College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007

COLLEGE OPPORTUNITY AND AFFORDABILITY ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - February 07, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Chairman, I congratulate Chairman Hinojosa, Chairman Miller, Mr. Keller and Mr. McKeon for their excellent work on this bill.

In the global economic competition, the difference between winning and losing is having skilled workers or not having skilled workers. This bill takes a major step forward in making sure that we have skilled workers, that America puts its best team on the field at all times.

There are two specific areas I commend the leadership of the committee for including in this bill. The first has to do with autistic men and women. A lot of autistic children make great strides in their lives and they become very able, very empowered people. But then they graduate from high school, and they age out of their education, and the supportive, intensive learning environment that they need is very often no longer there.

This bill has provisions to help establish residential, high-quality, post-secondary programs for autistic men and for autistic women.

This bill says to the men and women who wear the military uniform of our country that when they come back to campus, they will be welcome. An anomaly in the existing law says that a young man or a young woman who is deployed and goes overseas and fights for our country, when he or she comes back, they may be treated as a returning student, has had a gap in their student life, which means they go to the back of the list for enrollment in special courses, for financial aid and for many other purposes. This bill corrects that and recognizes that when a young man or woman serves, they should be rewarded. We should all support this bill on a bipartisan basis.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source