Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act of 2015

Mr. President, I ask consent that the Senator from Colorado, Mr. Bennet, and I, along with the Senator from Maine, Mr. King, the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Booker, the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Isakson, and the Senator from North Carolina, Mr. Burr, be able to engage in a colloquy on higher education for the next half hour.

I further ask unanimous consent to use a piece of demonstrative evidence in my remarks.

The Senator from Colorado, Michael Bennet, and I have been working for 1 year to make it easier for the 20 million American families who fill out the Federal application form each year in order to receive grants and loans for college.

The piece of demonstrative evidence that Senator Bennet and I have been carrying around in Tennessee and Colorado is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or FAFSA. This is the form that 20 million Americans fill out. It is familiar to many families as it has 108 questions, and it is important to them because about half of the American families who have students in college have a Federal grant or loan to help pay for college.

The problem with the 108 questions is that they are generally unnecessary. Senator Bennet and I were at a Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing. We heard four witnesses representing different perspectives in our country saying that we only need two questions to know whether we could make a Federal grant or loan to a student from Wisconsin who wanted to go to community college with roughly 95 percent accuracy.

So today we are introducing legislation which is named the Federal Aid Simplification and Transparency, or FAST, Act. It will turn these 108 questions into two--one about the amount of family income and one about the size of family. It will free students and their families from the dreaded FAFSA. It will eliminate thousands of hours of busywork by guidance counselors, college administrators, parents, and accountants.

I will use a specific example. On Friday I am going to Tennessee with President Obama, who has been attracted to our great State because we have become the first State to say to all of our high school graduates that community college is tuition-free. How can we do that in Tennessee? Tuition at community colleges, like in some places in the country, is about $3,600 per year, and the Pell grant can pay up to $5,700, but on average needy students receive about $3,300. So for about half the students, there is only a small gap between the amount the Federal Pell grant pays and what tuition costs. Tennessee has committed to make up the difference.

But here is the catch: The major obstacle to Tennesseans who want to

take advantage of the new Tennessee Promise Program is the 108-question form. The president of the community college in Memphis, Southwest Tennessee Community College, tells me he thinks he loses 1,500 students a semester because of the complexity of the form. They just don't fill it out.

So it is a terrific example of how the Federal Government, with good intentions, has built up over the years an enormous amount of paperwork that is getting in the way of the single greatest need our State has, which is to have more of our students better trained. This will help the businesses that are attracted there offering good jobs will be able to hire people who are properly trained.

In addition to that, our bill does the following things:

It not only eliminates the 108 questions and replaces them with 2, it tells families the result earlier in the process. For example, if you have a daughter who is a junior in high school, now you will be able to go online and find out--answering two questions--how much money you are eligible for in grants and loans. Now you have to wait until the second semester of your senior year.

The next thing it does is it streamlines the Federal grant and loan programs by combining two Federal programs into one Pell Grant Program and reduces the six different Federal loan programs into three--one undergraduate loan program, one graduate loan program, and one parent loan program--resulting in more access for students.

Fourth, it enables students to use a Pell grant in a manner that works for them. They can use it year-round--now they cannot use it for three straight semesters--or at their own pace.

Next, it discourages overborrowing. Too many students borrow extra money they do not need to go to college. For example, under the Federal rules a student is entitled to borrow the same amount of money if they go full time as they are if they go half time. That makes no sense. It saddles students with debt they cannot pay back.

Finally, it simplifies the repayment options. Now there are nine different ways to make repayments. We suggest two.

Senators King and Burr have their own bill, which they will be introducing today and talking about a little later, that streamlines repayment options.

I have been delighted to work with Senator Bennet. I congratulate him. His background as the Denver school superintendent and as a father has made him a very effective advocate for this effort. We have listened to educators and parents in our own States. The bill has been out there now for more than half a year. We have attracted other sponsors, including Senator Booker and Senator Isakson. We hope other Senators will want to join us.

Finally, I would say before going to Senator Bennet that as chairman of the Senate committee that handles education--the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee--we are ready to move on this. As soon as we can finish our work on fixing No Child Left Behind, which we have been working on for 6 years and have held 24 hearings. In addition, almost all of the members of the current committee were there last year when we reported a bill--as soon as we can finish that work, we will be ready to move to reauthorize the Higher Education Act to deregulate higher education starting with the FAST Act and the legislation Senators King and Burr have promoted.

I thank the Senator from Colorado for his partnership on this. I salute him for his leadership.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Bennet.

I would like to send to the desk the FAST Act that Senator Bennet and I are introducing, with the cosponsorship of Senator Booker, Senator Burr, Senator King, and Senator Isakson.

In this colloquy, I would like now to recognize the Senator from New Jersey for 5 minutes to comment on the bill, if he would like.

Mr. President, following that--the Senator from North Carolina and the Senator from Maine, who are cosponsors of this bill, are here, but they also have a separate bill on income repayments which they will discuss.

The Senator from New Jersey is known in his State and across the country as a pioneer in education, putting children first.

Having his support and advice on this bill will be a great advantage in helping it go from the Senate floor through the House to the President's desk and into law.

In 2013 the Congress and President Obama made significant steps forward in improving the student loan program--a $100 billion per year Federal program to help students go to college. That law created a market-based, market-pricing system, and it had the effect in that year of reducing the rate for undergraduates, cutting it about in half.

The two Senators who led that were the Senator from North Carolina, Mr. Burr, and the Senator from Maine, Mr. King. Senator Burr and Senator King have continued to work on student loans, making it easier for students to go to college, easier for them to pay their loans, and easier for them to pay them back.

We are proud to have them as cosponsors, but they have their own legislation on student loan repayments, which I am pleased to cosponsor and which will be a top priority in the Senate HELP Committee as soon as we finish fixing No Child Left Behind.

I now yield in this colloquy to Senator Burr.

I thank the Senator from North Carolina. No one was more instrumental in the work in 2013 that reformed student loans to reduce the interest rate for undergraduates by nearly half that year.

In his State of North Carolina there are many of the best universities and 2-year colleges in the country, and I know education has been and is foremost for him.

I look forward to working with him, the members of our committee and every Senator on the floor, as we go through the process with a full and honest debate on important issues using an open amendment process. Then I hope we are able to work with President Obama again this year in the same way we were in 2013 to achieve a result.

A forceful advocate for that result in 2013 was the Senator of Maine who has the advantage of having been a Governor, Senator King, and we will let him have the final say in this colloquy.

Mr. President, as the colloquy is concluding, I want to thank the Senators from Maine and New Jersey for their leadership and the Senator from North Carolina. I can assure them the King-Burr bill, with the support of Senator Rubio and Senator Warner, will be combined with our bill and be front and center on the agenda of the HELP Committee as early as we can this year. As far as I am concerned, it is the next priority after we fix No Child Left Behind. I am hopeful we can bring it to the floor by the spring, give the full Senate a chance to consider it, combine it with action of the House and work with the President, just as we did in 2013.

I am going to turn to Senator Bennet for just a minute to let him have a concluding word, but I wanted to say this. As I mentioned, President Obama is going to Tennessee on Friday. He is going to celebrate an initiative Tennessee has taken by itself to say to all high school graduates: Two years of community college education is tuition free. Of course, that is based upon the Pell grant. The State just makes up the difference, which isn't that much.

I am going to have an opportunity to say to the President: Mr. President, the one thing the Federal Government can do to make it easier for more Tennesseans to take advantage of Tennessee Promise is to get rid of the FAFSA. Because the President of Southwest Tennessee Community College in Memphis says 1,500 students a semester are not enrolling in community college, who ought to be going, just because they and their families are intimidated by this form or can't fill it out.

There is no excuse for that, and we are going to fix that. Maybe the solution is three questions, maybe it is four questions, but surely it is not 108 questions, and 70 or 80 pages of instructions, wasting the time of administrators, guidance counselors, parents, accountants, students, and discouraging Americans from taking advantage of education.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a one-page summary of the FAST Act.

I thank the Presiding Officer for the time, I thank my fellow Senators, and I yield for the final words of the Senator from Colorado.

Economic development and jobs is what unites us in this body. That is what we all want. That is what everyone here is striving to achieve--jobs and opportunity for the people of this country.

There are many factors that contribute to that, and we can discuss and debate all of them this year. I suspect that we will. There is infrastructure, tax policy, smart regulation, and regulatory reform. But the one about which there is very little dispute is education.

The single greatest job creation and economic development act in the history of the United States was the GI bill, subsequent to World War II, which opened the doors of college and higher education, to millions of Americans and literally built the middle class in this country. Education is what it is all about and education is even more important now than it was then.

There was a time in this country when you could graduate from high school and get a pretty good job in a mill, make good money, have two cars in the garage, and lead a successful life. That is much more difficult today. Even those jobs in those mills require more education.

In my State of Maine we did a survey a few years ago that showed 70 percent of the jobs had people touching a computer every day. That is what takes an education, and to get an education takes access.

I will share one rather chilling statistic in terms of the competitive nature of the 21st century. We are engaged in competition. We are engaged in competition with the entire world and they want our jobs.

A little statistic is the top 8 percent of high school graduates in China are equal in number to all the high school graduates in the United States. Think about that for a minute--the top 8 percent in China are equal in number to all the high school graduates of the United States.

We are going to have to work to compete, and the only way we are going to be able to do that is if we work smart, and the only way we are going to be able to work smart is with education and expanded opportunity and access to education. Higher education in the 21st century, I would submit, is more important than ever.

There has been attention to this over the years by State governments, local governments, by parents, by students, and by the Federal Government, going back to the midst of the Civil War, when one of the great education bills of all time was passed, the land grant college system in 1864. Support for research at our great universities has been a Federal effort.

Student loans have been a part of what we have tried to contribute to this system for many years. Then, of course, we have Pell grants, which have enabled millions of students to find opportunity in higher education. But, ironically, the very programs that are designed to increase access to higher education have, themselves, become inaccessible.

Senator Alexander and Senator Bennet made a dramatic showing today with these ridiculous forms. When you read the forms the conclusion is: I guess my kid isn't going to go to college.

We have created a system where you need an accountant, a lawyer at your shoulder in order to fill out a form for financial aid, and the people who need it the most are the least likely to have the resources to bring those experts to bear on the process. Programs designed to promote access have themselves become inaccessible.

So that is what today is all about. That is what our discussion is all about. It is about accessibility and simplification. Senators Alexander and Bennet and Booker have brilliantly articulated the power of the idea behind the FAST Act: reduce the questions to just a few simple questions to get the necessary information. You don't need 80 pages of instructions to answer two questions. It will open the doors to literally millions of students whom we need. This isn't nice to have; this is need to have. This is an economic security and a national security question. We need these people. The current form is discouraging the very people we want: those who may or may not take the plunge into higher education. The simple fact is you shouldn't need an accountant to figure out whether you can get financial aid to go to college.

The complementary bill Senator Burr and I are introducing today, along with Senator Rubio and Senator Warner, is called the Repay Act. The bill Senator Alexander is speaking to is about accessibility and simplification on the front end. Our bill is accessibility and simplification on the back end, dealing with the issue of repayment. It basically reduces eight current options--and I have a chart that would make Rube Goldberg blush in terms of the complexity of the current options--to two. One is a 10-year fixed repayment plan, which certain students can select if it makes sense for them, and the other is a variable income-driven plan.

As Senator Burr pointed out, the ideas for this bill came from across the spectrum--from students, financial aid offices, financial aid administrators, Republicans, Democrats, and President Obama in his most recent budget.

By the way, one of the groups Senator Burr mentioned is the Young Invincibles. I would like to be a Young Invincible. I would like to see where I can join that group because sometimes I don't exactly feel that way. But this is an idea I think is invincible because it just makes so much common sense.

Borrowers can switch between the fixed payment and the variable payment depending upon their circumstances, but they never pay more than 15 percent of their disposable income.

I think another important provision is if a borrower is totally and permanently disabled and the loan is forgiven, they do not have to pay tax on the loan that is forgiven. Under current law, they have to pay an income tax on the phantom income of the loan that is forgiven.

I particularly thank Senators Warner and Rubio for joining us on this bill. They had their own bill on this repayment structure last year, and they have generously decided to join forces with us on this bill, and I believe that will add substantial weight to our work. They have already made contributions to the drafting of the bill, and I think that will help us considerably as we move forward with this legislation.

Quite often around here we talk about things we can't do--we can't do--problems we can't fix. This is something we can do. This is a human problem of our making by layering programs over one another and having the bureaucratic rules build over the years to the point where, as I said, it has created an accessibility problem for the very program designed to give access.

These are important bills. They are not necessarily the bills that are going to get the headlines or cause all the fights and the friction, but these are the quiet kinds of changes that will change our country. They will provide opportunity for our students, for our families, and for our country. I am proud to join Senator Alexander, the chair of the HELP Committee, and Senator Burr particularly, who has worked so hard on this bill. I think we have a combination of bills that will make a difference in people's lives and in the future of this country.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am delighted to be on the floor today with, among others, Senator Alexander, who has worked so hard on the bill we are talking about today. Through the Chair, I want to wish him well in his new role as chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on which I serve. He is quite right to have said this bill came to us as a result of testimony in front of that committee by a variety of witnesses but all of whom agreed that the current system is completely unwieldy. I would also like to thank the other cosponsors--Senators Burr, Booker, Isakson, and King--for joining the efforts and for being here today as well.

I first became aware of this problem when I was superintendent of the Denver public schools. We had a couple who very generously donated $50 million for scholarships for kids who were graduating from the Denver public schools and who had applied to college. One of the things we learned in that process was how terrible the process was for filling out the financial aid forms for the Federal Government. That was a requirement we had for people to be able to be eligible for this scholarship. We literally had to put new rooms in our schools, in our high schools, and staff them with people in order to fill out these forms.

Every year tens of thousands of students and parents in Colorado and millions more across the country fill out the FAFSA as part of the college application process. It is the gateway to financial aid. By some estimates, over 2 million people who are eligible for financial aid and Pell grants do not get it simply because of the complexity of the form.

I ask unanimous consent to show some demonstrative evidence.

Here is this year's form. It is a different color than the one we had last year. This is the form a student has to fill out-- 108 questions. This is the instruction manual that goes with the form, which is something in the neighborhood of 66 pages long. It is very tiny print.

To be honest, the ridiculousness of this form would be funny if it were not for the lost time, money, and energy our country spends on it. Here are some of the examples of the questions families have to put up with on this form. Several times there are questions about income. We have been told by the witnesses we had that we only need two questions. There are a number of questions about income, investments, and assets. Each requires notes and instructions which are contained in here.

Question 36: What was your and your spouse's adjusted gross income for 2014?

Question 37: Enter your and your spouse's income tax for 2014.

Question 39: How much did you earn from working in 2014?

Question 40: How much did your spouse earn from working in 2014?

It is ridiculous.

The questions become even more complicated.

Question 42: As of today, what is the net worth of your and your spouse's investments, including real estate but don't including the home you live in?

That is the kind of reaction we get all over the country when we talk about this at home.

The instruction form here says, for question No. 43, the net worth of businesses and/or investments.

Business or farm value includes the current market value of

land, buildings, machinery, equipment, inventory, et cetera.

Do not include your primary farm. Do not include the net

worth of a family-owned and controlled small business with

more than 100 full-time or full-time equivalent employees.

Just to make it really clear, in dark print, bolded print, it says: business/farm value minus business/farm debt equals net worth of business. This is as complicated as any tax form.

At a time when the demands of the global economy require us to have more college access, not less, it is a shame that this bureaucratic piling up of questions is making it harder and harder for people to go to college.

So I think this is going to be great for our students, to get it down to a postcard that has two questions. The estimate is that the time saved by moving away from this existing form is the equivalent of 50,000 jobs that could be spent actually providing college guidance to young people who will now have the benefit of knowing, as Senator Alexander said so eloquently, what financial aid they will be eligible for in their junior year before they apply to college rather than waiting until their senior year, until they have already been admitted to college. That makes no sense to the people we represent, and there is a reason for it--it is because it makes no sense.

My hope is that this is a bill we will be able to move this year. Again, I thank Senator Alexander for his tremendous leadership.

Mr. President, I again say thank you to the chairman of the HELP Committee for all his leadership and his work dealing with this form. We have been after this for about 1 year.

This might be a quiet bill, as Senator King said earlier, but in my travels around the State I can't find anybody who is unhappy with this legislation except for the people who have already filled out the form, who are asking: Where were you 5 years ago when I was having to do this for my students or where were you when I was having to fill this out for my college education?

It makes absolutely no sense. I am sure many of these questions are well intentioned, but what we have learned in the hearings we have had, in the testimony, is they are not necessary. If

they are not necessary, we shouldn't be asking them. Our students would be a lot better off spending their time figuring out what college they want to attend, figuring out what course of study they want to undertake than spending their time with this bureaucratic nightmare.

I am enormously optimistic that we are going to get this passed with the chairman's leadership, and I look forward to working with my colleagues on that. I would like to thank the Senator from New Jersey again for signing on as one of the original cosponsors.

With that, I yield the floor.

I thank Senator Alexander and Senator Bennet, and I thank them for what they propose in the FAST Act.

As a parent who went through two kids going to college, when I was presented that form, I realized I wasn't capable of doing it.

I remember a story still today of a dear colleague of mine in the House of Representatives--many know Sonny Bono. We asked Sonny one day: Why did you come to Congress? How did you get into politics?

He said: Well, I became mayor of a city for one reason--because I opened a restaurant. When I went to get a sign permit, they gave me 50 pages to fill out. I didn't graduate from high school, but I figured out it was easier for me to run for mayor, win, and make the sign permit 1 page than it was for me to fill out 50 pages.

That is how he got his start in politics.

I might say, as a parent, to be able to--on a post card--apply and know whether I was eligible for my children's student aid would be a tremendous thing for all parents.

Senator King and I are on the floor to talk specifically about the Repay Act.

As we have looked at student loans and as the government has become the primary loan component for student loans, what we have seen is that the consolidation of one's loans has dramatically increased in an incoherent way. Now, some might say that is exactly what government does. We say we are going to fix a problem, and we fix it in a way that you don't understand it; it is way too cumbersome.

What we have tried to do is we have made an effort to provide more avenues for or options for children to choose or parents to choose how to pay back student loans. What we have done is we have made it as complicated as the form that Senator Bennet showed, which determines eligibility.

Currently, the Federal Government offers 12 repayment options for students. Among these 12 options, students are offered a series of terms and

conditions that often overlap amongst several other programs with very similar sounding names and stated benefits. The problem gets worse annually.

The administration continues to do new regulations every time we see a problem, and those regulations then overlap with existing regulations on student loans to where individuals don't know exactly what their options are--what Senator King and I want to do.

We will introduce, hopefully later today, the Repay Act. It provides two options that kids choose from: a fixed-rate option for repayment and an income-based option for repayment.

We also realize that under the income-based options that are out there today an individual who is married could file as married--filing an individual tax form--and their household income isn't considered for the amount they are going to repay on a monthly basis. That is not how we designed it.

We designed it so what their income capability was, their repayment would reflect it. In other words, we have people who are gaming the system today because their one spouse makes a lot of money and one spouse doesn't make much, and they pay a minimal amount of monthly student loan repayments. When they do that, they cheat the other students behind them because they take money out of the system that can be used for those individuals who desperately need it.

The Repay Act streamlines a multitude of loan programs and creates a fixed-base and income-based repayment. It does it by consolidating all income-based repayment programs into one repayment program that caps borrowing at $57,500 for 20 years and limits to 25 years the repayment period for loans over $57,500, while ensuring the monthly payments rise at a reasonable rate based upon that annual income level--again, the household income level.

The benefit for students is they will up front have the knowledge they need of what they will expect to pay based upon the amount they borrow.

We believe this will drive smarter borrowing decisions and will lead students to limit the amount of debt they take prior to going to school. Behavioral economists argue that when an individual's options are less complex and straightforward, individuals are more likely to make rational decisions.

Senator King and I believe the changes included in the Repay Act will promote those rational decisions that will ultimately lead to smarter borrowing that leads to repayment and ultimately healthier financial situations for our Nation's graduates.

Why are we here? It is because only 80 percent of our student loans are being repaid. That means 20 percent is in default.

What we want to do is we want to see kids get a great education. We want to see the ability for that to be paid for, and we want that money to be repaid based upon their success in the marketplace. I believe this act will put us on that road to do it.

Now, I don't want to pretend, and I don't think Senator King will pretend, this isn't something that we crafted and created. This is the result of ideas that were put forward by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, the Lumina Foundation for Education, the Education Finance Council, the American Council on Education, the Young Invincibles, the Institute for College Access and Success, the New America Foundation, and many other groups.

This is truly Congress, the Senate at its best, reaching out to organizations that do this day in and day out, just as I think the chairman did on the application-card student aid form.

We have tried to search the best ideas. From that we have gleaned them and put them into the Repay Act. We will introduce this bill. I thank the chairman. It does complement very much the FAST Act.

I thank my colleague, Senator King, for his help on the introduction of this bill.

I yield back.

Mr. President, for nearly a year now, Americans across the country have made their voices heard on the critical issue of how we protect an open Internet. Their message has been loud and clear--they want meaningful rules that protect the Internet as a platform for free expression and innovation. Consumers want to see the online space as we have always known it, as a place where the best ideas and services can reach users on merit rather than based on a financial relationship with a broadband provider. Last Congress I joined with my friend in the House, Representative Doris Matsui of California, to introduce bicameral legislation requiring the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, to ban ``pay-to-play'' deals on the Internet. Today, I am pleased to once again join with her to reintroduce this important bill.

When we originally introduced this legislation last June, nearly 300,000 Americans had commented on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's open Internet proposal. That number alone would have been an impressive level of public engagement. Since that time, however, the number of public comments filed at the FCC has swelled to nearly 4 million. As the comments show, consumers are concerned that without meaningful rules the Internet will become a place where broadband providers charge tolls to websites or applications for them to reach end users. This would represent a fundamental departure from the way in which consumers and entrepreneurs interact with the Internet. A two-tiered Internet based on ability to pay would harm the innovative and competitive environment we have all come to expect in the online world.

Like an overwhelming number of the public, I have grave concerns that a pay-to-play Internet would allow larger companies to squeeze out their competitors, stifling competition online. A small web company in Vermont that develops an idea to rival the largest Silicon Valley titans should not have to worry that its access to consumers could be blocked because its competitors have a paid arrangement with broadband providers. The next generation of Internet companies and retailers should have the same protections that allowed a company like the Vermont Country Store to become a thriving online success.

Pay-to-play arrangements would also harm consumers, who would not have the assurance that the service they are paying for will provide the speed that they want. Too many Americans currently lack real choice in broadband providers, particularly those in rural areas. A pay-to- play Internet could result in whole swaths of the Internet becoming functionally inaccessible to the customers of certain Internet providers. This is not the Internet we know today, and the FCC or Congress must act to ensure that it does not come to pass.

The Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act is straightforward. It requires the FCC to establish rules preventing providers from charging websites for priority access. It also requires rules to prevent providers from prioritizing their own affiliated content or services. These are simple rules to preserve the equal platform we know online today.

This legislation should not be used by opponents of meaningful open Internet rules to undermine the FCC's important work to craft open Internet rules that will protect consumers and innovators. To the contrary, this bill sets out important policy positions that the FCC should adopt in its current consideration of open Internet rules. The FCC should not hesitate to act at its February meeting to ban these deals outright.

The importance of an open Internet is an issue that resonates in homes and businesses across the country. I spent significant time last year listening to voices outside of Washington, particularly those of Vermonters, so that I could hear firsthand about the impact the Internet has had on small businesses and consumers. The Judiciary Committee held two hearings on this issue, including one in Vermont, where I heard exactly these kinds of stories. These are not people looking for a handout or special treatment--these are entrepreneurs and consumers who simply want the Internet to remain an equalizing tool regardless of where you live or how deep your pockets are.

There should be widespread agreement to prevent special deals that harm consumers and dampen online innovation. The FCC and Congress should rightly focus on this timely and significant issue to protect innovation and competition online.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.