A concurrent resolution authorizing the use of the rotunda of the United States Capitol in commemoration of the Shimon Peres Congressional Gold Medal ceremony.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, in a few moments I will yield the floor to my colleagues who will have an announcement about the progress which has been made on the veterans bill, an important issue.

I wish to take this moment to talk about a tale of two bills--a tale of two very critical issues that confront our country, both deserving of the time and attention of the Senate but how they have been treated very differently from one another.

The first issue is one which has been talked about here; that is, the issue of student loans in America. This is an issue I care about deeply for two reasons.

The first is, when I arrived on the floor of the Senate in January of 2011, I owed over $100,000 in student loans. For years we struggled with the cost of those loans. My parents never made enough money to save for our education, but I was able to pay for it through a combination of Pell grants and loans for my undergraduate and graduate studies. The undergraduate-level loans were manageable. The graduate- level loans for law school were quite a strain. At one point in our lives it was the single highest expenditure in our monthly budget. So I know the cost of this.

The other reason is because I have the honor of serving as an adjunct professor at Florida International University, where once or twice a week I interact with young men and women in South Florida who are facing not just the cost of undergraduate education but starting to think about how they are going to pay to go to law school or get a master's degree or any other profession they choose. This is a very significant issue, and there are two aspects of it that we are going to talk about in a moment.

The second issue that is critically important for our country is the well-documented problems of the Veterans' Administration. I don't need to go into a long dissertation about how our men and women who have served us so honorably and so bravely in uniform deserve the very best care possible.

Well documented are the long waiting lists and, even more tragically, efforts among some at the VA to cover up all of this, to cover their tracks and to cover up their incompetence. The vast majority of the men and women who work at the VA work hard and do a good job, but there are too many who do not, and there is not enough accountability with regard to that. As I said a couple of weeks ago when I came to the floor and tried to pass a measure, a companion of the issue that passed in the House: You are more likely to get a promotion or bonus than you are to get demoted or fired for not doing your job at the VA.

Two very important issues: a tale of two bills because they have been handled so differently.

I anticipate in a moment a number of Senators will come to the floor--Senators whom I thank for allowing me to work with them to make this possible--and will have an announcement to make with regard to votes on the veterans bill. That is great news. The men and women who have served us deserve this progress.

There is no claim that this is going to solve every problem in the world, but it is an important first step. I thank Senators McCain, Sanders, Burr, Coburn, and others for all the work they have done on this issue. We are excited to hear about their announcement in a few moments. If they arrive, I will gladly yield the floor for them to do that at the appropriate moment. I thank them, our men and women who have served us thank them, and the people of Florida thank them. We are a State with an enormous number of veterans.

This is an important issue, and I wish people could have seen the effort and how people worked across party lines to get this done. Everyone has great ideas about things they want to see added to it, about things they would like to see in addition to what has been included, but we all understand a sense of urgency about addressing this issue. We all had ideas we wanted to pursue, but we were all willing to put those aside for another debate and another day in order to get this done.

We need more of that in the Senate, we need more of that in the U.S. Government, and I thank the Senators who have worked so hard to make this happen and my colleague in the House, Jeff Miller, for the work he has done in terms of bringing this forward as well. He has done a fantastic job.

Compare that to the way this issue on student loans has been handled, however. This is a legitimate issue that needs to be addressed, but the bill that was brought before the Senate included something the proponents knew was deeply political and controversial--the so-called Buffett rule. We have had debate on that issue before. We can have debate in the future.

They knew the simple utilization of that rule as part of this measure--as admitted, by the way, by Members of the majority who have talked about this measure in the past--they knew that by putting that in there, it politicized it and, quite frankly, doomed it to failure.

Let me lift the veil for those who are watching at home or in the gallery or anywhere, watching or listening now or in the future. They knew what the outcome would be when they included that, but it was put in there for the purposes of saying Republicans blocked this because they knew that issue in and of itself served as a sort of poison pill that held this up. It is unfortunate because the issue of student loans is a very valid issue in America.

Look, there was a time not long ago when higher education was an important option for millions of Americans, but, for example, even if someone didn't have a college education, they could still find a middle-income job that allowed them to make it to the middle class.

That is how my parents did it. Neither one of my parents had advanced formal education. Neither one finished the equivalent of high school. Yet we lived in the middle class. We achieved the American dream, because working as a bartender and as a maid, my parents were able to make enough money to achieve that.

The world has changed. Today, if someone doesn't have some form of advanced education, they are going to struggle to find a job that pays enough to keep up with the cost of living, much less to get ahead. This has made

higher education no longer an option. It is now a necessity. This is an issue that needs to be looked at in multiple ways, not simply the loan issue, by the way.

Take, for example, the story of a 41-year-old head of household who has worked their entire life to provide for their family and now has lost their job or their business, the only way they are going to be able to get a job that makes it to the middle class in the 21st century--because the job they used to have has been automated or outsourced or the industry is no longer around. The only way they are going to be able to make it back into the middle class and stay there is to acquire skills and education necessary for 21st century middle- class and above jobs.

But if someone is 41 years old and they have to work full time to provide for their family, and they have to raise that family, they can't just drop everything and go back to college for 4 years, and they probably can't afford it either. So we need to revolutionize what higher education means in America so people living those circumstances can access it in a cost-effective way.

When I worked in the State legislature, I had an employee who was the equivalent of my executive assistant. She made less than $30,000 a year because that is what the State pay grade called for. But she went to school at night and became a paralegal and doubled her pay on the day after her graduation because she was able to acquire advanced skills and a degree that allowed her to improve not just her lifestyle and her quality of life but that of her daughter's as well--a young, single mother struggling to provide and move ahead in life.

The problem is that our existing higher education system is one we had in the 20th century. It is largely designed for a student who graduates from high school and goes to college for 4 years, but it is inaccessible and unaffordable for Americans who are later in their lives, who have to work full time and raise a family, for people who in the middle of a career have found their job outsourced or automated and need to be retrained. That in and of itself calls for higher education to be revolutionized. The second point I would make is there is some innovation in higher education. For example, there are degrees and degree-type programs you can now get online. But you will often find that the cost of those programs is as much and more than a brick and mortar institution would charge. It costs as much and in many instances more to get your degree on line than it would by sitting in a classroom and taking lectures every day. For many people that is not realistic.

So we need to revolutionize what higher education means. The traditional 4-year college will always be an important part of it, but we also have to provide programs that allow people to graduate from high school with skills that allow them to immediately be employed such as more welders and more electricians. There is nothing wrong with that. These are important jobs that we have shortages in, by the way.

We need to create more innovation so that people can acquire learning in the most effective way possible. For example, why can't we allow people to package learning in any way they acquire it, online, work experience, life experience, to be able to package all of your learning and acquire the equivalent of a degree that allows you to go to work?

There are real answers to these problems. I am involved in at least three of them. One is a program called ``Right to Know Before You Go'' that I sponsored with Senator Wyden. It is a bipartisan proposal. It is very simple. It says that when you go to school before you take out a loan you have to be told: ``This is how much people that graduate from our school with a degree that you are seeking make.'' So you can decide whether it is worth taking out thousands of dollars in loans for a degree that doesn't lead to jobs.

The other proposal is changing the way we accredit higher education in America. Accrediting basically means you have permission to get a college degree. But the institutions who control that process are the existing status quo schools. They will always have an important job in our educational portfolio but they cannot be the only ones anymore. We need to change that so there are alternative programs available that allow you to package learning no matter how you acquire it so that you can get credit for that as well. So the changing of accrediting is a big part of this.

I believe that income-based repayments should be a part of this. There is a more responsible way to do it. Thankfully, Senator Warner and I are working on such a proposal. I wish issues such as that were debated as a part of this solution, as opposed to simply a political stunt brought to the floor designed to get enough ``no'' votes by Republicans so it can be used in November on the campaign trail.

Student loans--a trillion dollars' worth--are owed by both Republicans and Democrats. We need to get this issue solved if we are going to move forward. On the Veterans' Administration issue--I see a number of Senators have arrived and potentially have an announcement for us--we have made great progress. The bill is important, but the one part I have been working on personally is accountability, giving the Secretary the power to hire and to fire those mid-level bureaucrats that are not doing their job. That is an important measure. I am glad that is included in this. I am glad the Senate will be moving forward on this in a few moments.

It is the tale of two bills. One is an example of how we can get things done to address the real needs in our country, and the other is a missed opportunity to address one of the single greatest impediments to upward mobility and the American dream in the 21st Century--and that is the accessibility and affordability of higher education, because today higher education is no longer just an option. In some way, shape or form acquiring higher education has become a necessity for all Americans, and we need to make that more accessible and more affordable.

It is my hope that in the weeks and months to come we will be able to put aside the desire to turn this issue into a political tool and come together to solve this problem because there is a trillion dollars of student loan debt sitting out there, and there are hundreds of thousands of Americans who desperately need to acquire some sort of higher education and they cannot afford it or they cannot access it or both. They need us to address this issue because this cannot be an issue we do not resolve. The American dream will continue to slip out of reach for millions of people in this new century unless we make the acquisition of higher education more accessible and more affordable to people from all walks of life: the 18-year-old who graduates from high school, the 25-year-old single mother, the 41-year-old father who heads a household, and everyone in between.

This is an enormous challenge for our country but one for which there are solutions. All we need now is a willingness to proceed to do it, and I hope that in the weeks to come, once we pass this moment, we can get back on this issue and solve it in a real and responsible way.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on these issues. I look forward to working to pass the veterans bill hopefully today and to move forward and work together in a serious and meaningful way to make higher education more affordable for every American who needs it in order to achieve their American dream.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, could the Chair please let me know when I have 3 minutes remaining on my time.

Mr. President, I heard the majority leader's comments about the importance of moving on to the veterans bill, so I have a suggestion: Why don't we send this political stunt on student loans to the Senate education committee, where the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Harkin, and I are busy working in a bipartisan way to reauthorize higher education, and let's move on to the veterans bill immediately. Why should the Senate take a week on a political stunt that everybody here knows won't pass when veterans are standing in line at clinics, waiting for us to act on a bipartisan solution to their problems?

It actually goes further in giving veterans more choices in health care than anything Congress has ever done. It actually begins to give veterans more choice in health care in the same way Congress gave them choices in higher education with the passage of the GI bill for veterans in 1944. Back then, Congress said to the veterans: Here is the money. Go choose your college.

Moving to and passing the veterans bill, Congress would be saying: If you have to stand in line too long or if you live too far away from a veterans facility, here is the money--go choose your medical care.

That is a very important step for millions of veterans. It deals directly with the problems all Senators on both sides of the aisle are chagrined about--veterans standing in line waiting for health care.

So I have one question: Why should the Senate spend a week on a political stunt? Why should we go all the way to next Monday before disposing of it? Let's dispose of it today. Let's send it to the committee that is already considering these issues, and let's move on to the veterans bill before noon. We could do that, and the veterans and the people of this country would respect us for it.

I thought we had stopped the political stunts on student loans last year when the President, to his credit, worked with the Republican House and a bipartisan group in the Senate, and came to a result--a big result. It affects $100 billion of loans every year.

Half the students in America have a grant or loan to help pay for college. Congress stopped this type of political stunt last year. Instead of every election year where someone comes forward offering some preposterous proposal about what we can do in the hope that students might vote for them--Congress stopped that by saying: Let's put a market-based pricing system on new student loans. The effect of that was to stop semi-annual political stunts, while lowering the interest rate on loans for undergraduates nearly in half. Undergraduate students are 85 percent of the students receiving federal loans. So a 19-year-old student can get a loan to go to college at 3.86 percent without any credit rating and in some cases can get a grant of up to $5,645 to go to college. Congress did that last year.

This year the Senate education committee has held 10 bipartisan hearings on higher education. This is a committee that knows how to work. Senator Harkin, the Senator from Iowa, and I have big ideological differences in our committee, but that doesn't stop us from working, from doing our job. We passed 19 bills out of our committee, and 10 of them have gone through the Senate and became law. No other committee in the Senate can say that. Right now we are working on this very subject of the political stunt.

So why not stop the political stunt and put this where it belongs-- back in the committee that is already working on it in a bipartisan way. Let's focus on the veterans who are standing in line and do what the majority leader said, which is let's deal with that issue.

Why do I say this student loan idea is not a serious proposal? It is not out of lack of respect to the sponsor. Of course I have great respect for her and for other Senators who are offering this proposal. But let me outline why I say this is not a serious proposal. And everybody in the Senate knows that. They know it is not going to pass. So why would the Senate waste time on it?

No. 1, it does nothing--not one thing--for current or future students. For students who are in college today or will be tomorrow, this does nothing for them. So don't let the rhetoric fool you.

No. 2, what does it do for people who used to be in college paying off a student loan? According to data supplied by the Congressional Research Service: It will give them $1 a day. For the typical former student who has old loans, this bill will give them a taxpayer subsidy of $1 a day to help pay their student loans.

How big is that loan? For undergraduates--which are 85 percent of all students with loans--it is $21,600. For graduates with a 4-year degree, it is $27,000. So $27,000--probably the best investment a person will ever make. The College Board says that if you have a 4-year degree, your lifetime earnings will be $1 million more. So $27,000 for a student with no credit rating and has a right to borrow that earns you $1 million? I think that is a pretty good deal. In fact, this $27,000, is about the exact amount of the average car loan.

So what are we going to do next week? Instead of dealing with lines of veterans at clinics, is somebody going to come on the floor and say: Well, people have a $27,000 car loan, so let's raise taxes and raise the debt and give them $1 a day to pay off their car loan or the mortgage loan or the credit card.

This is not a serious proposal. It is not going to help people. College graduates don't need a dollar-a-day tax subsidy to pay off their loan. They need a job. They need a job, and right now they are experiencing the worst situation for finding a job that they have seen in a long time.

Now Republicans have plans that would help create more jobs. We would like to do what the President said, which was give the President more trade authority so companies in the nation can sell more things in Europe and Asia, but, no, we cannot bring that up. We would like to approve the Keystone Pipeline, but, no, we cannot bring that up. We would like to repeal ObamaCare and particularly the parts that make it harder to create jobs, but, no, we don't want to talk about that. We would like to at least change the provision about part-time jobs from 30 to 40 hours which affects millions of American workers, but, no, we cannot bring that up either.

If the Senate wants to talk about students paying back loans, they don't need a dollar a day, they need a job. But my point is why should the Senate waste a week on this bill when veterans are standing in line waiting for us to take up and deal with a bipartisan proposal that the majority leader just described? What else is wrong with this student loan proposal? It could add up to $420 billion to the Federal debt. It does bring the money with it to eventually pay it off, we hope, but it adds to the debt. The Congressional Budget Office says national debt is rising at such a rate that interest payments will go from around $200 billion up to around $800 billion in 10 years. Taxpayers will be spending more on interest in 10 years than on national defense. It increases individual income taxes $72 billion with what I call a class warfare tax. That tax has been rejected eight times by the United States Senate, seven times on a motion to proceed.

There already is a way to lower your payments if you are a student with a loan and your monthly payments are too high. It is in the law. The President talked about it this week. It is called the income based repayment plan. It could lower monthly payments $60 more a month than the Democrat proposal if you are a typical undergraduate and $300 more a month if you are a typical graduate student. Former students can do that today. That is a bigger savings on monthly payments than in the proposal we are debating.

In addition to that, if this proposal were to pass the Senate. It could not be

sent to the House. It is unconstitutional. We cannot originate a tax in the Senate, according to the Constitution. So why would the Senate pass this if it cannot be sent to the House? Next, it violates the Budget Control Act. We passed a law that said we couldn't spend any more than X. This measure violates that act.

So if it gives a dollar a day to pay off a $27,000 loan at a time when a college degree will earn people more than $1 million, if the loans for undergraduates are about the same as a car loan, if it raises the debt by $420 billion, if it raises taxes by $72 billion, if there already is a way in the law to lower monthly payments more than this proposal without raising taxes, without raising the debt, without passing the law that is unconstitutional--so even if it did pass, it cannot be sent to the House--if it violates the Budget Control Act, why would the Senate waste time on it when veterans are standing in line waiting for a bipartisan proposal to give them more choices for medical care? Why would we do that?

Right behind the veterans bill are Senator Mikulski from Maryland and Senator Shelby from Alabama with a series of appropriations bills that have bipartisan support. They have been through committee too. We haven't passed appropriations bills in the last 4 years--two of those years we passed zero, one of those years we passed one. They are ready to do the job on both sides of the aisle.

Why would we spend time on this if it doesn't deal with the real issue? Students with loans don't need a dollar a day to pay off the loan. They need a job. We have proposals for jobs. The real problems with student loans are complexities and overborrowing. Ninety percent of the loans we read about in the paper that are over $100,000 are loans held by graduate students. But these are only 2 percent of the loans for all students.

I thank the Chair. I will reserve 1 minute and I will do it in this way:

Vote no. A ``no'' vote means no to a week-long political stunt, no to debt and taxes, and yes to moving today to a bipartisan solution to the problem of veterans standing in line at clinics; yes to appropriations bills that deal with cancer research and national defense and the other urgent needs of our country, also in a bipartisan way; yes to the way the Senate ought to run. It would mean no to the practice of pulling a bill out of your pocket, putting it on the floor, and wasting 1 week with a political stunt while veterans are standing in line at a clinic waiting for us to act.

So I would suggest the right thing to do is to vote no, send the bill and the discussion about student loans to the education committee. We can work with the President on a solution just like last year, and let's move on to dealing with a bipartisan solution to veterans who are standing in line waiting for the Senate to act.

I yield the floor.

Recognition of the Minority Leader

Mr. President, how much time do we have remaining?

The question before the Senate is, Shall we spend the next week on a political stunt that gives some students $1 a day to pay off a student loan or shall we move to a bipartisan solution for veterans who are lined up at clinics and hospitals across the country in a way that shocks Senators on both sides of the aisle? That is the issue.

The proposal before the Senate is not a serious proposal. There is nothing in it for current or future students. It is a $1 a day subsidy to pay off a $27,000 loan. What are we going to do next week--raise taxes and raise the debt to pay off a $27,000 car loan, which is similar to the average loan debt of a graduate with a 4-year degree?

In addition, this could not even be sent to the House if it passed because it is unconstitutional. You can't start a tax in the Senate, and this has a big tax in it.

The way we deal with these issues is the way we did it last year. We worked with the President in a bipartisan way and reduced rates for students.

What we need to do today is vote no--no to the political stunt, and move immediately to the deal to help veterans standing in line at clinics and hospitals across the country.

I urge the Senate to send this to the committee that is already working on it in a bipartisan way, and let's move to help the veterans in a bipartisan way.

I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.

cloture motion

Madam President, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, I wish to say a few words as to where we are right now and my strong hope that we can move forward as rapidly as we can-- hopefully today--in addressing some of the very serious problems that exist within the Veterans' Administration.

What I have learned since I have been chair of the Veterans' Affairs Committee for the last year and a half is that the cost of war does not end when the last shots are fired and the last missiles are launched. The cost of war continues until the last veteran receives the care and the benefits he or she is entitled to and has earned on the battlefield. The cost of war is in fact extremely expensive in terms of human life and financially. That is something every American should know.

It is very easy to vote to send people to war, but we have to understand what the costs of those wars are in terms of

what happens to people who come home from them and in some cases do not come home. The cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is almost 7,000 dead. The cost of war from Iraq and Afghanistan alone is some 200,000 men and women coming home with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. The cost of war is too many young men and women coming home without their legs or their arms or their hearing or their eyesight. The cost of war is manifested by tragic suicides that are taking place all across this country. The cost of war is veterans coming home and finding it difficult to get reintegrated into their communities and get jobs and get their feet on the ground financially. The cost of war is high divorce rates and the impact that has on children. The cost of war is widows suddenly having to begin their lives anew. Those are some of the real costs of war.

Last week Senator McCain and I hammered together a proposal to deal with the immediate crisis facing the VA. I thank him very much for coming forward, for working with me, and for understanding the need for us to move forward expeditiously. There are serious problems at the VA now and they must be addressed now--not next week, not next month but now.

I thank the 27 bipartisan cosponsors who have agreed to sign on to this bill. There are 21 Democrats and 6 Republicans, and I think in fact the support is broader than that. I thank Senators Begich, Blumenthal, Booker, Burr, Casey, Collins, Coons, Hagan, Hirono, Isakson, Johanns, Kaine, Manchin, McCain, Merkley, Murphy, Pryor, Rubio, Schatz, Udall, Walsh, and Whitehouse for cosponsoring this legislation.

Clearly, the bill Senator McCain and I introduced, which now has 27 cosponsors from both parties, is not the bill he would have written alone, and it certainly is not the bill I would have written alone. It is a compromise. What this bill does is address the immediate crisis facing the VA of veterans having to wait too long a period of time-- long waiting lists--in order to get the quality care they need in a timely manner.

What our veterans deserve is to be able to get into the system in a timely manner and get quality care. What this legislation does is move us forward strongly in that direction. Let me very briefly describe some of the major features in this legislation.

There has been on the drawing boards for many years in some cases the need to build or expand VA medical and research facilities. This bill provides for 26 major medical facility leases in 26 States and Puerto Rico. That is something that is supported in a bipartisan way and has already passed the House in virtually a unanimous vote.

This bill provides for the expedited hiring of VA doctors, nurses, and other health care providers and $500 million targeted to hire those providers with unobligated funds. The simple truth is that no medical program--not in the private sector, not in the VA, not anywhere--can provide quality care in a timely manner if that program does not have an adequate number of doctors, nurses, and other medical providers. It is unclear exactly how many more providers are needed, but there is no question there are many needed. I have heard--I will not swear to this, but I have heard estimates that in Phoenix alone there is a need for up to 500 new providers. While the Phoenix situation may be worse than other parts of the country, there is no doubt in my mind that many hundreds, if not thousands, of doctors and nurses are needed, and we need to expedite the hiring process.

Importantly, what our legislation also does is say to veterans around the country that if they cannot get into a VA facility in a timely manner, they will be able to get the care they need outside of the VA from a private provider in their community. They will be able to go to a federally qualified health center in their community, an Indian Health Service or if there is a Department of Defense military base and they can get care there, they will be able to do that. This gives the veteran himself or herself the opportunity if that person cannot get timely care within the VA to go outside of the VA.

What this bill also does is say to veterans who live 40 miles or more away from a VA facility if they choose--and it is clear there are some veterans that live hundreds of miles away in our rural areas from a VA facility--they will also be able to get care outside of the VA. For those veterans in rural areas this is an important provision.

This legislation also addresses a major crisis that we have seen tragically in recent years within the DOD, within the military, and that is the issue of sexual assault. Far too many women and men have been sexually assaulted, and this legislation provides funding for the VA to provide improved care for those suffering from sexual assault.

This bill also deals with an issue where I believe there is widespread support among Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, and that is the need to address instate tuition for all veterans at public colleges and universities. This legislation also provides that surviving spouses of those who die in the line of duty will be eligible for the post-9/11 GI bill. This bill also establishes commissions to provide help to the VA in terms of improving scheduling capabilities and also their capital planning, two areas clearly where the VA needs to improve.

Lastly, and it is very important, this bill gives the Secretary of the VA the authority to immediately fire incompetent employees and, even worse, those who have falsified or manipulated data in terms of waiting periods or in other instances. So what we say is if somebody has lied, has manipulated data, they are out tomorrow, after the bill is signed, but we also provide a very expedited appeals process in order to allow some due process.

I worry very much about the politicalization of the VA if a Secretary comes in with a new President and says, I am going to get rid of 400 top people and 4 years later another Secretary comes in and says, I am going to get rid of another 400 people. What we want in the VA, which is the largest integrated health care system in America, taking care of 6.5 million veterans--one shouldn't care if those folks are Republicans, Democrats, progressives or conservatives--what we want are competent, able supervisors. I also want to make sure if people get fired that it has nothing to do with the color of their skin or sexual orientation.

So we have an abbreviated appeals process, but within that appeals process somebody can be removed from their position immediately.

The House of Representatives, as you know, passed legislation yesterday which covers a lot of the same ground the Sanders-McCain bill covers, and I applaud the House for moving forward in a very rapid fashion. I am absolutely confident that working with House Chairman Miller and Ranking Member Michaud, we can in fact bridge the differences that exist in the two bills and send to the President legislation he can sign as soon as possible.

Finally, I wish to say a word to the some 300,000 employees who work at the VA. The overwhelming majority of these people are hardworking, honest, serious employees. In fact, many of them are veterans. My experience is that for many of these employees what they do is less of a job than a mission. They understand the sacrifices veterans have made, and they in the vast majority of cases are doing excellent work to support our veterans. Let us never forget that some 230,000 veterans today and tomorrow and the next day are going into the VA for health care and that the vast majority of those people--and that is 6.5 million people a year--are receiving high-quality care.

I have talked to veterans all over the State of Vermont, and what they tell me is that they get very good care. I obviously cannot speak for every veteran, but in Vermont--and I expect in most areas around this country--veterans feel good about the health care they get.

A few weeks ago I held a hearing and asked all of the major veterans organizations point blank about their view on VA health care. What they said--this is not what Bernie Sanders said; it is what they said--was that once people get into the system, the care is good. That is not just their view. There are independent studies out there that rate VA health care with private sector care, and oftentimes VA health care comes out better. Right now our job is to address the crisis of long waiting periods and making sure that veterans all

over this country can get the care they need in a timely manner.

In my State of Vermont--according to information that just came out the other day--some 98 percent of veterans get appointments in the system within 30 days. I suspect the numbers are similar in certain other parts of the country, although clearly not in all parts of the country. That is the issue we are addressing right now.

It seems to me that our job now is to defend the veterans of this country who have defended us. It is time to move the Sanders-McCain legislation as quickly as we can--hopefully today. I know the majority leader, Senator Reid, feels strongly about this issue. He wants this legislation moved as quickly as possible, as do I, and I believe Senator McCain does as well.

Once we get that legislation passed, I am confident we can set up a quick conference committee and resolve the differences between the House and Senate bills and get a bill to the President as early as next week.

It is one thing to give great speeches on Memorial Day and Veterans Day about how much we love and respect veterans, but it is another for us to act expeditiously and effectively on behalf of veterans. Now is the time for action, and I hope very much we will have virtually unanimous support to move this important legislation forward.

With that, I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I rise today to discuss a topic of great importance to our country's security, economy, and social fabric, and that is our broken immigration system.

No one can dispute that our system is broken. We do not yet have sufficient resources on our border or in our interior to prevent illegal immigration. And our legal immigration system takes far too long, has far too much bureaucratic redtape, and does not sufficiently serve our economic needs. In the meantime, our broken system has created millions of broken families. Many of these families are separated simply because of immigration status.

All of these problems can be solved by passing immigration reform legislation. Immigration reform will jump-start our economy, reduce our national debt, secure our country, and heal these broken families. The truth is, we have heard excuse after excuse after excuse from House Republicans about why they have not put immigration reform legislation on the floor.

First, it was that the Senate had to act first with broad bipartisan support. Well, that was taken away when the Senate passed bipartisan comprehensive reform legislation with 68 votes--a vote total which is virtually unprecedented for such important legislation.

Then it was that the House could only pass measures under the Hastert rule, which meant that a majority of the Republicans in the House had to support a bill in order to get a vote. This excuse was also taken away when the House showed it could pass other legislation, such as the debt ceiling, Sandy relief, and the Violence Against Women Act, without needing to fulfill the Hastert rule.

Then it was that the House could not pass one bill; it needed to break up the bill into component pieces. They thought this would be a deal killer. We said: Fine, we will work with you on the smaller pieces of immigration reform as long as all of the important pieces are addressed at or around the same time.

Then it was lack of trust of the President. That too was a phony excuse given that the President has deported more individuals than any other President. But even here we said: If that is really your problem, let's pass a bill now and delay implementation until 2017. We will get the President out of this equation so he is not used as an excuse. The House had no answers for that suggestion.

Now we have a new excuse. The excuse is that we supposedly cannot pass immigration reform because Eric Cantor lost his primary election. Well, just like all of the other excuses that have proven to be illusory, the idea that they cannot do immigration reform because Eric Cantor lost his election is another phony excuse for not passing immigration reform put together by those who willingly and unashamedly hand the leadership gavel on immigration to far-right extremists like Steve King.

I want to be very clear about two things today. First, Eric Cantor was never the solution on immigration. He was always the problem. Every time I talked to Republican Members, business leaders, growers, and faith leaders about immigration reform in the last several months, I consistently heard that the House leadership wanted to move forward but they did not have Cantor's support. Cantor was the chokepoint for immigration reform for these past few months. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Cantor's loss makes it easier--not harder--for House leadership to pass immigration reform.

Secondly, the polling is clear. Eric Cantor did not lose his primary because of support for immigration reform. It has been widely reported that 72 percent of registered voters in Cantor's district polled on Tuesday said they either strongly or somewhat support immigration reform that would secure the borders, block employers from hiring those illegally, and allow undocumented residents without criminal backgrounds to gain legal status. And this is the case in one of the most conservative districts in Virginia and the country. The polling is consistent with other recent polling which shows support for immigration reform among a majority of Republicans and a plurality of tea party supporters across the country. Even 70 percent of Republicans in Cantor's district support reform. Again, to be clear, not even the majority of the farthest right segment of the Republican Party supports deportations and the current broken system. But that is what we still have in place today.

So to repeat, Eric Cantor did not lose his primary yesterday because of immigration. He lost it because he had lost touch with the people in his district.

The election shows the Republican Party has two paths it can take on immigration: the Graham path of showing leadership and solving a problem in a mainstream way, which leads to victory, or the Cantor path of trying to play both sides, which is a path to defeat.

The lesson Republicans should take from last night is that embracing and showing leadership on immigration reform is a far better path to victory than running from it, particularly for Republicans who are not tea party members but mainstream conservatives. The example shown by Senator Graham is dispositive. Rather than trying to be all things to all people, he defended immigration reform strongly in his State and was rewarded by the people of South Carolina, the Republicans of South Carolina, which is an extremely Republican and conservative State.

Senator Graham sat with us from day one and crafted an immigration reform bill that he could sell to the mainstream conservatives in South Carolina, and he was rewarded last night by his State for being a man of principle.

One final thing about last night's election. David Brat won by receiving 36,000 votes in a Republican primary in rural Virginia in an election where 65,000 people showed up. The total population of the Cantor district is over 750,000 people, and there are 11 percent more Republicans in the district than Democrats. For some context, in the 2012 election, Eric Cantor received 220,000 votes and his Democratic challenger 160,000 votes. The point here is that it would be a monumentally lame excuse for Republicans to say that our Nation's immigration policy should be dictated by the whims of less than 20 percent of the Republican voters in a rural Virginia Republican district.

So the time for excuses is over. The time for action is now. It has been nearly 1 year since the Senate passed bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform legislation that would secure the border, turbo charge America's economic growth, and provide a chance to heal America's broken families who are being separated by our dysfunctional immigration system.

For far too long, Republican House leaders have yielded the leadership gavel on immigration to the xenophobic leaders of the extreme far right of the party such as Steve King, who has previously described immigration as a ``slow-motion holocaust.''

The question is whether House leadership will side with the Steve Kings and David Brats of the world or if they will side with the opinions of the vast majority of Republican voters and even the vast majority of voters in the Seventh Congressional District in Virginia.

Time is running out. The window is now open for passing immigration reform legislation, and the clock is furiously ticking. We have less than 7 weeks to go to get something passed, and the time is now for Republicans to give us their proposals on fixing the broken system. I say 7 weeks because it is highly unlikely that immigration reform could pass during a Republican Presidential primary season, where the party leaders will have to move to the extreme right to try and capture the Presidential nomination.

Therefore, it is time for the House leadership to declare unequivocally that immigration reform will be placed on the floor for a vote before the August recess. Without this declaration and the pressure to act, we will not be able to get immigration reform drafted and passed during this window.

Make no mistake about it. If the House fails to act during this window--a clear indication that they have no inclination in solving the problem--the President would be more than justified in acting anytime after the summer is over to take whatever changes he feels are necessary to make our immigration system work better for those unfairly burdened by our broken immigration laws.

But administrative relief is not what anyone wants to resort to. Those measures will be far too limited to fix all of the problems that currently plague our broken system. What we need right now is true leadership. Let's work together to get this done. A true leader will say: I will do what is good for my country--and for my party--even if it means that an extreme wing of my party will be unhappy. That is leadership. That is necessary.

We stand ready to work with any of our Republican colleagues who want to achieve solutions in good faith. But for now, I will conclude by saying that immigration reform is both necessary and inevitable. It is necessary because it will secure our country, grow our economy, reduce our deficit, create new jobs, and provide us with the best and the brightest. It is inevitable because the population of voters who believe this is an important issue continues to grow and become more politically active day by day.

So to my Republican friends, the choice is yours: Work with us on immigration reform this year and help the country now or do nothing and watch as immigration reform eventually passes without your support or your input. I hope we can act this year, but we will ultimately act. Let's hope we can finally do what is right before every other option has been tried.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Let me thank Senator Warner for his leadership on this issue.

The bills Senator Warner is bringing forward will help deal with the incredible burden American families are confronting today in order to get quality education. His story is a story told about the opportunities of America. Education is the great equalizer in this country.

My grandparents came to America for a better life for their children. My parents benefited from education. They are products of the Baltimore City public school system and the public colleges and universities in the State of Maryland. As a result of the educational tools given to them, the grandson of those immigrants now serves in the Senate. That is the story of America. Education is the great equalizer.

That is why we were so disappointed that we couldn't proceed with an important tool to make education more available to families; that is, the bill we just recently voted on to try to at least break the filibuster so that we could help those who currently have student loans.

Education has been the great equalizer in a growing middle class, which has led to the strength of America. It has been key to global competition. We all talk about the fact that other countries are doing a better job in STEM education or catching up to America--in some cases surpassing America. Well, education is a great equalizer.

We should make it easier for families to be able to afford a college education.

The truth is that it is more expensive here than it is in other countries. Yet we expect our country to be able to compete globally.

We are hurting ourselves. It is important for a growing economy, a growing middle class. Trained workers will strengthen America's economy, creating more jobs and more opportunity. So it is in our collective interests, not just that one family who is debating whether they are going to send their child to college or which college because of costs. It is in all of our interests to make it easier for Americans to afford a higher education.

The cost of higher education today is just plain too expensive. It is just too costly. It is the single most important investment a family can make. Yet today college debt is around $1.2 trillion--greater than all of the credit card debt held by American families. Is that putting a priority on education? I don't think so. We can do a much better job.

In Maryland, 776,000 students have Federal student loan debt totaling over $21 million. Over 50 percent of those graduating students are borrowing money in order to attend college, but here is the problem. For too many families it is a decision of whether they are going to college or not going to college--the cost. For too many families it is going to a school of their second, third, or fourth choice rather than the school they want to go to, and they are making that choice not because they couldn't get into the school they wanted but because they can't afford the school they want, their first choice.

The debt they have when they leave college, it is clearly affecting their career choice. We may have a brilliant future researcher or a brilliant future teacher. What is more important than being a teacher? But they choose to go into a different profession because they have student loans, and they choose for immediate pay considerations for their jobs rather than the career they really want because they know it is not fair to their families to continue these large student debts with which they are graduating.

That is the situation we confront. We know the numbers. I will tell you some real stories about real Marylanders.

Last year I visited one of our 4-year colleges and had a roundtable discussion with students. There was a second-year student there. She told me she was going to drop out of school after her second year. This is, by the way, in a very challenged community.

I said to her: I guess you are not doing well. She said: I am a straight-A student. I love the opportunities I am being given here. I love the knowledge I am getting, but I can't do it to my family to incur more debt. I look at my classmates from high school who have graduated and they are making money for their family and here I am a burden to my family by incurring more debt. I can't do it. I don't know where I am going to be 2 years from now, but I know I can't do this to my family. So I have to go out and work. I can't incur more debt.

That is a loss for that student and for our community.

I met another student named Becky last week at one of our Southern Maryland colleges. She told me the story about wanting to become a pediatric dentist. She is brilliant. She is doing great. But Becky is working full time and going to college. She is not going to be able to go to her first choice. She has her first choice, but she is not going to be able to do that because she is working full time and incurring debt in order to go to college. So it is going to take her a lot longer. She is not going to get through undergraduate in 4 years. It is going to take her 5 years or 6 years to get through, and whether she will ever become the pediatric dentist she wants to be, I don't know.

That is what is happening in America today, and millions of others can tell you similar stories of career decisions they have made, giving up the most important investment in their life because of the financial considerations. The bill we have on the floor right now can do something about it.

I would be the first to acknowledge there is a lot we could do to help in this regard, but I thank Senator Warren for her leadership in bringing forward a bill that will make a difference for millions of students who hold debt. It will make it less costly for them to take out the loans they have taken out. It would affect millions of students.

I think Americans would be upset, disappointed, and outraged to learn the Federal Government is making money off of student loans. The interest rates are higher than what the cost of the student loan is. Taking into consideration defaults, taking into consideration administrative costs, taking into consideration the cost of borrowing, between 2007 and 2012 $66 billion was made off the backs of students who can't afford the loans they currently have.

What Senator Warren's bill does is allow those who hold student debt to refinance and take advantage of lower interest rates. It is not going to be subsidized loans. There will be no cost to

the taxpayers to do this. This seems like a no-brainer, quite frankly. It would make it easier for them. We let homeowners refinance their mortgages and we passed special legislation to allow that. We allow businesses to refinance their loans to the lowest competitive rate. Why can't students do this? That is what the bill before us does. It lets us move forward at no cost because we are not subsidizing the loans.

Just because of our unusual scoring reasons here, she provides an offset, which I don't think is necessary, but I certainly support the bill, and the offset is certainly one that has millionaires paying their fair share and it makes sense. So this will save thousands of dollars for those who currently holds loans. That is important.

Some say: Don't we need more accountability from higher education? Yes, we do. Don't we need more transparency from higher education? Yes, we do. Don't we need to have better consumer information? Yes. I agree with all of the above, but today we can do something about the interest costs and correct an injustice of government, making money off of student loans, and do this in a way that makes it more affordable for families. We can do something that truly helps. It will provide help to families.

President Obama has acted. I thank him for doing that. Five million families will benefit from his Executive order or clarification which says no more than 10 percent of your income will be used to pay student loans and caps the number of years. That is going to help. He is also doing more to promote awareness of repayment options. That is good, but we in Congress have an opportunity to act and act today.

I hope we get bipartisan support to help middle-income families and to help our country. I urge my colleagues to allow us to get on the bill and to pay to help the middle class of America.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.