Although today's hearing with the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, had to be postponed due to a blizzard in the Washington, DC area, that hasn't stopped him from making a persuasive case for passing the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act.
In the Washington Post:
Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday urged the Senate to overhaul student lending, asserting that the banking industry has had "a free ride from taxpayers for too long" and that executives with lending giant Sallie Mae have enriched themselves as borrowers rack up college debt.
"Working Americans pay while bankers get rich," Duncan said in a prepared statement. "Sallie Mae executives have paid themselves hundreds of millions of dollars in the last decade while teachers, nurses, and scientists -- the backbone of the new economy -- face crushing debt because of runaway college tuition costs."
In an interview with Huffington Post:
Duncan called the administration's plans to overhaul the student loan program by ending government subsidies for private lenders "a once-in a generation, maybe once-in-a lifetime" opportunity that Congress would be foolish to let slip away.
and in that same article, Chairman Miller said:
"I haven't found one [argument from Sallie Mae's lobbyists] that made sense yet," said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chair of the House Education Committee. "We are now providing 88 percent of all the capital and over the next ten years we can save 85 billion dollars doing it a different way. And that money can be used to enhance the educational opportunities of millions of students in this country. It is a no brainer."
The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (H.R. 3221) passed the House with a bipartisan vote of 253 to 171 on September 17, 2009 and is waiting in the Senate.
