Interest Rate Reduction Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BASS of New Hampshire. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Illinois for recognizing me.

There's little disagreement between Republicans and Democrats over the need to extend the subsidized interest rates for student loans for at least another year. Student loan debt now in America exceeds $1 trillion which, I believe, is more than the entire Nation's credit card debt. It's a very serious national priority that needs to be addressed, and it should be resolved in a bipartisan fashion.

As you can tell from the tenor of the debate this morning, it has been reduced to the issue of how we are going to come up with the money to pay for this. First of all, I think it's a miracle that we're even debating that because the prior administration in this Congress wouldn't have even brought the subject up of how to pay for it.

At least the Democrats now want to pay for it by raising prices on gasoline through higher taxes on oil companies. And I believe that taxation of oil companies should be on the table in tax reform, not on an education bill.

We have a proposal that would reduce the funding in the prevention and public health fund account, and of course our friends on the other side of the aisle are right on message, on the national message, of tying everything that Republicans want to do to be some sort of a battle against women.

Let me just point out that I believe there's already about $119 million in FY 2011 for the CDC's breast and cervical cancer early detection program. And I know my friend from Illinois will probably enumerate on this even further.

I would point out that the program, or the fund, that the Democrats are trying to protect actually is providing money for early detection, but it's for free spaying and neutering for dogs and cats around the country. This money comes out of the Communities Putting Prevention to Work campaign, and that's receiving money from this Health and Human Services Secretary slush fund.

I would also point out to my friends that this fund has already been reduced in order to pay for the payroll tax reduction, so it's not setting any kind of a precedent.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mrs. BIGGERT. I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman.

Mr. BASS of New Hampshire. I would suggest that a fund that's funded at $17.75 billion for the first 10 years, and then automatically advance-appropriated for $2 billion a year after that, I've never heard of that in the Congress. That means that we are turning over our authority to raise and appropriate money to the tune of $2 billion a year to the Health and Human Services Secretary with no oversight from Congress at all.

I want student loans to remain at their lower rate, and I want to do it in a fiscally responsible fashion; and that's what this bill does.

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