Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act of 2013
Floor Speech
Mr. KLINE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and concur in the Senate amendment to the bill (H.R. 1911) to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to establish interest rates for new loans made on or after July 1, 2013, to direct the Secretary of Education to convene the Advisory Committee on Improving Postsecondary Education Data to conduct a study on improvements to postsecondary education transparency at the Federal level, and for other purposes.
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Mr. KLINE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.
I rise today in strong support of the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act, also known as the Smarter Solutions for Students Act.
After many weeks of delay, I'm pleased we finally have a bipartisan agreement to address the student loan interest rate problem. My colleagues and I have been fighting for months for a long-term, market-based solution that will serve students and taxpayers, and the legislation before us today will do just that.
As you can see in this chart, much like the Smarter Solutions for Students Act approved by the House back in May, the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act will tie student loan interest rates to the market, taking away the uncertainty that comes with allowing Congress to arbitrarily set rates.
Similarly, both bills provide a permanent fix to the interest rate problem, granting students the certainty they need to make smart, fiscally responsible investments in their education.
And most importantly, this legislation, like its predecessor, doesn't unfairly penalize taxpayers. Unlike some half-baked proposals that would put taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars to pay for artificially low student loan interest rates, both the House-passed Smarter Solutions for Students Act and the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act will generate a small amount of savings over 10 years.
Reports confirm the similarities between the House bill and its Senate companion. MSNBC has said the House bill is ``very similar'' to the Senate proposal. The Minneapolis Star Tribune recently noted the Senate compromise ``closely resembles'' the House-passed Smarter Solutions for Students Act, and the Associated Press called the differences between the two proposals ``relatively small.''
While I'm happy with the legislation we will consider today, I'm disappointed it took us so long to get to this point. Students and their families got roped into an all-too-tumultuous debate and were forced to deal with the fallout when Congress was unable to reach an agreement to prevent subsidized Stafford loan interest rates from doubling on July 1.
By getting politicians out of the business of setting student loan interest rates, the measure we consider today will protect students from future uncertainty. I applaud my colleagues on the other side of the aisle for finally recognizing this long-term, market-based proposal for what it is: a win for students and taxpayers.
Mr. Speaker, I strongly urge my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 1911.
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Mr. KLINE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
It's always interesting to listen to the debate here on the floor. No matter how hard we try to use the word ``bipartisan,'' we get into these partisan squabbles: the Republican bill was bad and this bill is good, and that bill is--look, we needed to change the status quo, and that's always hard to do.
We had some pretty simple goals here that we were trying to reach. We wanted to get out of the partisan political squabble that was occurring in this city every year as we tried to figure out, through some alchemy, what the student loan interest rate ought to be. The answer has been in front of us for a long time: the market is the best determiner of that.
So we wanted to put together legislation that would get us out of this political squabble, let the market do this in a way that was fair to students and fair to taxpayers. Let the market do it based on the 10-year Treasury, which is the best indicator of what it costs the Federal Government to borrow money; do it so that it was as close to budget neutral as we could get it.
The President of the United States had a proposal that did those things. At the end of 10 years, I think the President's budget saved the taxpayer about $3 billion. The House bill that we've been discussing saved the taxpayers about $3.5 billion, And this bipartisan Senate bill, just under $1 billion saved. That's budget neutral in this city, in a 10-year window, from the Congressional Budget Office. We're trying to get that.
It was a bizarre circumstance, Mr. Speaker, that I and House Republicans were working with the White House and the Department of Education trying to convince our Senate colleagues, Senate Democratic leadership that the answer was there in front of them, all they had to do was pick it up and pass it. We can get it done in this House. We can answer the questions of parents and students and put some certainty in this. I am very, very pleased that the Senate was able to put together that bipartisan--
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Mr. KLINE. I thank the gentleman.
Reclaiming my time, I will pick up on that note because we could not have done this without the hard work of some really instrumental people.
Certainly, I'd like to take a moment to recognize and thank the committee staff, as my colleague has done, for their hard work on this important issue, both sides of the aisle.
First, I would like to thank the majority staff director, Juliane Sullivan; our education policy director, James Bergeron; and professional staff member Brian Melnyk; and of course Amy Jones, sitting next to me here today, who started working to solve this problem more than a year ago. That's the frustrating thing here, Mr. Speaker. This problem didn't arise in April or May. We've known for more than a year, with certainty, that we had to address this issue. So I thank Amy for her passion in all higher education work. I know she's just resting up so that we can start into reauthorization of the Higher Education Act as we go forward.
Certainly I'd like to thank Virginia Foxx, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training, who helped craft the Smarter Solutions for Students Act. Again, I would remind my colleagues, this was a bipartisan bill. It came out of the committee bipartisan, came off the floor with a bipartisan vote, and Ms. Foxx deserves a lot of credit for her hard work.
In closing, I remind my colleagues, the legislation before us today is a victory for students, families, and taxpayers. It deserves our robust support.
I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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