Conference Report on H.R. 4137, Higher Education Opportunity Act
Floor Speech
CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 4137, HIGHER EDUCATION OPPORTUNITY ACT -- (House of Representatives - July 31, 2008)
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Mr. EMANUEL. When I was campaigning, I met a firefighter, Pat Kehoe, who told me about the night before he and his wife were trying to fill out the form for their only child to go to college. He talked about it was 108 questions, how complicated it was.
So I went and personally checked it. Go to page 8 and complete the columns on the left of worksheets A, B, and C. Enter the student, and spouse, totals in questions 44, 45, and 46 respectively.
Worksheet B, first of 12 items: Payments to tax-deferred pension and savings plans, including, but not limited to, amounts reported on the W-2 form in boxes 12a through 12d, codes D, E, F, G, H, and S.
If you can fill this out, forget college; go to graduate school. This is the most complicated form out there, for kids just trying to go to college.
This new legislation is going to take that 108 questions, those eight pages, take it down to two pages, 44 questions, and take it from bureaucratize language down to consumer-friendly language.
It's high time that parents who were trying to make sure that their kids had a shot at the American Dream don't have the government stepping in the way and preventing that.
I want to thank the chairman.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.
Mr. EMANUEL. This legislation goes from protecting colleges to empowering college students, and this Congress will be remembered because of the chairman being the most friendly to college students and those families, for going to $20 billion in additional aid to kids to go to college, for the GI Bill which is new, and now this legislation.
And I thank the chairman for his work, as well as the ranking member, for making sure that families across America who are trying to send their kids to college no longer have to jump through hoops every year filling out a form that was more friendly to the bureaucracy than it was to their family and their children.
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