on what the market rate actually is. We say whatever it costs the government, whatever it costs the taxpayer, we loan it to the students at that level.

The Senator is correct; if it costs the government more to borrow the money because the rates are higher that year, the rate will be higher that year. But there is the 8.25-percent cap. Throughout the history of the student loan program, there have been caps in the past. There was a 10-percent cap for about 15 years. There was a 9-percent cap for about 20 years. If the Senator is suggesting there be a cap on the loan at a lower level than that, then the Senator will have to raise a lot of money.

For example, if we had a 6.8-percent cap on all loans going forward, my guess would be that it would cost $50 billion or $60 billion over a 10-year period of time. I do not know where we will get that money. So the President made the proposal that we have a permanent solution. He suggested that we take the amount of money--ask the Congressional Budget Office. This is not some Republican or Democratic figure. Ask the Congressional Budget Office: What does it cost to borrow the money and to make the loans? Let's then loan it to the students. Let's not overcharge them for any purpose. That is the proposal.

So my question would be, why would we do a short-term fix for 1 year that

benefits a small percent of students, and leave 7 million middle-income students twisting in the wind, paying an interest rate that is nearly twice as much as they would pay under the bipartisan permanent solution that is based on the very same idea the President proposed, that the House of Representatives has passed, and that a bipartisan group here has proposed?

I think the more Senators look into this and understand the cost of it, they will agree the goal is to say, we do not want to add any cost to the taxpayers, and we certainly do not want to overcharge the students on a loan, that they will come out with something about like what the bipartisan proposal is and what the House passed and what the President proposed.

If I could make one other comment, the Senator from Michigan was talking about large loans for students. I agree that is a problem. I am a former university president. I am a former Education Secretary. I have watched this for a long time. I think a lot of students are borrowing too much money. We need to think about ways to change that. Right now, they are entitled to borrow certain amounts, even if the college thinks it is unwise for them to do that. Maybe we need to change that. Maybe colleges need to have some skin in the game when they make a loan, whether they are a public, or nonprofit or a for- profit college. That is something we ought to look into.

But what we are debating this week is a simple question of what is a fair rate? What is a fair rate? The bipartisan proposal is an 8-page bill that says: Let's take what it costs the government to borrow the money, that is whatever the Congressional Budget Office says it is, let's loan it to the students without any profit, and let's have two caps on it going forward. One would be 8.25 percent. Any student could consolidate any loans at that level if it goes higher. The other would be a cap on how much you have to pay each year as you pay your loan back. I hope my friends on the other side recognize that unless I am mistaken, their proposal does help, for 1 year, 2 million low-income students who already have their interest paid by subsidy by the taxpayers, who also are eligible, for the most part, for Pell grants. But it does nothing for 7 million middle-income undergraduates whose rates on new loans will stay at 6.8 percent.

The bipartisan proposal would lower those rates to nearly half that level. Why would we leave those middle-income students--those 7 million middle-income students--twisting in the wind, paying twice as much in interest rates as they need to pay? That is the question. I hope after the vote tomorrow that we can sit down, talk this through, and come to a result. We should not be having political gamesmanship about this. We are talking about 11 million families here, 18 million loans, over $100 billion. We are talking about people who are making their plans to go to college. It is not easy to go. Many Senators have talked about that.

People might have $100,000 in loans, but they cannot get it through the subsidized loan program. You can only receive up to $23,000 that way. We can look at all of that at some point. But we need to pass this 8-page bill, set a fair rate, spare the taxpayers, spare the students. There is no need to deal with ``some of the loans,'' when we can lower rates for ``all of the loans'' and put it on a permanent fair basis, very much in the way the President recommended in his budget, very much in the way the House of Representatives passed it, and very much in the way the bipartisan group has suggested.

I yield the floor.

I thank the Senator from New York. I understand he has a previous meeting. I don't want to make him late because maybe it will produce some result. I hope it will produce a result--I don't see an issue that benefits either political party or any Senator.

The questions we who have been working on this have asked the Congressional Budget Office are very simple. We have said our goal is to create a permanent solution along the lines the President recommended, that the House of Representatives has now passed, that neither costs the taxpayers additional money or overcharges the student. Please give us what the interest rates would be and what the type of loan should be.

The Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, goes through all of this and they suggest a variety of options that we have.

What they have told us is that the proposal of the bipartisan group comes as close to being equal as one can get. It is about nearly $1 billion over 10 years which, when you are loaning $100 billion a year, is sort of a rounding error.

The intention is to loan it to the students for what it costs the government to borrow the money, but we are not going to overcharge the students and we are not going to ask the taxpayers to pay an additional subsidy.

Within that, if you accepted that idea, then you could say there are a variety of ways to do that. You could do it as the bipartisan group has suggested or you could try to put a cap on it. Whenever you put a cap on, it costs a lot more to students. A cap at 10 doesn't cost very much because the interest rates aren't estimated to be that high for undergraduates especially. But as you go down to 9, 8, 7 or 6.8, it balloons very rapidly. We could meet that principle, fair to taxpayers and fair to students, but we are going to have to raise a lot of money to do it. I haven't heard anybody suggest where $50 or $60 million more is going to come from.

I think it is better to go ahead and amend the House bill, get a better bill, put the Senate's imprint on it, and send it to the President. Let's let all of today's students take advantage of today's low rates and pass a permanent solution that would reflect what the actual cost is. It may go up; it may go down. That is the reality.

As we know, with low-income students, those eligible for subsidized loans, the taxpayer already pays the interest on those loans while the student is in college. That is about $50 billion over 10 years. Those students are also eligible for Pell grants, most of them are, and that is about $350 billion over 10 years. This is a substantial subsidy.

The Senator mentioned the Federal Credit Reform Act. The Federal Credit Reform Act is the way the Congress has said the CBO should count when it is making these computations, so it does that. It also does it according to a fair value method of accounting. Maybe the simplest way to explain it is to say the Federal Credit Reform Act actually favors students pretty heavily in this computation. The fair market value accounting is more realistic, and favors the taxpayers' point of view. We are using the accounting system--or the CBO is--for this bill that is more generous to students.

I still, after listening respectfully to all I have heard, don't see why in the world we are going to insist that for the next year several million middle-income students are going to have to pay 6.8 percent when they could be paying 3.66. This is what I can't understand. I hope we continue this debate and tomorrow we will have at least one vote on it. I hope after that we have more discussion and that we come to a result because there are a lot of families waiting for us to make a decision.

The President has weighed in. The House of Representatives has passed a bill. We have a bipartisan bill on the floor. We need to come to a result, send it to the President so families can make their decisions about how they are going to pay the college bills.

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Last week on July 2, the Tuesday before the Fourth of July Independence Day on Thursday, the administration made an announcement that they were going to delay implementation of a key component of the ObamaCare law. I think that came as a surprise to a lot of people because the expectation has been all along that in January of this next year many of the provisions in that law were going to go into effect.

Tomorrow, a majority of the Senate Republican conference will be sending a letter to President Obama asking for a permanent delay of the employer mandate. I say permanent delay because they talked about delaying it for 1 year. In making the announcement about the delay of the employer mandate, the administration unilaterally acted and failed to work with Congress on what is a very significant decision.

This action finally acknowledges some of the many burdens this law will place on job creators. I believe the rest of this law should be permanently delayed for all Americans in order to avoid significant economic harm to American families.

In response to questions about the administration's decision, the President's senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said, ``We are listening,'' while referring to the concerns of the business community over the onerous employer mandate that will result in fewer jobs and employees working fewer hours.

We have been listening as well. As more employers have attempted to understand the burdensome requirements in the President's health care law, the louder their outrage has become. In particular, small- to medium-sized businesses are simply drowning, drowning in their efforts to understand all of the regulations.

We are also listening to the views of the American people. A recent Gallup poll from this week showed that a majority of Americans still disapprove of the health care law. The survey showed that 55 percent of respondents disapprove of ObamaCare. A Gallup survey last month revealed for every one person who believes they will be better off under ObamaCare, two believe they will be worse off.

Opposition to the health care law is growing and it will continue to grow as more Americans realize the law is built upon broken promises and will result in higher health care costs and more taxes.

Under the individual mandate, the IRS, which is still under multiple investigations for unfairly targeting conservative groups, will play a central role in the implementation of the health care law in our country. Last fall the Congressional Budget Office estimated nearly 6 million Americans, primarily in the middle class, will have to pay a tax under the individual mandate, which was 2 million more than were initially estimated.

When the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented, the average individual mandate tax will be nearly $1,200, which clearly--clearly-- contradicts the President's previous statement that the individual mandate is ``absolutely not a tax increase.''

Further, families are facing significant increases in premiums. The Wall Street Journal recently published an analysis of premiums and concluded under the health care law some Americans will see their premiums double or even triple, which is the opposite of the promise that was made by the President that premiums would go down by $2,500 for American families.

Given the widely held belief by the American people the Affordable Care Act will not fulfill its promises and will result in higher costs for American families, I believe this law should be permanently delayed. This law is unworkable, harmful to the economy and to American families, and action to delay the employer mandate is an acknowledgment of that very fact.

Public opinion about the Affordable Care Act has been consistently low. Perhaps Americans don't like it because it is affecting their jobs. Four in ten small business owners say they have held back in hiring, and one in five owners says they have let employees go due to the health care costs associated with the Affordable Care Act. As implementation of the law continues, the number of small business

owners who take these steps could increase.

Employers are also cutting back on hours in anticipation of the mandate. Even though enforcement of the employer mandate may be delayed, employers still know this is coming down the pike and will continue to make adjustments to their workforce in anticipation of the new mandates.

A new mandate will also be imposed on individual Americans. On January 1, Americans will be forced by their government to buy a product--health insurance--for the first time ever. This mandate will be enforced by tax penalties administered through the Internal Revenue Service. The Obama administration has requested over $400 million in funding and nearly 2,000 bureaucrats for the IRS to implement the individual mandate and 46 other statutory provisions.

The blizzard of ObamaCare rules and regulations continues. Regulators have now written over 20,000 pages of ObamaCare-related rules and notices in the Federal Register. And just this last week another 606 pages of new regulations were released that were designed to assist in implementing this massive law. It is no wonder the public outcry from employers was so loudly opposed to the employer mandate.

American families are also struggling to understand how this complex, burdensome law will affect them. It is critical the President and his administration listen to the American people and permanently delay this law.

I would add that if we look at the impact on the economy, not only is this about higher premiums for middle-class families in this country, not only is it about higher taxes that are going to be imposed upon medical device manufacturers, on health insurance plans, pharmaceutical companies--all of which, by the way, will be passed on to individual consumers--it is also about the impact this will have on jobs and the economy. If we look at the numbers that came out last week and what they said about the impact of policies coming out of Washington, DC, and the impact they are having on jobs in this country, the number of people working part time for economic reasons--sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers--increased by 322,000 people to 8.2 million total people in the month of June. These are people who are working part time because their hours have been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

The real unemployment rate, or what we call the U-6 rate, is 14.3 percent for June of 2013, which is an increase of one-half percentage point over the previous month. That is the total percentage of unemployed and underemployed workers, making the real number of unemployed Americans in this country 22.6 million people. These are people who are unemployed, want work but have stopped searching for a job, or are working part time simply because they can't find full-time employment.

I would add that when policies coming out of Washington, exemplified by the ObamaCare mandates, are imposed on the American economy, it makes it harder for job creators and employers in this country to create the jobs necessary to affect these numbers in a positive way, to get Americans back to work, and back to work in a full-time way and back to work in a way where they are actually increasing their take- home pay rather than having it decreased by higher costs for everything they have to spend their income on, including the cost of health insurance coverage.

We have been saying for a long time and there is study after study that comes out that talks about how the health care law is going to cause health insurance premiums to rise, and there have been a lot of people who have gotten up here in the Senate, others in the administration, in an attempt to defend the ObamaCare law who have said: Oh, no, no, no, that is not going to be the case; it is actually going to drive premiums down. We continue to hear that, but more and more evidence comes in, and not just studies being done out there but real-life examples of the impact this law is having on insurance premiums.

In fact, there are some actuarial studies that have estimated premiums in various States around the country and what the impact on premiums would be. For the State of Colorado, in the individual market, the estimate by the actuaries is that the insurance premium rates are going to go up by 19 percent; the State of Indiana by 95 percent in the individual market, by 10 percent in the small group market; the State of Maine, the estimates are the individual market premiums are going to go up by 40 percent, 9 percent in the small group market; the State of Minnesota, in the individual market, a 42-percent increase in premiums and 20 percent in the small group market; the State of Wisconsin, a 30- percent increase in the individual market. In the State of Ohio, last month the Department of Insurance announced the average individual market health insurance premium in 2014 will cost 88 percent more. According to Ohio insurance regulators, the department's initial analysis of the proposed rate shows consumers will have fewer choices and pay much higher premiums for their health insurance starting in the year 2014.

Well, it shouldn't be any big surprise when we look at the requirements in the new health care law. The new health care law says you have to have a certain kind of coverage. You can't continue to offer coverage available to people who might want to have different choices about what types of things they want covered, what they want their copays or their deductibles to be. Basically, the law says if you are going to offer a plan, you have to offer this plan, it is a government-approved plan, and it has to have these sorts of coverages and these sorts of things and these bells and whistles.

The new law also says you can get insurance after you get sick. It is called the guarantee issue. No longer is there any requirement to go out and get insurance to protect yourself and prevent yourself from having to be in that situation when illness strikes. Now, if you get sick, you can go out and buy insurance.

It also requires community rating, which changes the way in which health care costs are distributed across the range of people who are covered by health care premiums in this country, making it more expensive for younger people to get their health insurance coverage. That is why we are seeing these steep increases in the individual market.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to continue for a couple of minutes.

So when we look at all the mandates, the new requirements in the legislation, the new taxes in the legislation, and when we look at all the States trying to deal with and cope with this, and all the small businesses--and small businesses, obviously, weighed in heavily, which is why, as I mentioned earlier, the White House said, look, we are listening, we got the message, and so they waived this, they delayed this at least for 1 year for the small businesses under the employer mandate--all we are simply saying is: Look, there are lots of problems associated with this law. This was a bad law. It is based upon broken promises. It promised lower premiums; we are seeing higher premiums. It includes higher taxes. We are going to see effects all across the economy when it comes to jobs as people cut back and start forcing people into part-time jobs so they are not hit with the employer mandates under this legislation.

So the law affects jobs and it affects the economy. We have a sluggish economic growth rate that has now been adjusted down to 1.8 percent in the last quarter, and we continue to sort of muddle along. One of the reasons for that is because we here in Washington, DC, continue to pile more and more costs on employers trying to do business. So until we understand that to create jobs and grow the economy we have to make it less difficult and less expensive for employers and job creators to create jobs, we will continue to see this trend in the future.

I would simply say to my colleagues here in the Senate, and to the administration, if we are going to delay implementation of the employer mandate for a year, let's delay the individual mandate as well, and let's not just do it for a year, let's permanently delay this. Let's start over and do this the right way, in a way that actually reduces premiums and health care costs for people in this country, that makes it less expensive and less difficult for small businesses to create jobs and

grow the economy, and to get Americans back to work in good jobs that pay well, that increase the take-home pay so they can provide in a better way for their families.

Madam President, with that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my remarks, the Senator from Utah be recognized.

I wish to thank the Senator from Utah for graciously allowing me to proceed.

While the Republicans failed to join us in an effort to avert the doubling of the interest rate on need-based student loans, there is still time to act to make things right for students. On July 1, the interest rate on subsidized Stafford loans doubled from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. Instead of allowing us to take up a vote on an extension of the lower rate, the other side continues to push a so-called long- term solution that would saddle students with even more debt in the future.

Students and advocates from across the country have been very clear. On June 21, they wrote to Senate leadership, and in their words: ``A bad deal that is permanent for student borrowers is worse than no deal at all.''

We need time to work together to develop a good deal for students-- one that is comprehensive, one that touches not on just rates but on incentives to lower the costs of a college education and on ways in which students can refinance their existing debt and their future debts. As we all understand, we have reached a point where student debt has exceeded credit card debt. It is the second largest household debt--$1 trillion--and it is saddling this generation and future generations with burdens they well might not be able to discharge.

In the meantime, at this moment, we should take up and pass the Keep Student Loans Affordable Act which I have offered, along with Senator Hagan and 41 of our colleagues, to ensure that students with the greatest financial need do not see the interest rate on their loans double. Again, at the heart of our student lending program has been a special concern to allow young men and women with talent from low and moderate incomes to go to college. That is why we created the subsidized Stafford loan program. That is what we have to keep our focus and emphasis on today. Forty-nine organizations representing students, educators, colleges and universities, and workers from across the country have asked us to do this. These are the students, the universities, and the people who have most at stake and they are telling us, again, that a bad deal is worse than no deal at all.

We should take a step back and remember why we offer student loans in the first place. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Higher Education Act into law in 1965, he said: ``And it is a truism education is no longer a luxury. Education in this day and age is a necessity.''

His words are truer today than they were in 1965. According to Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, we will fall 5 million

short of the workers with postsecondary credentials we will need by 2020. We already know there is going to be a gap between the workers we need with advanced degrees and the jobs available by 2020. Nearly two- thirds of new jobs will require a college degree or similar credential. So by saddling this generation with additional costs and thereby inhibiting those who may well have the talent but not the resources to go to college, we are going to create an even bigger divergence between the demand for skilled workers and the talent Americans need to develop to fill those jobs.

President Johnson again referred to the Higher Education Act as a promise the Nation was making to its young people for generations to come. The promise was that this Nation was not going to allow financial barriers to keep willing and able young people from a college education. But, today, that promise is at risk.

As I have indicated, the job market increasingly demands postsecondary education simply to achieve middle-class earnings. At the same time, college is getting more and more expensive. As I said also, student loan debt is accelerating, second only to mortgage debt for American households. This is going to have a huge impact on the overall economy of this country. It is not going to be just individual students and families struggling. The Federal Reserve of New York and others have reported that this debt is dragging down our economy especially for young families as they try to establish themselves.

The primary tools in the Higher Education Act to help students pay for college are grants, work study, and low-cost loans. The Pell grant, which I must say we are so proud of because it was authored and championed by our great Senator Claiborne Pell, is less and less able to fund a college education. In the 1970s, it covered a large part of tuition and fees for a year in college. Today, the percentage of costs it covers is shrinking, even as we try to expand it. As a result, more and more students have had to rely on loans, and that is why we have seen this huge explosion of debt.

Today, instead of aiding students with low-cost loans, the Federal Government, ironically, is reaping profits from these students. We have to change this.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that between now and 2023, student loans will generate $184 billion in revenue for the Federal Government. At a time when students are struggling and when they are seeing their debt explode, we are making money off of them--not investing in them but putting them under a huge financial burden.

As we seek to solve these complex problems, I think the most sensible and the wisest thing to do is to keep the subsidized loan rate at 3.4 percent and use the year to engage and successfully complete the complex task of looking at several different aspects of this problem.

However, we are blocked from doing so because our budget rules basically require us to replace the revenue and the other side has been unwilling to consider revenue from other sources. We propose to offset the cost by closing a tax loophole. We have to look carefully not only at what we will do to make the student loan programs cheaper and more effective for students but also how we will pay for it.

We also have to recognize that for many years our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have targeted some of these subsidized loans, wanting to make them more expensive. From the Contract With America in the 1990s to the Ryan budgets, they have suggested things such as, for example, eliminating the in-school interest subsidy on student loans. For subsidized student loans, we pay the interest while the student is in college pursuing their educational goals, and they have suggested eliminating that. These are some of the reasons why I think we have to be skeptical of proposals that are being advanced in order to provide relief for students.

The so-called Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act would add nearly $1 billion in additional revenues from student loans to the government coffers. It may be a short-term fix, but it creates a much larger long- term problem: The teaser rates in the first few years mask the uncapped rates students would face in the following decades.

This chart is very revealing. This demonstrates the undergraduate Stafford loan interest rates under the so-called Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act. This green line is the graduate Stafford loan, and this is the PLUS loan for parents. As we can see, they accelerate dramatically because of the 10-year Treasury bill rate chosen by supporters of the other proposal and because of the likely increase in that rate. It reaches the point here where interest rates exceed current law in 2016. So by 2016, these loans will be much more expensive. This is a classic case of enjoying 2 or 3 years of low interest, but having to be prepared to pay a lot more for education in the future. It is eerily reminiscent of those proposals to refinance one's house with an adjustable rate uncapped mortgage and get rid of that old-fashioned fixed rate which was so prevalent in the first decade of the 2000s and which caused so much havoc, and still is causing so much havoc.

CBO estimates that if we look from 2017 to 2023 alone, students will pay $37.8 billion more under the so-called Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act.

Students are smart. They can figure it out. But I think there is something else we have to add to the mix. This chart shows an estimate of the rates that was made a few weeks ago on the previous chart. Here is the change in the daily yield for the 10-year T-note. This is the benchmark rate. We can see where it begins on May 1 of 2013. It is going from about 1.6 percent all the way up to about 2.6 percent. This rate is rising dramatically. Why? Well, for one reason, the Federal Reserve has indicated they are going to begin to taper off their quantitative easing program. One reason is as we see signs of growth in the economy, interest rates will rise naturally. So what we could find is that this chart actually underestimates the potential growth in interest rates and students could end up paying maybe much more.

In the Republican proposal, there is no cap on these rates.

They talk about the fact that there is a consolidation process, but that consolidation process can only be entered into after a student has gone through school, begun repayment, accumulated interest at increasing rates each year, and then, indeed, when a student goes into the consolidation phase, all of the interest is capitalized and the loan is stretched out over many years, meaning they end up paying more. So it is not a rate cap at all. Frankly, without a rate cap, I think we are exposing students and their families to vast uncertainty. In fact, the only thing that seems to be certain is these rates are going up.

We have to approach this problem in a thoughtful way. That is why I introduced the Responsible Student Loan Solutions Act with Senator Durbin. It is a long-term proposal. It would base student loan interest rates on the actual cost of running the student loan programs--not on arbitrary rate but the actual cost to the government--and it will protect students by capping interest rates on each of the individual loan programs. Our proposal would, in effect, pass on the savings to students that the Federal Government accrues from the low cost of borrowing relative to other borrowers, our ability to absorb risk relative to others, and the economies of scale for loan servicing for students across this country.

Additionally, by increasing in this legislation the loan limits on subsidized loans, we will allow students of low and moderate income to receive more help and not require them to borrow unsubsidized loans at higher interest rates and, as a result, I think, help bring down the whole cascading issue of student debt.

Finally, our legislation would provide relief to students with outstanding loans--that is upwards of $1 trillion nationally--by allowing them to refinance to a lower interest rate.

These are some of the key elements for a true long-term solution.

We also need to address the cost of college, which is going up astronomically. The institutions have to have a lot more at stake. They have to be very careful that they are not only selecting well-qualified students, but also that they are preparing them for the workforce of this century and that they can

have certainty, and the students can have certainty, that the skills they master in college will be rewarded with a job in our economy.

Finally, we have to establish a true Federal-State partnership. Federal grants and loans can't keep pace with these rising college costs. We have to work with every level of government to try to address these issues.

What I would suggest is that we work together. First, we extend the 3.4-percent interest rate, then, consciously, deliberately, and expeditiously, I hope, move forward to fix these complex issues, protect our students, allow education to be once again the engine that moves the country ahead, and allow every American, regardless of their wealth, to get aboard that train and go forward.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senators be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each and that Senator Hatch be permitted to speak for up to 15 minutes.

Madam President, before my friend from Rhode Island leaves the floor, I wish to thank him for coming to the floor of the Senate every week to give a message that we need to hear all the time about a serious worldwide crisis. I thank him for his passion and for calling on us to remember that when it is time for our children and grandchildren to ask where we were, I want to say I was with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and those of us who care deeply about solving these problems. So I thank the Senator from Rhode Island very much.

I thank all of our colleagues who have come to the floor today and have spoken on the issue of keeping student loan rates low. I know Senator Blumenthal was here a few minutes ago. Our chairman, Senator Harkin, has come to the floor, as well as Senator Brown, Senator Sanders, and Senator Reed, who has been such a passionate advocate and leader on this

issue. I thank as well our Presiding Officer from Massachusetts for her passion in keeping us on point. I thank Senator Boxer and Senator Murray and others who have come to the floor, including Senator Kay Hagan, who is leading this fight with Senator Jack Reed in what we intend to do tomorrow, which is focus on a very simple issue: Let's not do harm to students as it relates to student loan rates going up, while we fix the larger problem of affordability of college.

Let's be very clear. The majority of the Senate voted on June 6 to keep student loan rates at 3.4 percent--the majority. When we run for office, if one person gets one more vote than the other person, that person wins the election, and that is a majority. So it is unfortunate that a majority could not have ruled here, but because of the rules of the Senate, because of the rights of the minority and the filibuster and so on, there have been objections from Republican colleagues, and we have had to now go through this other process to overcome a filibuster.

We had the vote, and the majority of the Senate voted to keep rates low for students. Let's make that very clear. However, in order to overcome a Republican filibuster, we need 60 votes to block that filibuster. So tomorrow is about that vote.

We all know that on July 1 the interest rate for students jumped from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. Let's all look at what is happening around in our communities with our families right now as well. Keep in mind, you can get a mortgage or a car loan for about 4 percent. So we are now seeing student loan interest rates higher than that. Under proposals we have seen predominantly coming from the other side of the aisle that would have those rates go up and up based on ``the market,'' we could see those rates go to 7, 8, 9, 10 percent in the future. It makes no sense.

If you can get a car loan, if you can get a mortgage for about 4 percent, what about students? Why are we now in a situation where college students are seeing their interest rates on their student loans double--double--or higher, which has been proposed by many in this body?

To add insult to injury, if we do not fix this the Federal Government will start to gain huge profits, as our Presiding Officer has reminded us over and over--more than $50 billion just this year on the backs of students and families.

So what we are looking at right now is billions of dollars in profits on the backs of students if the rate is doubled. If it goes higher, if it goes to the 7 or 8 percent being talked about in the Republican proposals or the 8.5 percent that was passed in the House, we are looking at over $100 billion--more than that--in profits by the Federal Government on the backs of students and families, right at a time when they are just trying to hold it together.

They want to go to college. We want them to go to college. We want them to get an education. We benefit as a country from making sure we can outcompete and outeducate the competition around the world. Yet those who say they care about students are proposing options that would increase costs for students and profits for the Federal Government. We should not be making profits on the backs of students who are trying to go to college. So our proposal that we will be voting on tomorrow would lock in the 3.4-percent interest rate on student loans to make sure students and families can afford college.

I would like to share a couple of e-mails I have received out of thousands. I want to thank students and families all across Michigan who have engaged in this effort, who have gone to DontDoubleMyRate to get information and tell their story, who have come to my Facebook page and have called us and e-mailed us to tell us how this impacts them.

Corey, a student right now at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, MI, wrote to me about this issue and said:

I am asking you to please not allow my student loan rates

to be doubled. I am a hard-working and respectful student. I

make all of my payments. I go to class and do well. I work

hard and am grateful for the chance to get a higher

education, but if student loan rates go up I would be left to

make a decision whether or not school would be affordable.

Whether or not school would be affordable--that is what this issue comes down to.

If we do not fix this, and fix it in a responsible way that keeps costs low, students like Corey and 7 million students across our country will have to rethink their college plans.

This issue should not be controversial. This is not a partisan issue. If I were to pick a partisan issue on the floor of the Senate, it would not be student loan interest rates and the cost of college. I would think this is one of the areas on which we could come together.

Just last year we kept the interest rate low. We passed, for a year, an extension of the 3.4-percent rate. It was good enough to do last year; I do not know why we cannot keep that going while we tackle the long-term solutions. This should not be partisan. I know there are people of goodwill on both sides of the aisle trying to figure out something. But, unfortunately, because of the desire of the other side of the aisle and the desire of the House to have this market based and float with the marketplace and go up with market interest rates, we find ourselves in the situation where it is even worse to pass one of the proposals that has been made rather than just allow the rates to go back up to the fixed rate of 6.8 percent, which is really crazy.

Republicans, in what we see in the House of Representatives, cap the rates at 8.5 percent and 10.5 percent. Now, again, remember, right now you can get a car loan--you know, 15, 20 years, however long you finance your car: 10, 15, 20 years--at 4 percent; have a 30-year mortgage at 3.5, 4 percent, 4.5 percent, 5 percent--all less than what we are talking about for a student to be able to get a loan to be able to go to college, which we all say we want them to do.

We are lending to banks at a much lower rate, as our Presiding Officer has reminded us over and over. I do understand it is a 24-hour lending rate. I do understand it is a different structure. But, still, if we can lend to banks at 0.75 percent, we cannot even fix a rate of 3.4 percent for students, when we have a tremendous stake in their willingness to go to school and work hard and be successful?

So under the plans we are seeing on the other side of the aisle and the plan we have seen in the House of Representatives, we would see rates go to 7, 8, 9 percent; some of them tapped out at 10.5 percent-- 10.5 percent. It makes no sense.

Corey from Central continues with his e-mail:

From the time we first start learning, we are encouraged to

attend college and get a good job so that we can be a part of

helping this country grow. I am simply asking you to help

continue to make this an affordable option for me, and many

others like me.

Our country will not grow without a strong middle class, and we will not have a middle class if people cannot get an education to get the skills they need, go to college, dream big dreams, and know they can be successful in attaining those dreams.

We are saying we need to do everything possible to make sure students can afford to go to college and that they do not come out with $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 of debt. I talk to medical students coming out with $100,000, $150,000 of debt. You could buy a house for that. Then, rather than making a decision maybe to go into primary care, where we certainly need doctors, they have to decide to go into a specialty because they have to pay off their student loans. There are stories like that all across our country--judgments being made.

So I have a very different view in terms of how we go about this--not just in the short run but what we lock in for the long term. The proposals on the other side lock in rates that will go up as interest rates go up. I do not think we should be doing that.

Here is another e-mail from Matthew in Royal Oak:

Students are not asking for a bailout like the one Wall

Street got, just an opportunity to obtain an affordable

education so we can compete in a global economy.

That is what we are talking about: Corey and Matthew and 7 million other people.

Let me conclude by saying that for me, this is very personal because I would not have been able to go to college, I would not have been able to be

the first one to get a 4-year college degree in my own family if people I did not know in Michigan and in Washington had not decided that an affordable education was important to have.

My dad was very ill when I was in high school. I had great grades, but we did not have very much money. Because of a tuition-and-fees scholarship I received and student loans I was able to go to college. I want to make sure that every young person who wants to go to college can do that, and that whether we know them or not--we know their name, we know where they live--it does not matter. Nobody knew this red- headed, freckle-faced kid from Clare, and yet because somebody put a value on education and its importance to our country, I have had the opportunities I have had in my life.

I think that is what this vote is about. Tomorrow is about keeping the rates low, giving us time to address the broader issues around affordability. There is a lot of work to do. We can do that on a bipartisan basis, but first we need to start by doing no harm. That is the vote tomorrow.

I hope we will see a ``yes'' vote on the Keep Student Loans Affordable Act.

Thank you, Madam President.

Madam President, if I might respond, this number comes from the Joint Tax Committee. I would be happy to follow up with the Senator on that, but that is where the number comes from.

Would my friend from Tennessee yield for a question?

I thank the Senator. First, in prefacing this in terms of the number the Senator asked me about before, we will check. I do know there are about 300,000 students in Michigan affected, over 500,000 in California. So that is almost 1 million. So the 2 million the Senator is talking about seems low if those two States together have about 850,000. But certainly we will check. We want to make sure the numbers are right.

My question would be: The number the Senator quotes as the interest rate in his proposal, is that a fixed rate or will that go up?

For next year, though?

Do I understand correctly, though, that for a student next year who took out a loan, it might be higher? If a student took out a loan in year 3, it might be higher? It is my understanding that over time, over the next 3, 4, 5 years, we are looking at rates at least of doubling, if not more. The Senator is saying cap it at 8.25. That is a lot more than doubling of the rates that will happen right now.

But is it accurate to say if the year in which you are taking out the loan, depending on whether it is next year, the year after, the year after, that it would be in anticipation that the interest rate would rise?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, last week I led a bicameral delegation that visited the Syrian border with Turkey. What we witnessed on the ground highlighted the critical nature of events and the desperate need for American leadership and eventually a negotiated resolution to the Syrian civil war.

This civil war is now in its 29th month. More than 100,000 people have been killed, including at least 36,000 civilians, and 1.7 million people have been forced from their homes, fleeing for their lives as the chaos escalates. To describe this conflict as anything less than a regional disaster is to ignore the magnitude of its impact.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the violence has pushed over 400,000 refugees to Turkey, almost 500,000 refugees to Jordan, 160,000 to Iraq, 587,000 to Lebanon, and 88,000 refugees to Egypt--a stunning development. The people of Turkey and Jordan, including Prime Minister Erdogan and King Abdallah, should be specifically applauded for their generous support of these refugees.

I also point out there are now secure locations inside Syria where refugees can be housed within their own country.

There is noted international support to prevent the spillover of violence. At the request of the Turkish Government and in fulfillment of our NATO obligations, the U.S. Patriot missile batteries at Gaziantep are one example of efforts to deter the threat of ballistic missiles beyond the Syrian border. Additionally, the Dutch and Germans have deployed batteries to Turkey.

American troops are working diligently to strengthen our regional security and protect innocent lives in harm's way. Our delegation was able to meet and visit with troops in Gaziantep last week. These highly educated and motivated men and women are proudly serving American interests, and I commend them for their dedication to a critical mission.

Turkey must have the support it needs to defend its population and territory from the raging civil war next door. Without robust cooperation among NATO allies, the stability of this entire region is at risk.

During our visit to a refugee camp in the town of Killis near the Syrian-Turkish border, roughly 40 miles from Gaziantep, we saw firsthand the dire situation facing the countries that have accepted Syrian refugees and the challenges these individuals now face. At the refugee camp, our delegation met with a women's group, children in school, and with the elected camp council. Our conversations were insightful--and heartbreaking. Over and over, the same question emerged: Why aren't the Americans helping to bring down Asad? Why are the nations of the world allowing the slaughter of innocent people to continue? Is there no outrage over the displacement of more than 1.5 million people from their homes?

Frankly, these questions are very difficult to answer.

So far, the Obama administration has been reluctant to help in contrast to the aggressive military and humanitarian aid provided by some of our NATO allies such as Britain, France, and Turkey. I wish to emphasize: No one is asking for American boots on the ground. No one is asking President Obama to put troops in Syria. America is understandably war-weary from Iraq and Afghanistan, but our hesitation to provide adequate arms to the anti-Asad rebels is hard to justify, especially when multiple red lines have been crossed.

Those who share President Obama's reluctance to assist opposition forces point to the uncertainty surrounding those who might assume control of Syria if the rebels win. They ask: Which faction will emerge? The more moderate rebels under the Free Syrian Army or a radical Islamist band of opposition rebels?

While caution is definitely called for in this dangerous and volatile situation, our reluctance to act reminds me of Shakespeare's Hamlet who once observed that men ``rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of.''

I would remind Members--and the administration--that Hamlet's hand wringing and indecision ultimately led to his demise. In bowing to a fear of uncertainty and choosing disengagement, the implication is essentially that the world is somehow better off with a known quantity--even a known quantity in the person of Bashar al-Asad. I disagree.

Here are a few facts about the ``ills'' we know regarding the Syrian dictator known as Bashar al-Asad:

No. 1, Asad is supported by the extreme Islamist regime in Iran, with a supply of Iranian Revolutionary Guards to embolden his rampage.

No. 2, his grip on power has been serviced by Syria's client-state relationship with Russia, which continues to defend its military aid to him. President Vladimir Putin refused to join other nations at last month's G8 Summit in explicitly calling for an end to the Asad regime.

No. 3, Asad has tolerated--if not overseen--the killing of at least 36,000 civilians in his own country, and this is according to numbers from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. More than 3,000 of these have been women and more than 5,000 were under the age of 16.

No. 4, under Bashar al-Asad's rule, the number of refugees has topped 1.7 million, with thousands more seeking safety every day.

No. 5, Bashar al-Asad has targeted the villages of his enemies in a merciless attempt to eradicate any who oppose him.

No. 6, following in his father's ruthless footsteps, he has shown that he is willing to use every tool at his disposal to hang on to power, and that includes the use of chemical weapons, a development President Obama once called a red line, as well as rocket attacks on his own people.

No. 7, we have every reason to conclude that Bashar al-Asad is a calculating strategist and student of history who has learned from what he views as the mistakes of Iraq's Saddam Hussein or Libya's Muammar Qadhafi.

With Russian and Iranian assistance and arms, Asad has succeeded in stopping the momentum of the rebels. But with sufficient military support, the pendulum can, in fact, swing back toward the rebels.

I strongly disagree with those who suggest that the opposition rebels could somehow turn out to be worse than the nightmare that has unfolded.

Increasing America's assistance to Syrian rebels, short of boots on the ground, must be decisive and strategic in order to be effective. That does not mean we send arms freely to all rebels. I challenge the notion that in sending military aid, we forfeit the authority to choose which rebel leaders to support. I would also point out to Members that both the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that within the administration, they argued in favor of arming the rebels.

General Salim Idris, chief of staff of the U.S.-backed Supreme Military Council, has emerged as anything but a

radical Islamist in presiding over the armed opposition and serving as a conduit for military aid. A New York Times profile described him as ``soft-spoken and humble compared with many military men.'' He defected from the Syrian military after an attack on his village last year--the same village where he and his eight siblings were raised by a grain farmer.

In a recent letter to the United Nations Security Council, General Idris's pleas for the Syrian people were clear and simple: ``Syria should not be allowed to become the Rwanda of the 21st century.''

As I emphasized when speaking with Syrian refugees at the camp in Killis, a negotiated settlement will ultimately require reconciliation by representatives of all factions of the Syrian society--Alawites, Sunni, Shia, and Christians. They must be prepared to negotiate with and eventually forgive their fellow Syrians who have made war against them. But I do not believe that can happen as long as Asad and his Russian and Iranian backers see the momentum going their way. Russia will never agree to back a meaningful peace negotiation if the Russian leadership thinks Asad can win outright. A leading-from-behind strategy will not expedite the overthrow of the Asad regime. There is still an urgent need for American leadership.

There is no peaceful future for the Syrian people if Asad remains in power--only one of more violence, oppression, and regional instability. Should he prevail, the impact could have drastic implications on America's national security interests, including the prospect of increased sectarian violence in the region, the rise of al-Qaida- affiliated groups in Syria, and the expansion of Iran's extremist influence. The United States must not shy away from our potential to make a meaningful difference.

Our Nation led an international coalition to act in Bosnia and Kosovo, and we did so with success. We did not do so, regrettably, in Rwanda--a mistake President Clinton has called his greatest regret.

I do not suggest that one visit to a refugee camp is by any means a comprehensive assessment of U.S. foreign policy in Syria. Military assistance would be fraught with difficulties, and it produces a host of conflicting viewpoints among people for whom I have great respect. But my visit to the refugee camps does have a profound effect, and my observations of what is happening on the ground certainly bring home the enormity of human suffering and devastation this conflict has caused.

Most of those unfairly caught in the crossfire just want to get on with their lives and protect their families. Instead, they have been forced from their homes and from their livelihoods--their entire way of life ripped apart by the bloodshed that no human should endure.

I invite the American press to visit Gaziantep and the refugee camps nearby. The American people are entitled to know what is happening to 1.7 million people. After more than 100,000 deaths, with so many people left without a home, we should not stand by as the horrors continue to mount. The administration's hesitation leaves the fate of Syria's war- torn people to a regime willing to kill and destroy to stay in power.

In summary, we know too much about Bashar al-Asad to maintain the status quo. Backed by Russia and Iran, he has overseen the massacre of innocent lives, boldly crossed red lines, and violently suppressed any who challenged him. To suggest we cannot do any better--that Asad is somehow more acceptable than the opposition forces--falls short of taking an honest, realistic look at what is happening.

The question now is not whether America puts boots on the ground. We should not and will not do that. The question is whether the administration will strengthen the capabilities of Asad's adversaries. The question is whether the administration will trade its reluctance for resolve and--like that of our NATO allies--respond with robust military aid. So far, efforts in Geneva have failed to bring about a consensus among major world powers that outlines a lasting political transition. Without changing the momentum back to the rebels, the current situation will not change, and the threat to regional stability and to American interests will continue.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Would the Senator yield?

I thank the good Senator for working in such a bipartisan manner. I think this truly is a bipartisan bill.

This bill has been described as belonging to one party or the other, and that is wrong. Senator Burr, Senator Alexander, Senator Coburn, Senator King, Senator Carper, and I sat down and looked at how we could fix something. We looked at it from the standpoint that this deadline has hit. One year ago we extended it. They said it was the political atmosphere and we had to extend it. We knew that year would come and, similar to everything else that has happened here for the last 2 or 3 years, nothing gets done. We just said: Enough is enough. It has to be fixed, and if we want to fix it, to understand the program, we have to look at the whole program.

I think now they are making accusations that students are paying profits so we can pay down the debt. Whether there is profit built in depends on the accounting procedures used by our Federal Government. It was built in. You can blame whomever you want to blame, but it is built into it. We have to deal with the facts in front of us.

What I would ask the Senator, all of us have agreed in a bipartisan manner that no profit will be made on the backs of students, what we can determine through the bill we are working on, right?

So we have all come to that agreement--Democrats and Republicans--no profit in debt reduction. It should go to lowering the rate.

We agreed on that. We have agreed on a long-term fix, 10 years, rather than kicking it down the road another year, knowing another year will come and go and we are probably going to be standing here debating. That is the conclusion we have come to, which is different than what the House sent us. I applaud the Senator for working with us to put in a fixed rate.

So if it is at 3.66 this year and I am able to qualify and I am subsidized at $3,500 of a subsidized loan the taxpayer will be paying, that 3.66 is fixed for the full life of the loan. We agreed on that, correct?

So when they say it is a Republican bill or a Democratic bill, that is erroneous. That is not fair. This is truly a bipartisan effort, and we are working with all of our colleagues in my caucus--and I know the Senator is in his caucus--to understand that if I have a subsidized Stafford loan, that means the Federal Government--the taxpayers of this country--will pay my interest while I am in school, correct?

At the end of that, then I pick up whatever interest rate has accumulated while I was in school, and I take it from that day forward.

What I think a lot of our colleagues don't understand, I can't make it just on that $3,500. I have to borrow more money. So now, if I go with my colleagues on the Democratic side, if I borrow more money, I have to borrow that at 6.8 percent.

We were able, in a bipartisan way, to bring that to 3.66 percent for all undergraduates, correct?

So the money I would have to borrow, even though I qualify because of my income for a subsidized loan, I don't have to pay the interest on an annual basis. So by bringing it down to one low rate, I am making much lower payments. So that is less obligation and less hardship on me as a college student to make that lower payment than it would be to make that higher payment.

We want to help the subsidized, very poor kids. I might be poor, but I can't make it on just what you give me because I am poor. I have to have a little more help. Then, on top of that, I want to go to graduate school after I get my college degree. So then I am at 6.8 again. Ours brings it down to 5.21, which is more savings, which I know the Senator agrees to.

If I may ask my colleague from Tennessee, right now we know we have a

consolidated cap at 8.25 percent. Let's say I graduate and I went to school during the high recession times. At the end, I have an 8.75- percent accumulative interest I owe. I can cap that and consolidate at 8.25, correct?

I think what they are referring to--and I might have misunderstood, but I think I am accurate on this. Everyone will take the loans for the longest period of time, and I just got out of school so I want the smallest payment. Four or five years out I have a better job. Instead of paying $150 a month, I can afford to pay $300 or $400.

There is no penalty for me to shorten that, as it would be in a conventional market. Is that how the Senator understands it?

To both of my friends, let me say that I graduate from college--no matter what the interest rates are, no matter what they might have been--I graduate and economic times are tough. I find a job that is not what I think my value is, but I find a job at $40,000-- $40,000. I am married now, and I have a child or two. Don't we have in our bill a protection which has been in place for a long time--both Democrats and Republicans have supported this protection--which is called income-based repayment? By law, I can only pay 15 percent of my disposable income. I think that breaks down to my payment can only be $142. Isn't that a subsidy too? Wouldn't we be subsidizing that to an extent? I am also understanding that if my economic condition does not improve and that is all I pay, by the end of 25 years it is exonerated. I pay nothing. I am done.

Let me say very quickly--and I will use $10 million hypothetically that is borrowed every year--$10 billion, $10 million, whatever you want to use--25 percent of that money goes to the subsidized, just 25 percent. I understand that it is close to about 40 percent of the students who participate in borrowing money, but the volume of money is about 25 percent, one-fourth of the money that is loaned out. So if we are keeping the rates low on one-fourth of the money, that means we artificially have much higher rates on three- fourths of the money students need to get an education.

What we are saying is that we are going to bring a larger majority of that down to the lowest rate. We think it is a good policy that we should be discussing and talking about. That is where we are. That is why we came up with the plan we did, but we reduced all the rates. The PLUS loans I think went from 7.9 to 6.21, yes, and then the graduate loans went from 6.8 to 5.21.

But if you do all of the undergraduate, it would go from 3.4 to 3.66, a quarter and a point--.26.

Right. Right.

That was the bipartisan agreement we had. I appreciate that very much. Let me say, here is the last 10 years. If we would use the last 10 years, with the bipartisan bill kicked in, this is what the students who basically are paying the higher rate now--6.8 percent frozen--would have been able to take advantage of, the lower rates. They never got a chance to take advantage of the lower rates. All we are assuming is that if rates go up in 3 or 4 years, they are going to be paying higher rates. We never assume the market--that is the reason why you fluctuate with the market on the 10-year T-bill. This would have happened with the 10-year T-bill. Look how much lower they would have been paying in the last 10 years.

I know we can all use figures any way we want to use them, but the bottom line is that it is either going to be market--it has always been that before. There have been caps that have been much higher, and we are trying to find something that is affordable, but the bottom line is, do we try to protect the lowest rate?

Most undergraduates have the hardest times. Once you get your undergraduate degree, you have a much higher percentage of making it. If you want to get a graduate degree and a higher Ph.D. degree, you have a much better chance.

The bottom line is that we want to keep the rates low so that when students go out they are not burdened with the highest payments. We have a lot of protections built in that a lot of times are misunderstood and are not explained properly, and I am glad we are having this colloquy.

Yes.

I am not sure how the Senator voted on the extension a year ago. I voted for the extension a year ago.

I don't intend to vote on the extension again because we have not fixed it. By voting on this extension, what we are voting on is 3.4 percent just for the subsidized, and everybody will be at 6.8 percent, and 7.9 percent for PLUS loans.

When my colleague is talking about that, the difference of savings between our bill--if we got a vote on our bill, which is a compromised, bipartisan bill, we would save close to $9 billion in

interest that students wouldn't have to pay. I believe we agree on that.

I think we are going to have a chance to vote on one bill, and that is about $2 billion. In West Virginia that is a lot of money in savings of $7 billion that students don't have to pay in interest, which is across the board for students who have subsidized and unsubsidized loans. That is the point we are trying to make, and we hope we get that through.

I know the Senator hopes, as I do, that we get a vote on this today.

I believe Senator Burr has the floor.

Was that for every student who was in college at that time no matter what their ranking or what service they had performed in the military or whether they had the GI bill?

Everybody in college during that period of time could borrow at the low rate of 2 percent with no interest at all?

Maybe Congress did a better job of getting its financial house in order than we have.

I have one question that I would like to ask in the spirit of a colloquy to my dear friend from Iowa. They are saying 1 year, and they are looking at the compromised, bipartisan bill we have worked on. In 3 or 4 years the rates may go up because market rates will change. If we are only looking at 1 year, is there anything prohibitive in our bill that we couldn't go back a year from now if we see a better solution? If we get an education bill, we can say: Hey, here is the grand bargain, which is better than what we thought we had.

Still yet, our bill saves $9 billion, and the bill my dear friends in my caucus support only saves $2 billion. If we only do it for 1 year, we help more people save more money, and then we can still rewrite another bill in 1 year. Are we able to do that?

If we look at it from year to year, we have 3.4 percent for the smallest group, 6.8 percent for everybody above that, and 7.9 percent for PLUS.

Under our bill, it is 3.66 percent for all undergraduates, and every rate comes down; correct?

So that is $9 billion versus $2 billion, and that is about as simple as I can make it.

I think what we are talking about also is that they are saying if it consolidates, it strings the payment out for the maximum of 30 years, which means they are paying a lot more back in interest; correct? That is the argument I have heard from different people. So that means, why would you have an automatic consolidation?

With that being said, I understand that with the government-run loan right now, there are no penalties for me. If I string it out to get the lowest payment for 30 years, and then I said I want to have 10 years, I can do that; correct? That is able to be done. So I can reduce that amount of time and amount of interest with my affordability to pay more.

Madam President, I wanted to speak in a little detail on another topic, and that is the direction we are going on the student loan crisis, I guess. It is a shame we have come to this. A year ago, I voted for the extension. We were told at that time that due to the political atmosphere, we had the big election year coming up, that we couldn't get into the details and fix it the way it maybe needed to be fixed and should have been fixed back then. So a lot of us went ahead and voted for the extension, and now we find ourselves in the same position this year as we were last year. There will be another election in 2014. So it seems as though we are always in an election cycle, and if we allow that to continue to direct what we do and how we do it, we would get little done here, which is what the public is getting frustrated with.

A few of us got together, myself, Senators Alexander, Carper, and King, and we decided maybe we could come together and work on something. There is no perfect fix for anything here, I have found, and this is complicated and confusing if you don't delve into it. So I started looking into it more this year than I had before.

I think a lot of our colleagues, and a lot of people in the country, believe the so-called ``doubling of the rates'' from 3.4 to 6.8 meant everybody's rates had doubled. First of all, there was just a small percentage of the loans we loaned out that were getting the advantage of the 3.4 if we extend it. Seventy-five percent of the loans--75 percent of the money out there--is at the higher rate of 6.8 or above.

I have tried to understand, the best I can, all the different aspects of the loans we have out there. We have the subsidized loans. Because of family income and participation someone is able to get a subsidized loan. What that means, if we break it down, is the first year you qualify for a subsidized loan you can borrow up to $3,500, and $3,500 in today's higher education world doesn't go very far. You are also allowed to borrow $2,000 of unsubsidized money, which means you would have been paying 3.4 percent on the $3,500 and 6.8 percent on the unsubsidized.

So as you can see, it is not all clear-cut. Then, in the second year, you can borrow $4,500 subsidized and $2,000 in unsubsidized; and then it goes to $5,500 and stays at $5,500 for the fourth year.

The thing that happens is the unsubsidized loans, if we are looking at the unsubsidized loans at 6.8 percent, they are staying. We have had some say it is better to leave it alone, do nothing. Let it go ahead and double at 6.8 and leave it where it is. We worked out a proposal along the lines of the President's proposal. Also, we had the so-called House Republican proposal.

Our proposal is much different. This is not a Republican or Democratic piece of legislation. It is a bipartisan piece. We looked at all aspects of what we have to deal with in today's market.

On July 1 the rates went up. If we are able to come to agreement this week or maybe the first of next week, we can retroactively bring those back so that when you go to school this fall you will know exactly what your rates will be. We came to a bipartisan agreement that those rates could be 3.66 percent, and that is for all undergraduates.

Now if you are getting a subsidized or unsubsidized loan, a 1-year extension goes from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. Under our proposal, everything is at 3.66 percent. That will save about $9 billion this year in interest that students would be responsible for paying--$9 billion for the youth of this country trying to get a higher education. If we just do the 1-year extension, that is only a savings of $2 billion. So there is a $7 billion savings beyond what the 1-year extension would do. We are just dealing with the facts that we have in front of us.

So let's say you are going to a graduate unsubsidized Stafford loan, which many people in graduate school get. Right now, that is at 6.8 percent. Under our proposal, that goes to 5.21 percent.

If you have a PLUS loan--that is parents and graduate students--today you are paying 7.9 percent, and you have been paying 7.9 percent. Our bill takes that to 6.21 percent. You can see the savings.

Some might say, well, the interest rates will go up after 3 or 4 years, and then you will be at a higher rate. We put also, the same as in the law right now, an 8.25 percent cap. So if you borrow money this year at 3.66 percent, that is locked in for the life of the loan. That is what you pay for the money you borrow this year for the life of that loan. Now, next year it could be 4.5 percent. It could go up with inflation.

When I was in school, and later on, inflation kicked up to 16 or 17 percent. That is outrageous.

In the Senate, Republicans and Democrats have come to an agreement that we don't think the policy of this country should be that we should make a profit on the loans that students are receiving to educate themselves to have a better quality of life and opportunity. We have come to that agreement. That is not the bill we got from the House. They want to use profits to pay down debt.

Now, I understand there is a lot more that needs to be done on the profit end of it and how we get to the true cost. The Presiding Officer has been working hard on that, and I am willing to work with her. But the agreement we have in front of us today is that we are not going to make any profit that will go to debt reduction. If there is a so-called profit, it should go to reduce and give the lowest rate we could possibly offer. That is what we have agreed on. We agreed on fixing the rates for the life of the loan. That is not what came from the House.

So when I say it is a bipartisan bill, these are things we are agreeing on that make a better piece of legislation.

People might say: But 4 years from now it might go up higher than 6.9 percent. In the 3 or 4 years that we know we will have tremendous savings, there is a difference of $36 billion versus maybe $8 billion if you just keep extending 1 year at a time. A $2 billion savings here, a $9 billion savings here. It is not hard to do the math.

Then, talk about a comprehensive education bill, I pray to God that we can get a comprehensive education bill, but I am not sure the American public believes we are able to get any type of a consensus on any type of comprehensive bill.

When I first got here, they told me we were trying to get our financial house in order. Then we had the sequester coming at us. The sequester basically was a penalty we voted on, but no one ever thought we would let it get that Draconian, to the point we couldn't come to an agreement and we would have to have this type of a punishment put on ourselves. So we put a supercommittee together for the purpose of getting a superdeal so we could get our financial house in order. It wasn't that super. It didn't work.

So then the sequester kicked in and the Draconian cuts across the board. You don't run your life that way, your business that way, whether it is small or large. You don't cut everything. You have your priorities and necessities you have to maintain in your life on a daily basis. Then you have excesses you can do without. So you make adjustments and you pick and choose.

That is not working right now, and what is happening is people are suffering needlessly because we cannot come to an agreement to get our financial house in order, to find a budget that works for this country, to find a tax system that is fair and equitable that people believe in. We haven't been able to do that.

We are being told: Let's go ahead and extend the 3.4 percent for the smallest portion of the amount of loans that we loan out, and everyone else can pay the higher rate.

I am not willing to do that. I think we can do better. I think we are better than that--on both sides of the aisle. Chastising each other and saying one wants to raise rates and one is insensitive toward students, and it is a Republican or Democrat plan, doesn't fix anything around here. It hasn't since I have been here, and I don't think it is going to. It will if we put our country first. And we know one thing: By putting our country first, we put our students first.

Without educating the populous, we have nothing. We can't compete in the world of economics. We can't compete in the world of science and technology. We just can't.

The best investment we can make is in our youth. The best investment we can make is in education. We might buy a car and think that is a great investment. We might buy a piece of property or a house and think that is a great investment. The best investment we will ever make is in education. We want to make it as affordable and doable as humanly possible, and that is what we have worked on together, on a bipartisan basis. We are hoping we can find common ground.

We have talked about caps. The caps are inherently built in. Let's say you graduate, get a degree, and find a job that pays $40,000--which is not a lot in today's market for the money invested--and get married and have a child or two. With the system we have built in right now, you only pay 15 percent of your disposable income. That breaks down to about $142 a month that you will pay on your student loan to make it affordable. If you are not able to pay that off at the end of 25 years, it is exonerated and wiped out.

Pell grants. If a person is in need because of their income, they can get up to $5,645 a year free. Those are grants we give out, which are excellent, helping students who don't have an opportunity or chance, with any support from their family, to be able to get a higher education. We are doing an awful lot of things to help. The bottom line is that we have come to an agreement that it shouldn't be subsidized, there shouldn't be a profit made, and it should be affordable--and it has to run efficiently.

I think $36 billion in savings over 4 years is pretty substantial compared to us doing nothing. I also think those who say let the rates go up to 6.8 percent are misinformed. I don't think they have been told the facts or the truth.

What we are asking for is basically a level playing field, looking at what we can do that is positive, getting more groups to sit down and sincerely work toward what I think is going to be a good outcome and a good process.

Extending what we have doesn't work. Not being able to come together to make sure our loans are affordable is not acceptable. I think if we continue to strive to work toward finding a reasonable outcome, we will be able to succeed.

Tomorrow we will have a vote, and there will be more discussions about student loans. The bottom line is we want rates to come down for everybody. Every student in every category should have the benefit of the lower rates that are available to the public today.

Madam President, I yield the floor

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I ask I be permitted to speak in morning business for up to 20 minutes.

Madam President, I am here for my 38th weekly ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, and today I want to ask the question: What if?

What if climate change is real? What if the 30-plus gigatons of carbon pollution mankind is dumping into the atmosphere every year makes a difference? What if it is warming the planet and changing the weather? What if it is warming the seas and raising their level and making them more acidic? What then? What if this is serious?

What if this is serious and we are not? What if this is serious and we are sleepwalking when we should be awake? What if this is deadly serious and we are reckless when we should be responsible?

What if we are completely missing this moment in history? Winston Churchill talked about ``sharp agate points upon which . . . destiny turns.'' What if our destiny will turn based upon what we do about carbon? What if we have been warned? What if we have been thoroughly and convincingly and reliably warned? What if we have been warned by virtually every climate scientist--at least 95 percent of them--by the scientists who work for the United States of America at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, by the vast majority of scientific societies, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society, among others?

I ask unanimous consent to have a letter from a great number of those organizations printed at the conclusion of my remarks.

What if we have been thoroughly and convincingly and reliably warned by thorough, convincing, and reliable scientists and have chosen instead to listen to the cranks and the polluters?

Let's play this out a bit. Foresight is supposed to be a capability of our species. What if it turns out the world will care about this? We Americans have held ourselves out as a beacon of light to other nations. We have proclaimed we are a shining city on a hill. What if that is true? What if President Clinton was right; that the power of our American example is, indeed, greater than any example of our power? What if Daniel Webster was right; that if the example of our great democratic experiment ever became an argument against that experiment, it would sound the knell of popular liberty throughout the world? What if our political and moral failure to address carbon pollution became, in fact, an argument against our American example, an argument against our American example punctuated by the exclamation points of local climate change happening right there in towns and barrios, hills and hamlets, on coasts and farms all around the world?

What if the world takes notice of that? What if the world takes notice of what is already happening all around them and takes notice of how we blew it at dealing with carbon pollution and, as a result, turns away from our great American experiment because of this conspicuous and consequential failure of American democratic governance and leadership?

Let's really push it here. What if Abraham Lincoln was right, was not just making it up when he said America was ``the last best hope of Earth.'' The last best hope of Earth. He was not alone. Thomas Jefferson too in his first inaugural said this American Government was ``the world's best hope.''

What if we are, indeed, the last best hope of Earth, a hope which it is up to each American generation to, as Lincoln said, ``nobly save or meanly lose''? What if we in this generation of Americans meanly lose such a measure of that American light and hope in the world? What if we, the children of the ``greatest generation,'' were to blunder into history as the ``vilest generation'' because we failed so badly at this plain and present duty?

In sum, what if the deniers, the mockers, and the scoffers are wrong? What if they are wrong? Someone has to be. There are two sides to this. What if it is the deniers and the scoffers and the mockers who are wrong? What if the evidence keeps piling up and the tide of public opinion keeps going out and the deniers are left stranded with their inadequacies plainly visible?

Please, let's look at the two sides. On the side of waking up and doing something about carbon pollution: the President of the United States of America, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and our military leaders, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of the Churches of Christ, and many faith groups and leaders. On the side of waking up: icons of our American corporate community, including GM, Ford, Coke, Pepsi, Nike, Apple, Walmart, and hundreds of others. Also on the side of waking up: the property casualty insurance and reinsurance industry and many in the electric utility industry and the vast majority of national scientific societies. In particular, I wish to mention the scientists at NASA who right now are driving an SUV- sized rover around on the surface of Mars. That might be an organization whose scientists actually know what they are talking about.

What if it turns out that the other side of the argument is actually phony?

What if it turns out that the other side of the argument is a few cranks, a lot of people and organizations on the payroll of the polluters, and a cynical propaganda campaign intended to mislead and deceive?

What if it is the argument that climate change is a hoax--which we hear around here--what if it is that argument that is the real hoax?

What if the so-called climategate scandal was no fraud at all, but the whipped-up allegations were the fraud and the so-called climategate was really climategate-gate?

What if that cynical, polluter-driven propaganda campaign is one of the biggest and most successful frauds ever perpetrated on the public-- a fraud that, when it is ultimately exposed for what it is, will change the way we think about political information and trust in corporations, just as my generation seeing the Cuyahoga River burn changed the way we thought about the environment?

What if the great climate denial fraud will stand in the annals of American scandal beside Watergate and Teapot Dome and the corruption leading up to the great crash of 1929 as a dark smear across the pages of our American history?

There was an iconic recruiting poster for World War I. I wish I had it with me, but I don't. It is a picture of a fellow sitting in his armchair with two little children, and they are asking him: ``Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?'' And he is looking sadly out at the viewer of the poster because clearly he had not done his part in the great war. That was the message of that poster--``Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?'' What if we have to be asked by our children and grandchildren, when they are studying this disgraceful episode in their history classes, ``Mommy, what did you do in the great climate fraud? Grandpa, what did you do in the great climate fraud?''

Why do I come every week to give these speeches? Because these questions stick in my craw. These are the questions that haunt me and that I can't shake. And upon the answer to these questions, to these what-ifs, the future may depend, destiny may turn. I have asked them today as questions, but many of the answers are already clear. Many of the answers are crystal clear. Many of the answers are so likely clear that no rational person would bet against them. And many of the answers carry stakes so high that they cry out for prudent choices to be made.

Many of the answers are crystal clear--as clear as measurement. For at least 800,000 years the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere held between 170 and 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide--for 800,000 years, always in that range. Now it is 400 parts per million and climbing. That is a measurement. Oceans are already 30 percent more acidic than before the Industrial Revolution and getting more so. That is a measurement. The winter water temperature of Narragansett Bay has risen 4 degrees since the 1960s. That is a measurement. Millions of acres of western pine forest, once protected by cold, have been ravaged by the pine beetle. That is a measurement. Thirteen of the past 15 years are among the hottest 15 years on record. That is a measurement. Being against science is one thing. Being against measurement, that takes us to a new extreme.

Many of the answers are so likely clear that no rational, prudent person would bet against them. The principle that carbon dioxide and water vapor in the atmosphere create a greenhouse effect that warms the planet goes back to the time of the American Civil War. It is firmly established science.

The head of the World Bank recently said, ``If you disagree with the science of human-caused climate change, you are not disagreeing that there is anthropogenic climate change; what you are disagreeing with is science itself.''

I submit that my denier colleagues in their own personal lives would never take the wild risks, the reckless risks they are asking us to take on carbon. If they went to 100 doctors and 95 or more of the doctors told them that their child or grandchild needed treatment and it was urgent, I doubt very much they would go with the three or four who didn't. In fact, it would probably be a matter for their State child welfare services if they ignored that kind of warning about the health of a child or a grandchild. But that is what they want us to do on carbon pollution.

Many of the answers carry stakes so high that they plead for prudent and rational choices. The downside is so deep that the balance has to be toward precaution if we are indeed a rational species. We are talking about fundamental changes in the habitability of our planet, with considerable human dislocation and disorder a likely result. We are talking about measurements of basic planetary conditions veering outside the entirety of human experience, to measurements whose antecedents are found only in geologic time and which we find there in the geologic record, associated with massive disruptions, upheavals, and die-offs.

The facts are clearly measured, the principles are solid and sound, and the stakes are very high. Yet we sleepwalk on the precipice, refusing to listen, refusing to speak of it, refusing to act when duty calls us to act. It is time to wake up--or perhaps I should say, what if it really is time to wake up and we are just missing it, sleepwalking on the lip of the precipice, listening to the lullabies of the polluters, and ignoring the facts and consequences that are plain to our sight and reason, plain in front of our faces? What then?