-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. VANCE. Mr. President, I rise today to speak to a particular problem in America's higher education system, a problem borne of unfairness and of mass subsidy from the American taxpayer. It has now metastasized into one of the most corrupt and one of the most politically active and politically hostile organizations in the United States of America, and that is elite colleges.

A lot of us have watched not just since the October 7 attacks on Israel but for over a decade as America's colleges seem less and less interested in education and more and more interested in teaching things like racial hatred and various forms of far-left ideology.

A lot of us ask ourselves: How is this possible? How is it that universities that should be responsive to the public will, responsive to their donors and alumnae, and responsive to their students--how is it that they can go so far, so fast, without any pushback?

The answer, my fellow Americans, is university endowments, which have grown incredibly large on the backs of subsidies from the taxpayers, and they have made these universities completely independent of any political, financial, or other pressure. That is why the university system in this country has gone so insane.

At just three universities--Harvard, MIT, and Penn--the endowments are approaching $100 billion. That is as large as some of the largest hedge funds in America. In fact, Harvard, Penn, Yale--many of our Ivy League institutions and others beyond that--are little more than hedge funds with universities attached to them as pretend.

This must stop. It must stop because it has enabled political insanity. It must stop because it has burdened an entire generation of Americans with over $1 trillion of student debt--student debt relief that many of my friends on the other side would like plumbers in Ohio to pay for. But I think, if the universities have caused the problem, they ought to pay for it, and if they paid for it, if they didn't have these massive endowments subsidized by taxpayers, then maybe they would be a little bit more responsive to the public will in the process.

I have advanced legislation that would do something very simple: take the hundreds of billions of dollars in large university endowments--not even all university endowments, just the largest university endowments--and apply a tax to them. Right now, they pay a tax that is less than 2 percent on their net income--far lower than many of the working-class members of my own family and far lower than most Americans pay in taxes.

Why is it that we allow these massive hedge funds pretending to be universities to enjoy lower tax rates than most of our citizens--people who are struggling to put food on the table and buy Christmas presents this season? Yet they enjoy a far higher tax rate than these university endowments. It is insane, it is unfair, and I think we ought to fix it in this Chamber.

My friends on the other side will often talk about how the wealthy don't pay their fair share in taxes. If the wealthy don't pay their fair share in taxes, there is no institution in this country that is a bigger offender than these massive endowments that pay almost nothing.

3514, which is at the desk. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source