Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I stand to join in with the voices we have already heard from, including Senator Murphy of Connecticut and Senator Portman of Ohio--bipartisan, of course--who have stood in support of the unanimous consent request of Senator Baldwin, blocked by the opposing party, that we move forward with reauthorizing the Perkins Loan Program.

The voice that I think is so often missing from the deliberations in the Senate is the voice we just heard brought forward by Senator Murphy of Connecticut, the voice of our constituents--the constituents who connect with us when we are home in our States; the constituents who reach out to us by letter and by email. I just wanted to add the voices of my constituents from the State of Delaware.

Apparently, our colleagues have failed to hear from thousands--even hundreds of thousands--of our home State constituents who rely on Federal Perkins loans. This program is a critical lifeline for students across the country who would be well on their way to a college degree if it weren't for the skyrocketing, unsustainable costs of higher education. I think Congress's failure to reauthorize the Perkins Loan Program is already having a negative impact on students and on households across our country. We can see the real-world impact in our home States if we will but listen to our constituents.

Let me give two examples of Delawareans who have recently reached out to me.

Frank, an incoming University of Delaware student, was counting on the Perkins Loan Program to help cover a gap in affording the cost of his higher education. Now that those funds are no longer available, now that the Perkins loans have expired, his family is struggling to figure out how they will pay for his education.

There is also Taylor, a Delawarean, already a college student, who had signed up for a promising new course of study because of a Perkins loan that would make the additional cost possible. Without this funding moving forward, future students like Taylor will also have to turn to private loans--sometimes less accessible, sometimes less affordable--to fill that gap. Frank and Taylor's stories are just a few examples of many that I have received in my office from constituents or conversations I have had at home in Delaware.

When I am with working Delawareans, there is no topic raised more frequently amongst those in my age bracket of how they can afford to send their kids to college. Just the other night, standing around on the sideline of a soccer game, I heard a whole group talking about how can we possibly afford the skyrocketing expenses of higher education.

So the question we are here today to address isn't the great big question of how can we make college affordable, it is just a simple question of how can we extend the Perkins Loan Program. I am proud to join with my colleagues in calling for a permanent extension of this program. In my State of Delaware, nearly 2,000 Delawareans last year received Perkins loans from 2013 to 2014. Those are 2,000 of my constituents who had the chance to go to college, invest in their education, improve their lives for the better, and that is in just 1 year of the program.

In the 50 years since Perkins was created, the program has awarded nearly $30 billion through 26 million loans across this entire country. Those are big, abstract numbers, but for my colleagues who remain undecided on whether to support the extension, I urge them to think about the Franks, the Taylors, their constituents, and folks from towns and cities, big and small, all across this country. They are not asking for a free education. The average Perkins loan is just $2,000. It is not even a rounding error in the scope of the total Federal budget that we fight over here week in and week out, but that is an amount that one student, one family can singlehandedly determine--for an aspiring teacher or a business owner or an inventor or someone who just wants to advance themselves through education--whether they can continue their steady forward progress.

This extension alone is not the Higher Education Act reauthorization many of us have been calling for; it is not the substantial education investment many of us know would be a huge boost to our country, its competitiveness, and our constituents' well-being; it is not a perfect solution to the Delawareans I talk to every day who wonder how they can afford college; it is an important start. So let's come together and act. Even the House of Representatives, of all places, has acted on a bipartisan basis to extend the Perkins Loan Program. We can and should do the same.

I thank my colleagues for their work on this critical issue, and I urge this Chamber to come together to approve an extension of the Federal Perkins Loan Program without delay.

Thank you. I yield the floor.

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