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Floor Speech

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Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, what a great time of the year-- county fairs, State fairs. The weather is changing. People are getting outside more. It is not quite as hot in most places. Parents have smiles on their faces because their kids are going back to school. College is starting up.

That is what I want to talk about today. Our college campuses are ramping up. There are a lot of good things going on with that. A lot of young people are for the first time going to college, going out for the first time in their lives and making their own decisions, away from home for the first time, putting their budgets together, having to go by their own time with nobody to wake them up, having to wash their own clothes, having to do things they have never had to do before. For the first time in their lives, they are responsible for themselves 24 hours a day.

I did that for 40 years coaching college football, coaching high school football. It was amazing how many young men and women whom I worked with never saw the Sun come up in their lives. If they played for me, they got to see the Sun come up. We got up early and stayed late.

So it is an important time for all of our young adults in college, K- 12--very important--for our high school, elementary, and junior high school kids. For many, many years, it has been an important part of all of our lives in the United States of America, and it has been one point that has made us better than everybody across the world in terms of education. We educate our young people from K-12. Everybody has an opportunity to go to college for an extended education. It is a great opportunity. It is fun to watch. I had a chance to watch a lot of young people have some great opportunities and make a lot of things out of themselves.

I used to tell my players when I coached that you are living in the greatest country on the face of the Earth. If you are born in this country, you hit the lottery. A lot of people don't understand that. If you go to some of these other countries, you will figure it out real quick. But the United States of America, this country, really owes you nothing other than one thing: It owes you an opportunity--an opportunity to do what the heck you want to do or be who you want to be. If you work hard, you might have a chance. A lot of times, you are going to get knocked down. Do you know what this country does? It gives you a chance to get back on your feet and go again. It doesn't owe you one thing other than that. If you take advantage of it, you can achieve it.

For many years, institutions of higher education were great examples of the great American experiment. They were places where free speech was not only allowed but encouraged, and innovation and problem-solving were required for success. Success created some of America's favorite pastimes.

College sports, which have become a piece of our national identity, started a couple of weeks ago. They have immense benefits for young men and women who get involved in sports. But higher education became the envy of the world, as I said earlier. Our colleges and universities produced new research, technologies, and medicines and molded the talent and the talented minds to use these new developments that make our country a better place and make our country No. 1.

But this trend, I hate to say, is changing. Activists have fundamentally shifted higher education to become a vehicle to further their political agenda, and now they are set on forcing American taxpayers to pay for the overpriced indoctrination and taking athletic opportunities away from those who have worked so very hard to train and compete.

Let's start with the pricetag associated with higher education. The cost of attending college has skyrocketed, but these institutions have done little--very little--to ensure their value has increased along with the increase in price, the increase in tuitions. Bloated school administrations continually drive budgets and tuitions up, to the point where a lot of people can't afford to go to school anymore.

President Biden recently decided to throw gasoline on this fire by attempting to use Executive authority to, as he calls it, forgive student loan debt for millions of Americans. His plan will forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for Pell grant recipients who make $125,000 a year or less and $10,000 in student loan debt for all those under the same salary cap.

Think about that. A college-educated person making a six-figure salary would essentially get a $10,000 handout from hard-working Americans, the majority of whom did not go to college themselves and are struggling to provide for their families thanks to soaring inflation driven by our comrades on the left, Democrats' reckless spending in the last 2 years.

Despite the administration's attempt to convince the country that they are focused on fighting inflation, this debt transfer scheme will do exactly the opposite. It is going to make prices higher. In fact, the Penn Wharton budget model projects the total cost of President Biden's loan forgiveness plan and changes to the other loan programs could cost the American people more than $1 trillion.

Folks on both sides of the aisle have rightfully criticized this plan because of its clear and indefensible cost, and I share those concerns with everybody that is against this.

I am also concerned about two additional long-term effects of this decision. One, it does nothing to fix the broken system that led to soaring costs of college in the first place. It will, in fact, make college even more expensive. If we are going to do something, let's fix the problem. We are not fixing the problem. We are just adding to the problem. And, two, it allows students and graduates to avoid the consequences of their own actions, further hindering young people from becoming independent, free thinking, and responsible. The thing about education is learning responsibility, and this does exactly the opposite of teaching responsibility at a level where they need to learn.

All Americans, including those who, like me, chose to take on debt attending college must be responsible for their own actions. Hard- working taxpayers who did not go to college should not have to assume the debt of others because this administration decided to fulfill a campaign promise right before a midterm election.

Further, this degradation of the value of college is just the latest in a decades-long effort by those on the left to fundamentally change higher education and force their agenda on campuses across our country, and it comes right after this administration announced its plan to attack another key part of the American system--athletic competition and the level playing field created by title IX.

I began my career coaching high school a long time ago. But before that, title IX was created in supporting women athletics. I started coaching a few years after title IX was started, and I have seen from the very beginning what title IX has done for women across this country--girls and athletes--and how it has made leaders of young girls and young women who would have never been afforded the opportunity had title IX not passed.

Title IX, to me, is one of the best things this Federal Government has ever done, bar none. It has given the opportunity of a level playing field for young girls to have that opportunity they would have never had. What it did, it said boys and girls have to have the same facilities, coaches, and same athletic budgets, also the same scholarships if they went to a university. Men could not have more than women. And we have seen the explosion of women sports, bar none.

When I was coaching years ago, 3 to 6 percent of the high school girls--3 to 6 percent--played high school athletics. Today, we have close to 60 percent. Why? Because of title IX, because of more sports that title IX afforded and bigger budgets for women athletics. It did a tremendous service to women and girls across this country. I am proud of the progress this country has made and the immense talent that it has brought out because of what title IX has done.

But this anniversary, which was the 50th anniversary in June--think about that, 50th anniversary, how time flies. I am not that old. But the 50th anniversary of title IX was in June. This anniversary comes at a challenging time now for young girls and women in sports. The ability to train and compete fairly is under attack from activists and this current White House. Since 2003, at least 28 biological males have won titles in various women's events around the world. Think about that. Now we are allowing biological boys and biological men to compete against girls and women in sports, and they won 28 titles. How fair is that?

If the current administration and the activists pushing this policy have their way, biological males winning women's sports championships would become the norm. It will be an everyday occurrence. That is not fair. It is not fair for a young girl or woman that has trained all her life in a sport to, at the end of the day, have to compete for a championship against a young boy who says or thinks that he is a woman. What is right about that?

In July, the Department of Education published and proposed a rule to change how title IX is implemented in order to better align with the administration's progressive agenda. These proposed changes would require schools to allow--this is in title IX now--will allow biological males to compete in women's sports.

Last week, I submitted a public comment to Secretary Cardona that clearly and strongly condemns this new proposed rule. Expanding the definition of sex to include gender identity, to identify whoever you want to identity as, will cause lasting damage to the level playing field title IX originally was created for, which was for women. The change to title IX would be a monumental setback for the generations of women who have benefited from the law over the last 50 years.

So what are we going to do now? We are going to go back to square one because somebody wants to change it. The Department should not move forward with this proposal and not change the rule but, instead, work with Congress on legislative action meant to strengthen protections afforded women in the original statute.

As I know from firsthand experience, participating in college athletics is about more than winning and losing. There is a lot more to it. Student athletes learn many important lessons by participating. It sets our country apart from other countries all over the world--like the value of hard work, discipline, commitment, responsibility. Athletes learn how to work together, be loyal to each other, play for a cause, take responsibility for their own actions, learn how to win-- but, more importantly, learn how to lose. Perhaps most importantly, they teach student athletes that free and fair competition allows the best team to win.

That is why I am so strongly opposed to this administration's plans to devalue education and unlevel the playing field in the name of leftwing progress and indoctrination.

These attacks on higher education and women's sports must stop. To best prepare America's young people to be the next generation of leaders our country needs, I am fighting back against these policies, like dismantling title IX and haphazardly forgiving student debt. That encourages young adults to break the rules and ignore their responsibilities.

Instead of making our colleges more expensive and less fair, Congress should be focused on reforms to get to the root of the cause. Universities should be encouraged to cut budgets and lower tuition rates. Students graduating high school should be steered toward career and financial decisions that make sense for them and that they can afford. Everybody doesn't need to go to college.

Lastly, we must reject these ideologies and mobs on the left who don't believe in free speech in the classroom and on our college campuses. Our country cannot thrive without allowing young adults to freely and fairly learn, grow, develop, and create on and off the field. We must protect that fair playing field while encouraging college students to take responsibility for their own actions and financial decisions, something all of us here in Congress should learn to do as well.

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