Floor Statements

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Connecticut for referencing a measure in which we both share an interest. He is right; a student loan is not like another loan. It is not like the mortgage on your home. It is not like the money you borrowed to buy a car or a boat or a line of credit you might have needed at some point in your life. A student loan is a debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. No matter how bad things get, you are going to carry that debt with you to the grave, and believe me, they will pursue you all the way.

We just had a report in the Wall Street Journal. There was a grandmother receiving Social Security benefits. They levied her benefits because grandma decided to befriend her granddaughter by cosigning her student loan, on which her granddaughter defaulted. So now grandma finds her Social Security check being levied to pay off her granddaughter's student loan. It never ever ends.

So I support my colleague from Connecticut. He and I both believe this ought to change. This is awful. For goodness' sake, we have to have some recognition of what is happening with student debt today. It is not the way it used to be. Those of us fortunate enough to get the early government loans--the National Defense Education Act, that is how I went to college and law school. Scared to death when the Soviets launched sputnik, this Senate and the House created a loan program for kids like me from East St. Louis, IL, to borrow money to go to college. I had to pay it back over 10 years with 3 percent interest. I did not think I ever would, but I did. Now look at what students are faced with.

Hannah Moore, of the suburbs of Chicago--I have gotten to know Hannah. I want to tell you Hannah Moore's story. This young lady went to community college first. A good idea, right--affordable, a local college. Then she decided to sign up at the Harrington College of Design. They were going to give her a special education. Well, they sure as heck did. The Harrington College of Design is a for-profit college. Hannah Moore signed up for the course. It is owned by Career Education Corporation. It is a for-profit school. You ought to know something. Career Education Corporation is under investigation in 17 different States for their activities in luring students into worthless college courses. Hannah Moore was one of those victims.

What happened to Hannah? Well, at the end of the day, when she finished

her so-called course at the Harrington College of Design, she ended up $124,000 in debt, and it is growing. She cannot keep up with it. She cannot earn enough money to keep up with it. Do you know what has happened? She has moved into her parents' basement. That is where she has to live now. Her dad has come out of retirement to help her pay off the loan. That is what she faces.

So we are going to do something about it with the help of a few Republicans. I hope a few of them will stand and join us. We are going to give students across America who are not in default an opportunity to refinance their college loans with lower interest rates. Those of us who have had a few mortgages in our life know what that means--a lower interest rate, a lower payment or more money reduced from the principal. It is the only way some of these people ever get out from this burden of student debt. Senator Elizabeth Warren put the bill together. I have cosponsored it with a number of others. We think this is the only way that students deep in debt have a fair shot at a future; otherwise, they are going to be swamped with debt and never get out of it.

The prospect of going back to school for Hannah? Impossible. She cannot borrow money for that. Buying a car? Out of the question. Her own apartment? No, sorry, you cannot do that either. I have met young couples who have said: We are putting off raising a family because of the debt.

Now we have a bill that is going to be introduced by Senator Warren, brought to the floor, and we need Republican support. We cannot pass it without Republican support. So far not one Republican has joined us-- not one--for refinancing college debt. But that can change. It will change if our Republican colleagues will simply go home to their States and have a town meeting and ask the people in attendance: What do you think; should we give college students a lower interest rate? Should the Federal Government make less money off these college students so they can get out from under this debt once and for all?

They will find what I found in Illinois--overwhelming support for this approach.

So if we are going to do something in the Senate Chamber that really affects the lives of working families--where young people and their parents can say, well, thank goodness somebody in Washington is finally listening to problems families face--this is it: refinancing college student loans. This is our opportunity to give a fair shot to kids from working families all across America, the kind of opportunity I had, the kind of opportunity millions of others have had.

There is a lot more we need to do to clean up this mess when it comes to college loans and when it comes to the schools that are ripping off students, but let's start at the right place. Let's help students in debt get out from under that debt.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise in morning business to respond to the Republican Senate leader who just spoke.

I preface my remarks by making the claim that I have made on the floor now three different times, and I am still waiting for the first Member of the other party to come to this Senate Chamber and to dispute what I am about to say.

The Republican Party of the United States of America is the only major political party in the world today that denies global warming.

I have said it. I am waiting for them to come forward and say: No, there is another one somewhere. One said: Well, we think there is one in Australia.

Really? So the entire world understands that global warming is a challenge except for one political party, the Republican Party of the United States of America.

And what have we seen with global warming? We have seen a change in the world we live in. Weather is more extreme; things are changing.

We have from time to time young people who come and visit the Senate Chamber and sit in the galleries. They are always welcomed, but of course our debate today is about them. It is about the world they will live in and a question of whether it will be habitable, a world they can live in and prosper. Don't we have an obligation, our generation, to leave that world to them and, if nothing else, a world as good as what we inherited from our parents and grandparents?

That is what this debate about. And if we are going to do that, we have to make some changes. Can America make a change? We sure can. We have led the world when it comes to change. This President sat down with the automobile manufacturers, after decades of resistance to the notion of more fuel-efficient vehicles, and hammered out an agreement that now we are driving cars and trucks that take us the same distance and burn fewer gallons of gasoline.

My wife and I drive a Ford Fusion Hybrid, 36 miles a gallon, and we can beat that with other cars, but we are pretty happy with our little Ford. Nobody put a gun to my head and said buy it. My wife and I thought it was the responsible thing to do. Ford made a great product and we bought it.

There was a time on the floor of the Senate when Ford and other companies were in denial. It will never happen, they said. It is happening. America can change for the better with leadership.

I listened to the arguments from the Senate Republican leader today about the impact of change and the impact of doing something about carbon pollution on poor people and working families. I had to come to the floor. I listened to the plaintive pleas of the Republican leader to think about poor people working and the impact it has on them, and I kept remembering it is his political party that has opposed the increase in the minimum wage, an increase in the wage these poor people are earning. They oppose it, with one exception, maybe two. Their party opposes increasing the minimum wage and comes to the floor and says we can't do anything that could hurt poor working families.

First, let them join us in a bipartisan effort to raise the minimum wage. Secondly, I can report one thing that global warming and carbon pollution is producing today. It is producing the No. 1 complaint of children brought to the emergency rooms across America. What is the most common health problem bringing children to emergency rooms? Trauma? No. What is it? Asthma. I go to classrooms across my State, and I say to the children who are there: Hold up your hand if you know anyone who has asthma. Rural schools, urban schools, it is all the same. Hands go up across the classroom. These problems are created by the air we are forced to breathe. Are we going to do something about it? We should.

Our colleague Max Baucus from Montana recently took on the position as Ambassador to China. He and his wife were headed over and we said half jokingly: I hope the air is clean enough to breathe over there, because if you have been to China, you know it is a challenge every single day. Are we going to take a different approach in America? Are we going to set a different example in America when it comes to public health? This is our opportunity.

If we truly care about working families and their children, how can we ignore what is happening? As the air gets worse and carbon pollution increases and asthma increases, health care costs go up. Lives are compromised. I don't want to see that happen. So if we truly care about working families, care about their children and the health of their children. I might also add, care about providing these families with health insurance. Time and again the same party that came to the floor this morning, telling us about working people, has opposed our efforts to extend the protection of health insurance to working families.

Which State is one of the most successful States in the Union in signing up people when it comes to our new health insurance plan, the so-called ObamaCare? One of the most successful per capita States in the Nation happens to be the Commonwealth of Kentucky, represented by the Senator who just spoke on the other side of the aisle. Hundreds of thousands of people in Kentucky now have health insurance through the President's plan, including thousands under Medicaid.

So when we are talking about who is sensitive to the needs of working families, whether it is minimum wage or basic health insurance, I think our approach is one that has proven to be right. Over 6 million Americans have now signed up for health insurance. In my State of Illinois, over 100,000 in Cook County alone now have health insurance, and I have met some of them.

Roy Romanowski--a great Chicago name--Roy, a big barrel-chested Polish musician, was sitting next to me at a health care clinic and he said, Senator, never had health insurance in my life but have it now and patted his wallet. Now he is signed up for Medicaid. A low-income guy, takes jobs as they come along, he has health insurance--he is about 60 years old--and is happy to have it. So when we talk about standing up for working people, this is part of it.

Yes, it is a challenge when we face change. We are a coal-producing State in Illinois. We are going to have to sit down as a State and make a plan that is going to deal with reducing the pollution which is changing our planet. We can do it. I am sure we can, and America should lead the world.

How many times have our colleagues on the other side talked about exceptionalism; that America is such a different and great country. I don't quarrel with that. I don't want to be braggadocios about it, but I don't quarrel with it.

But when it comes to a challenge such as this, of cleaning up the environment, shouldn't America be a leader? Of course. That is what President Obama is asking us to do: State by State, figure out a plan that reduces carbon pollution, reduces the public health hazards children and families are facing because of the pollution, reduces the damage taking place to this environment that is changing the world we live in. That is what a leader does.

It is time for us to try to come together and work together to find a solution.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Udall), and the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Rockefeller) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Rockefeller), and the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Udall) are necessarily absent.

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

Mr. President, during this last break I went back to Illinois and visited a lot of college campuses. I went to Augustana College, which is in the Quad Cities, and then went to Illinois State University in Normal, IL, and then down to the University of Illinois.

At each one of those campuses I had a press conference about student debt. Student debt today has reached a point where we have to pay close attention to it--and we should. The vast majority of Americans ask a very basic question: Senator, is there anything you are doing today that really is going to help my family? For 44 million Americans currently paying on student loans in America, legislation that is going to be introduced tomorrow can make a big difference.

I am cosponsoring a bill with Elizabeth Warren, the Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a very bright lady who was on the faculty of the Harvard Law School and who understands these issues better than almost anyone I have ever met. She is leading the way on a college student loan refinancing bill.

Here is what we are trying to do. We are trying to get those students who are trapped in big debts with high interest rates a chance to refinance their loans. How significant could it be? Well, when I met these students at different schools, they told me their stories. As a former college borrower myself, as a father raising three kids who went through college, it was sad. It was really sad to hear their stories because the amount of debt that students are running into now is dramatically higher than anything those of us who were in the early stages of college loans ever experienced.

I will not even tell you how much I borrowed because it makes me sound ancient. But it scared me to death when I borrowed that money to go through college and law school for fear I would never pay it back. It turns out I did as I was supposed to. But students today many times find themselves so deeply in debt they just cannot get out from under it.

Now, I am going to set over here on this side a whole category of speeches on institutions known as for-profit colleges and universities. They are in a special place in my thinking. For-profit colleges and universities, who are they? The biggest one is the University of Phoenix. Apollo Group owns a series of universities. You have seen their advertising, I will bet.

They, at one point, had over 450,000 students in this University of Phoenix network of schools across the country. The second biggest is DeVry, another for-profit university out of my State of Illinois. Kaplan is the third largest. I am going to set them over here because they are in a special category. They are in a category of colleges and universities that we ought to be doing something about.

Three numbers tell the story about the for-profit colleges and universities. Ten percent of high school graduates go to for-profit colleges and universities. Ten percent of America's high school graduates go to these schools. These schools receive 20 percent of all Federal aid to education--10 percent of the students, 20 percent of the Federal aid.

These for-profit colleges and universities receive over $32 billion a year in Federal aid. Why is it so much if they only have 10 percent of the students? Because they charge so much when it comes to tuition. But here is the number: 46. Forty-six percent of all student loan defaults are students out of for-profit colleges and universities.

Why? Worthless diplomas, too much debt, and the students cannot find work to pay off their debts. Now, what if you have a college loan? There is something you ought to know about it. You probably heard it. It bears repeating. There are only a handful of debts in America that you can incur as an American citizen that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy: taxes--you have to pay those--child support, alimony, and college student loans.

No matter what happens to you financially, there is virtually no way out. The loan you take out to go to college is with you for a lifetime. Even in bankruptcy you cannot discharge it. At the end of bankruptcy, it is still sitting there. Unfortunately, the interest is growing.

That is why we have to take a look at it. Let's move aside from the for-profit college world, which I think is a separate issue, but a very important one, and look at the big picture. For too many Americans the promise of a fair shot at an affordable college education has become a long shot. Average tuition and fees at 4-year public colleges has more than tripled in the last 30 years. I can guarantee you that income for American families has not tripled in that same period.

Tuition has outpaced inflation for 32 straight years. The cost of education at all colleges and universities has been going up dramatically. No other major consumer expenditure, including health care, can make that claim. It is not just low-income students who feel the impact of these rising costs. It is middle-income students and their families as well. Since 2003 the amount of student loan debt in America has quadrupled. Nationally there are now almost 40 million borrowers with more than $1 trillion in debt. There is more student loan debt in America today than the combined sum total of all credit card debt. That is more than there is in auto loans. Only mortgages would be a higher category of debt in terms of its total cost.

The average student loan debt increased by 49 percent between 2005 and 2012 to $27,850. On average, Illinois graduates in the class of 2012 left with a little over $28,000 in debt, but their individual debts, as you might guess, are much higher; and 1.7 million Illinoisans have outstanding student loan debt out of a population of about 12.5 million.

What effect does $1 trillion in student loan debt have on the American economy. The Federal Reserve warns us that it is threatening current and future economic growth. The student loan debt crisis has been compared to the mortgage crisis we went through 8 or 9 years ago. It is ingrained in American culture that each successive generation wants to do better than the previous one. But student loan debt is crippling middle-class growth for younger generations.

Currently the median household wealth of people my age, in the 55-to- 65 bracket, is 44 times the net worth of the median household of people younger than 35. People under the age of 35 are struggling. This is historically unprecedented and has a lot to do with the student loan debt.

I have heard from so many people in my State about this issue. They say student loan debt is preventing them from buying a car, borrowing any more money to finish their education, having their own place to live, getting married and, once married, having children. I have met couples who have said: We made a family decision; no kids until we pay off the student loans; I am not sure we will be able to pay them off in time to make that decision.

Think about that for a second. They cannot even start a family because of the student debts and the fear that they are going to default on them. I heard it firsthand back in Illinois last week. One student I met, Mabinty Tarawallie, is struggling with student loan debt even though she has done everything right. She immigrated to the United States from Africa when she was 11 years old. Her family was very poor but they told her: You have to have an education.

She graduated from high school, went to a local community college--a good place to start--and completed her undergraduate degree in sociology at the University of Illinois.

She told me she wanted to help others pick themselves up out of poverty as she did, so she went to graduate school for a master's degree in social work. She recently graduated from a program at the University of Illinois. Although she was able to get through her undergraduate years without much debt, she spread out her graduate studies over 3 years as she was raising her family of three kids.

She had one graduate assistantship, but she had to pay for the rest with loans. To compound this problem, her husband, another University of Illinois graduate student in education, also has student loans. Together, Mabinty and her husband, now that they have completed their degrees, have a debt of $150,000. One wants be a social worker and the other wants to be a teacher.

Now she worries about how her family is going to be able to cope, with debt three times the annual salary she might receive as a social worker. The irony is even as a college degree becomes harder to afford for the middle class, it is more important than ever that people get educated, trained, and skilled for better jobs. Only college-educated workers have had wage gains in the past 30 years. If you don't go the college route, your chances of success are diminished dramatically. That is why we want to address these serious issues.

This bill I am talking about, the one we are going to introduce tomorrow, will give students with college student loan debt who are current on their loans an opportunity to refinance.

I talked to Mabinty and other students. It meant for her that her interest rate would come down from 6.8 percent to 3.8 percent. If you have ever gone out to get a mortgage or you know somebody who did, they will explain to you that 3 percent of your interest rate is a big deal. If you can get your interest rate reduced by 3 percent, your chances of paying off the principal are going to be a lot better.

This bill I have cosponsored with Elizabeth Warren, Jack Reed, and others is called the Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act. It will help millions of current borrowers refinance their Federal or private student loans into these lower Federal interest rates. Those with Federal loans can refinance into lower rates, the same rates available to students who took out new loans this year.

Under the Warren bill, those with private loans--many of whom have sky-high interest rates and are facing collection agencies beating up on them--can refinance with Federal loans with lower rates and strong consumer protection. Refinancing, incidentally, is fully paid for. This is a point I want to make, because this is where we lose the other side of the aisle. This is where we can't find bipartisan cosponsorship for refinancing college loans.

Here is how we pay for it.

I ask for 2 additional minutes.

Most of us have heard the name Warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest men in America. He raised the question a few years ago: Why, in America, is my income tax rate as a multimillionaire lower than my secretary's income tax rate? There is an explanation in the Tax Code, but it isn't a very good one. Warren Buffett said I should be paying more than she is paying. So we have come up with something called the Buffet rule, which says if you are in the multimillionaire category, you are going to pay a higher income tax rate than your secretary.

What a radical idea that is. I am just kidding. I think it is reasonable, and that is how we pay for refinancing college loans.

The problem is that we go to the other side of the aisle and say: We want to refinance college loans. It is going to take some money to do it. We will put in the Buffett rule so millionaires pay more in their income taxes. They say: We don't want any part of it. We will not increase taxes on anybody.

Well, by taking that position, they are sticking 44 million Americans with college loan debt at higher interest rates and all the problems they generate.

Which is better, that millionaires pay a little more so working families across America have a fair shot of paying off their college loans or saying we are not going to touch the Tax Code for any reason whatsoever--and isn't it a darn shame for these students and their families.

Well, it is pretty obvious to me what we should be doing.

I met Shiann Poshard last week at Illinois State University. She graduated with a teaching degree and about $30,000 in student debt. She has a job, and she is going to be teaching in public schools in Eureka, IL. Even so, on a first-year teaching salary--with an upcoming wedding, incidentally--her student loan debt will undoubtedly be a burden. If she is allowed to refinance her loan, which she took out at 6.8 percent, she could cut her interest rate almost in half. That will make a big difference.

Tomorrow, when this legislation is introduced, I hope anyone who has a family, where they have borrowed money for college, who has a son or daughter deep in debt and wondering how they are going to get out from under it, contact your Senator or your Congressman and ask them: Are you going to be part of this college student loan refinancing effort?

I hope they will say yes. We need bipartisan support to help these students out of the debt they are facing today.

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent to yield back all time on the pending nomination.

I announce that the Senator from New Jersey, (Mr. Booker) and the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Udall) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker) and the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Udall) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from Louisiana (Ms. Landrieu), and the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Udall) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from Louisiana (Ms. Landrieu), and the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Udall) are necessarily absent.

Madam President, today the Senate will act to make major improvements to our water infrastructure for commercial and recreational navigation while protecting and maintaining many environmental treasures for future generations.

The Water Resources Reform and Development Act--which the House passed 412 to 4--is one of the few bipartisan accomplishments of this Congress. I wish there were more.

Nevertheless, I would like to thank Chairman Barbara Boxer and Senator Vitter of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and Chairman Bill Shuster and Congressman Nick Rahall on the House side for their hard work in getting this bill to us today.

I would also like to thank my Illinois delegation colleagues on both sides of the Capitol and on both sides of the aisle for their assistance in advancing Illinois priorities in this bill.

I am pleased that in the final bill there are many provisions that will benefit our home State.

It was just a little over a year ago that we dealt with a major drought in the Midwest that caused record low water levels on the Mississippi River and threatened to disrupt the crucial transport of millions of dollars in goods and commodities on the river.

After the initial threat had passed, thanks to better-than-expected rainfall and quick action by the Army Corps of Engineers at the behest of Congress, Representative Bill Enyart and I introduced the Mississippi River Navigation Sustainment Act. The major provisions of this measure are included in the bill we will pass today.

These provisions will improve water level and river forecasting abilities along the Mississippi and give the Corps greater flexibility to respond to low water events that threaten navigation. The bill also authorizes the Corps to conduct, for the first time, a study of the entire Mississippi River Basin--which spans 40 percent of the continental United States--to determine how we can better manage the system during extreme weather. Finally, we create an environmental management program for the middle Mississippi--recognizing the importance of preserving and restoring fish and wildlife habitats while undertaking important navigation improvements.

River commerce in America's heartland depends on the system of locks and dams on the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers.

I was pleased to work with my colleagues in the 2007 reauthorization of the Water Resources Development Act to authorize modernization and expansion of the locks on these important Illinois waterways.

These improvements make commerce more efficient and guard against catastrophic failures of current locks and dams as most of them reach 80 or so years old. At the same time, with current project delivery schedules and the tight Federal budget, these improvements are not expected to be realized until 2090 by some estimates.

With that in mind, Senator Mark Kirk and I, along with our colleagues Representatives Cheri Bustos and Rodney Davis in the House, introduced the Water Infrastructure Now Public Private Partnership Act or WIN-P3. A version of our proposal is included in the final conference report.

It includes a pilot program that would decentralize project planning, design, and construction from the Corps and provide an opportunity for private financing to come to the table. We are hopeful that it will speed project delivery of nationally significant water infrastructure projects like the locks and dams on the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers.

Along with the economic and recreational benefits of the Mississippi River comes the annual threat of devastating floods for many Illinois communities.

In Illinois' Metro East region the community has stepped up to improve flood protection after their levees were decertified. They have taxed themselves to help pay for this improved protection and have endured a long and often frustrating partnership with the Army Corps.

My hope is that the provisions we secured in this bill will go a long way to improving their situation.

The bill would combine several separately authorized levee projects into one. That means that the money Congress appropriates for these projects will be more flexible and can be used where it is most needed.

Additionally, the bill would allow the Metro East levee projects to qualify for work-in-kind credit with the Army Corps. This will help make the work the locals are doing go farther towards the completion of the final levels of protection.

The conference report will also allow much needed restoration of the Chicago shoreline along Lake Michigan to continue. The project was facing delay as it got closer to hitting its original authorization cap. This bill increased that authorization.

I would like to thank again all those who worked on this bill. I look forward to this bipartisan accomplishment being soon signed into law by President Obama.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, yesterday I was visited by several hospitals from Chicago. Mount Sinai is an amazing hospital. It originally--you can tell by its name--was founded by Jewish families living in a section of Chicago. The families have moved on. The remaining population is largely African American and Hispanic. It is a very poor neighborhood. It is a violence-ridden neighborhood. But in an amazing show of magnanimity and charity, many of the Jewish families whose ancestors and predecessors predated them and founded this hospital continue to support Mount Sinai. It is a beacon of quality medical care in one of the toughest, meanest neighborhoods in that great city.

They came to speak yesterday, to meet with me. They just merged with another extraordinary hospital, Holy Cross Hospital in Marquette Park. I have a special affection for this hospital because for decades it was run by the Sisters of St. Casimir, a Lithuanian Catholic order of nuns who devoted their lives first to the Lithuanian population that lived in that neighborhood and then, after that population left, to those who came after them, many of them very poor people.

Mount Sinai and Holy Cross merged, and between the two of them, I can't think of better examples of hospitals with a mission to help the poorest people and to make certain they have care that all of us would like to have for our families. They came yesterday to talk to me about the Affordable Care Act.

There are so many speeches on the floor about the Affordable Care Act. Most of them from the other side of the aisle are entirely negative. But there are some things about the Affordable Care Act which were brought to my attention from these two intercity hospitals which I think we should all look at carefully.

First, they are telling me that at these hospitals more people are showing up and paying. In days gone by, many of those who came in for services were charity cases. The cost of their service was passed on to everyone else. Now, under the Affordable Care Act, many of these lower- income families have health insurance for the first time in their lives.

I have met some of these families, and I know what it means to them. It was several years ago when I was approached by the chairman of the Cook County board, Toni Preckwinkle, the president, and we asked for a waiver from the Obama administration to enroll families in Cook County in the Medicaid portion of the Affordable Care Act before it actually went into effect.

We were given that waiver. We now have 100,000 individuals in Cook County--low-income individuals--who have Medicaid protection.

This Medicaid protection has allowed them to have quality health insurance for the first time in their lives, in many cases, and also it means when they present themselves for care in hospitals, they are paying. They are paying through the Medicaid program rather than coming in as charity cases.

What we are finding as well is that as more and more Americans have the option of health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, the percentage of Americans who are uninsured has gone down. The share of adults without health insurance declined to 13.4 percent last month from 15.6 percent just a few months before. It is an indication of more and more people in America having the peace of mind that comes with health insurance coverage.

I see the Senator from Kentucky is here, and I know he reserved the floor this morning, and I don't want to take his time.

I also want to make the point as well that as we are bringing in more cost savings in health care through the Affordable Care Act, we are seeing the overall increase in health care costs starting to decline and slow down. That is what we were shooting for--more and more accessibility in coverage, more affordability for those who have that coverage and the overall cost in health care systems starting to come down. It is an experiment which is starting to show good results.

Let me add that as proud as I am to have supported this law, it is not perfect. There are things we need to do to improve it and to refine it. We should do those on a bipartisan basis. That is what we are waiting for.

The House of Representatives has now voted--I believe the number is 50 times--to repeal the Affordable Care Act. I hope they have gotten it out of their system and now will sit down with us and work on a bipartisan basis to make it a better law. We can do that and we should do it together.

So I commend this effort to both sides of the aisle--in the Senate as well as in the House--and I hope that we can achieve something that will make a difference.

I would like to close by mentioning two of my constituents in Illinois before I turn the floor over to the Senator from Kentucky.

Philosophy Walker is a 28-year-old graduate student in biblical studies at the University of Chicago. Her husband Adam is 31 years old and a part-time youth minister. Philosophy's school provides health insurance, but it is $900 per month for her and her husband. That would require them to take out additional student loans to pay their health insurance while they are in school.

Before moving to Chicago, they were paying $700 per month for health insurance through COBRA, which is an option for those who have lost health insurance--but an expensive one. The $700 payment depleted their savings because her husband struggled to find a full-time job. Going without health insurance wasn't an option because Philosophy Walker has some severe allergy problems.

Last November they signed up through the Affordable Care Act exchange and purchased a plan comparable to the COBRA coverage that had cost them $700 a month, but the plan also included dental insurance, which they never had before.

Philosophy and her husband Adam, under this Affordable Care Act plan, pay $200 a month. It went from $700 to $200. Philosophy also receives her monthly allergy medication for free, rather than the previous $10 monthly copay.

If we listen to some of the stories on the floor of the Senate, you would never believe this story, but it is true.

I wish also to talk about Laurel Tyler, who runs a small business with her husband in Illinois. Because they have two employees and one of the children of one of their employees has asthma, the policies they were sold in the past were extremely expensive.

Because of the Affordable Care Act and the Illinois marketplace, Laurel's business is going to save 20 percent on health care costs, and the 22-year-old son with asthma can stay on the employee's plan. That, to me, is a success story.

Let's build on that success. Let's work together to make this law even stronger.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from Missouri (Mrs. McCaskill) and the Senator from New Hampshire (Mrs. Shaheen) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from New Hampshire (Mrs. Shaheen) is necessarily absent.

I would be happy to yield.

Madam President, I am honored to represent the 12.5 million people living in the State of Illinois, and it is a special honor to represent 745,000 veterans who live in my State. These men and women have served their country honorably. Many of them are leading great lives and making great contributions to our State. Some are struggling, returning from war with wounds--visible and invisible.

I came to speak to the issue involving the so-called VA scandal at the Arizona Hospital. What I have been told is troubling. What I have been told is that there were secret waiting lists of veterans who were being unnecessarily delayed when they needed critical medical care. The allegations suggest that some of them may have died while on the waiting list. That is as cruel an allegation as anyone could make about anybody and particularly cruel when it applies to our veterans.

We are trying to investigate this, as we should. The President sent his Deputy Chief Rob Nabors, a person I know, to Arizona today, but we are not going to stop with that. We are going to do everything we can to make sure every veterans facility across America is serving our veterans in a timely and professional way. That includes, of course, those in the State of Illinois.

Tomorrow I will be meeting with General Shinseki in my office. He is the head of the Veterans' Administration. We are going to focus on Illinois, because in Illinois we have five VA medical centers, 30 outpatient clinics, and 11 veterans centers. I want to make certain there are no secret waiting lists at any of those facilities, and I want to make certain we are doing everything in our power to serve our veterans in a timely professional way.

We know the stories--the stories that have come out of these wars we are concluding now. The war in Afghanistan is winding down to a close. Iraq was over just a few months, maybe 1 year ago, but despite the end of these wars, it is not the end of the war for many veterans. They come home with needs--serious needs: post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, amputations, serious problems that will haunt them for some time.

We promised these men and women, if they would volunteer to serve our Nation, if they were willing to serve and even die for our Nation, we would never quit on them; that when they came home, we would stand by them.

We passed a GI bill on the floor of the Senate several years ago. Jim Webb was the Senator from Virginia, a Marine Corps veteran himself of the Vietnam war. He brought in a modern GI bill for those men and women currently serving, and it passed overwhelmingly with both political parties supporting it, as they should. In a place where we don't agree on much, we sure agreed on that. When it comes to veterans and the GI bill, we stood together. We have to do it again on a bipartisan basis.

I read the comments from President Obama this morning. I thought they were unsparing in terms of his personal concern over what has been reported.

I know we all honor the contribution made to America by General Shinseki, a disabled veteran himself from the Vietnam war. He is an extraordinarily good man. The question is whether he can fix this problem if one exists.

I don't know about the Arizona situation. We will wait until those facts come together. But this much I do know: Our Veterans' Administration has been overwhelmed by disability claims coming in at rates that surpass this country's experience in any previous war. Almost half, almost 50 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are filing for disability benefits when they come home.

The backlog at the VA is 300,000 cases--applications for disability. They have been pending for more than 125 days--4 months. Some have been in the process for more than 1 year. It is an improvement--300,000 from 611,000, which was the case last year--but not good enough.

Illinois has cut its backlog in half as well. But when I read some of the delay times in making a decision at the VA, we will understand why we find this still unacceptable.

Seven years ago the average processing time for an Illinois veteran claim was 1 year, maybe 18 months. Appeals sometimes took 2 years. Today veterans tell us the claim will easily take 2 years to process, maybe longer, and an appeal may take 3 or 4 years. Compared to the numbers of 7 years ago, the numbers are much worse today. I understand there are more veterans who are applying, but it just means we need to put the resources in place to serve this surge of veterans looking for help.

The veterans who call my office are just asking for updates and accurate information about the claims and medical care. They want to know if somebody--anybody--at the VA is taking a look at their application. They get conflicting information from the VA.

Sometimes the VA calls them back and says: You have to send such and such a document.

The veteran says: I have already sent it.

That kind of frustration for someone who is coping with illness or problems is unacceptable, and it is certainly unacceptable when it comes to our veterans.

Even when claims are processed, there are cases of mistaken identity. A bad address leads to canceled benefits and checks, and it takes months to fix it. I am trying to help. As chair of the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, I put $3.6 million in the Defense Department to speed up the program that allows servicemembers' records to be transferred to the VA electronically so we can have at least a quicker response from the VA. I directed the DOD inspector general in my bill to work with the VA inspector general to streamline the transfer of records between the Departments.

Another way we tried to step up support for veterans is by creating the Caregiver Program at the Veterans' Administration. I will be the first to tell you this was not my idea. It was the idea of Senator Hillary Clinton of New York. She used to sit back there, and she came up with an idea: If members of a disabled veteran's family will stay home with them and help them get through, we ought to help those members of the family. She called it

the caregivers act. It didn't pass while she was here, but when she left I liked it enough to call her and say to the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton: Do you mind if I steal your idea and try to pass it? She invited me to be her guest, and I did. With the support of Senator Danny Akaka, Senator Patty Murray, and others, we made the caregivers act the law of the land, and now across America hundreds of spouses and parents who care for disabled veterans are getting a helping hand. We provide them medical training, nurses training so they can take care of their veteran. We give them respite care of up to 2 weeks a year so they can have some time off, a vacation to recharge their batteries. If they have a financial hardship, we provide a modest amount of money to help them get by. It is the right thing to do. These veterans get to stay home with families who love them. That is where they want to be. From our point of view as a government, just to put it down to dollars and cents, it is a lot cheaper when they stay home. So we do well and the veterans do well. That is a great outcome.

We have to expand the reach of caregivers assistance through the VA so at every veterans center there is a source of information to tell that veteran and the veteran's family: The Caregiver Program is there if you want to stay home. We want to help you stay home and be healthy as you do.

I think that is a good thing to offer the veterans. The ones I have met, there are some amazing stories in Chicago that truly warm your heart to know that those veterans, after what they have been through, can stay home with their families and be there with the people they love and who love them too.

There is another area I wish to mention. Our committee has pushed the Veterans' Administration to focus on the sustainability of orthotics and prosthetics. We are worried about the professional workforce that deals with these important parts of restoring a veteran's life.

Twenty percent of the orthotics and prosthetics workforce, about 7,000 clinicians, will retire over the next 5 years. We have never needed these specialists more than we need them today: 1,715 servicemembers lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many have lost multiple limbs. The United States has 5 quadruple amputees and 40 triple amputees from these wars. The VA serves 40,000 people with limb loss every year. That is why I am focused on this--to get the professionals in the orthotics and prosthetics fields of medicine to be trained and ready to help these veterans in the years to come while others are retiring.

There are 745,000 veterans in my State, and not a single one of them should be deceived about what they can receive for their service nor delayed when it comes to seeing a doctor or having their claims processed. Not one of them should wait 2 years before they start getting disability benefits. We have 5 VA Medical Centers, 30 outpatient clinics, and 11 Veterans Centers across Illinois, and we have to be there to serve them in a timely way.

None of these facilities has the right to mislead or lie to the veterans about what doctors they can see or what services they can receive. The Senate just added $5 million to the budget of the inspector general at the Veterans Administration, and the Inspector General is now investigating 26 facilities.

One of the toughest votes that a Member of Congress is called on to cast is whether we should go to war. It has happened a few times in my career. You don't sleep well the night before, wondering how you are going to vote, and knowing that at the end of the day, even if this is a just and necessary war, innocent people will die, including innocent Americans. What I have come to learn over the years is that it is not just a matter of that simple decision to go to war, but it is the cost of war--the cost in human lives. Over 4,000 died in the war in Iraq, and over 2,000 have died in the war in Afghanistan. There are thousands and thousands who come home with injuries, and, of course, there are the expenses and budget costs that come along with each and every one these conflicts.

It really helps when you make these decisions and reflect on them to also be aware and honest about the real cost of war. The real cost of war in human life and human suffering can't be calculated, but we did make a promise that those who would stand for our country in those wars would have our help when they came home.

The scandal that has been reported in Arizona--the problems at the VA centers--is unacceptable in a Nation as great as America, and we owe it to these veterans and their families to stand by them. I promise I will, not just for veterans facilities in Illinois, which is my first priority, but for those across the United States.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I thank my colleague from Michigan for her statement because it raises a theme which we really need to focus on in the Senate.

I went back to Illinois this last weekend, traveling around, as I have over the last several months. After a person has been in this world of politics for a while, it doesn't take long to sit down with most gatherings and crowds and kind of test out ideas. People either fold their arms and look at the ceiling and pray you stop talking or they start getting on the edge of their chair and listening. What I have found over the last several weeks is that everywhere I go, everywhere in the State--downstate small towns, medium-sized cities, and the city of Chicago--there is one issue that has everybody sitting up and listening. The issue is student loans.

We wonder why that issue would have so many people interested. It is because 34 million Americans are paying back student loans now. In the State of Illinois, there are 1.7 million people paying back student loans--1.7 million. Fifteen percent of our population is paying back student loans. There is more student loan debt in America today than credit card debt.

Some of the loans these students are taking out to go to school are outrageous. There is no other way to describe it. These young people, 19 or 20 years old, are sitting there at the desk at the college as someone is shoving a piece of paper toward them for them to sign saying: Well, if you sign up here for your loans, you can start classes on Monday. That young man or woman, who has been told since they were just a little kid to go to college, go to college, go to college, signs on and heads to class. At the end of the day those students end up $20,000 in debt, $30,000 in debt, and more--dramatically more. Many of them don't have a clue about the indebtedness they are getting into to go to school. Some of them don't know they are being lured into these for-profit colleges and universities. Sadly, too many of them are worthless. Students are signing up for these for-profit colleges and universities thinking they are real schools, thinking it is just like the University of Wisconsin, just like the University of Illinois. No, it isn't. It is a business, and it is a business that makes its money off of kiting the cost of tuition for students and, if they can stick around to finish, handing them a worthless diploma. How does a student know this? Well, the honest answer is they don't until it is too late.

Hannah Moore has been at my press conferences twice. She went to one of these awful for-profit schools and ended up with $120,000 in debt for a bachelor's degree and a worthless diploma. She couldn't get a job. Her debt is now closer to $150,000. She can't pay it. Here she is barely 30 years old with over $100,000 in debt for a worthless diploma. That is the extreme, but for 10 percent of the students graduating from high school in America today,

those are the schools they go to--for-profit colleges and universities.

Which are the biggies? The University of Phoenix, No. 1; DeVry University from Illinois, No. 2; and Kaplan University, which used to own the Washington Post. These are the big ones.

Remember three numbers when you think about the for-profit colleges and universities: 10 percent of high school students go to these schools. These schools get 20 percent of the Federal aid to education because their tuition is so outrageously high--20 percent--over $30 billion a year going to this industry. And here is the kicker: 46 percent of all student loan defaults are students at for-profit colleges and universities. What does that tell us? They charge too much, the educations are not worth it, and the students can't get a job.

That is the most extreme example, but let's talk about the rest of the world: 97 percent of students going to other colleges and universities. They are running up debt at record numbers, at a record pace. Unfortunately, many of those student loan debts lure in their parents and sometimes grandparents to help them along, and the student debt grows and grows. Sadly, if they make the big mistake of going not to a for-profit school but one of the regular schools and sign up for private loans, they are in for a beating, and they don't know it. They are young students. How could they possibly know what they are signing up for--a school that would lure them into a private loan to go to college and then subject them to the harshest, toughest, meanest, most unrelenting collection agency you have ever seen coming after these students on their student loans. That is the world we live in, and that is a world that needs to change.

When I go home and talk to people about it, they are either directly personally affected by it, their family is affected by student debt, or they worry that their sons and daughters who may want to have a chance at higher education will get sucked into this same scam. Well, help can be on the way.

I have joined with two of my colleagues, Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. We have a package of three bills that would give students from middle-income families, working families across America, a fair shot at an affordable higher education. My bill, the student borrower bill of rights, says the school has an obligation to tell students to stick with the government loan because it is a lower interest rate and not lure students into a private loan. Jack Reed has a bill which stipulates that if schools keep sinking students deeper in debt and they can't get out of it, eventually the school has to accept financial responsibility. That will get their attention. But the big bill of the three comes from Elizabeth Warren--and we are joining her--to refinance college debt at lower interest rates, bring them down from 7, 8, 9, 10 percent to 3.8 percent. Does it make a difference? Anybody who has ever had a home mortgage will say it does. Lowering that interest rate to 3.8 percent will finally allow some of these families and students to start paying off the principal on the student loan and put it behind them. Consolidate the loans at lower interest rates is what our bill says.

Oh, Senator, great idea. Who is going to pay for this?

I will tell my colleagues exactly how we pay for it--exactly. Does the name Warren Buffett ring a bell? He is one of the richest men in America. He has done very well for himself, the ``Seer of Omaha,'' Berkshire Hathaway. He came to Congress a few years ago and said: Something is wrong with the Tax Code.

Do we know what is wrong with it? Warren Buffett is paying a lower income tax rate than his secretary.

Why, he said, is my secretary, who makes dramatically less money than I do, paying a higher income tax rate than I am?

The reason is pretty clear: Most of his income comes from capital gains, and that is lower than the regular income tax rate.

So Warren Buffett said: We ought to have a rule that says if you are a millionaire in America, you are going to pay at least as much as the people who work for you pay in taxes--the Buffett rule. The Buffett rule generates enough money in the Tax Code by imposing that tax burden on millionaires to refinance college loans across America. Is it worth it? You bet it is, and I will tell my colleagues why. I don't begrudge millionaires their wealth if they have come by it legally, and I believe Mr. Buffett has. But they have an obligation to this great country that set the stage for their success, and that obligation is to be a good citizen, pay their taxes. That is what Mr. Buffett has suggested. He is willing to accept that responsibility.

And if we can refinance student loans, it doesn't just bring relief to these families, it does something else. Hannah Moore is living in her parents' basement with $148,000 in student loan debt and she is barely 30 years old. The thought of borrowing more money to go to a real college is out of the question. The thought of living in her own apartment is out of the question. The thought of buying a car? No way. For some young couples even having children is out of the question because of student debt. Do we see that when we bring this debt under control, we unleash a positive growing force in our economy where these young people can get back and participate--buy homes, buy cars, become full-fledged members of the economy again. So it not only brings relief to families and gives them a fair shot at a college education they can afford, it also can help our economy overall.

We don't have a single cosponsor from the other side of the aisle yet on this--not one. They are scared of the Buffett rule. The idea that millionaires might have to pay higher taxes scares them away. If they have a different pay-for, come on down. Let's hear the ideas. Let's actually have a dialogue on the Senate floor. How about that. That would be historic. And we could talk about solving a problem in America such as this runaway college debt and these awful for-profit colleges and universities.

We need to work together. What we have before us is the tax extender bill and a bill which involves a lot of different sections of the Tax Code. This bill is not paid for--by and large not paid for. Some of us believe that unemployment compensation, which was cut off for millions of Americans over the last several months, should be there to help them get back on their feet. When we suggest it to our Republican friends, they say: No, no, you have to either raise taxes, which we will oppose, or cut spending to pay for unemployment.

But when it comes to tax cuts for businesses, good or bad, they look the other way. They do not think that has to be paid for. I think helping unemployed Americans get back on their feet, find a job, take care of their families, is central to putting this economy on a glidepath to the future.

I hope as we measure the issues we can debate here on the floor of the Senate, we will start with those issues that interest the people we represent and that affect their lives and give working families a fighting chance.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from Michigan (Mr. Levin), the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Manchin), the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Rockefeller), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) are necessarily absent.