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Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I want to make a few remarks now about the Congressional Review Act vote we will be taking later tonight.

And here is the thing. This is so straightforward, in terms of, here in the United States of America, pursuit of an education to serve the people of this country should never be a privilege reserved only for the wealthiest Americans.

Indeed, don't we want every child to have the opportunity to thrive, to get a graduate degree, to get a professional degree, to be able to serve in the many capacities where we are desperately short of individuals? Of course we do.

And this is something very near and dear to my heart because I am a blue-collar kid, and my father said, when I was in grade school: Go to the doors of the schoolhouse. You go through those doors, and you study hard, and you can do just about anything in America, because we are so fortunate to live in America.

That is a beautiful idea--that every child has the opportunity to pursue their dreams, and if that requires a college education, to be able to pay for a college education without a millstone of debt around their neck or just the actual impossibilities of having access to enough funds to pay tuition.

So I pursued that vision. And my interest did take me to college. And I did borrow money, and I did get scholarship, and I did wash dishes, year after year, in order to help get through.

But that journey is becoming so much harder now, when college is so much more expensive. When I got out of high school, if you worked a minimum-wage job, the summer of 1974, at $3 an hour, you could save enough money, living at home, to pay the tuition for a public university in my home State of Oregon.

Or you might still have to work in order to, well, have a room to live in and have food to eat. But you could pay the tuition.

And now it is completely out of sync. You cannot save enough on minimum wage, which is still only, you know, in many States, only $7.50, or half that if you have a job that has tips, in many States. There is no way you can pay your tuition.

And so shouldn't we all be working to make it easier for children to actually get the expertise that we need in our services, in our economy? But, indeed, we are going in the other direction.

I have often spoken about how I feel the Big Beautiful Bill, as Trump called it, hurt Americans along the way, kicking millions of Americans off of health insurance and gutting nutrition and slashing funding for higher education. Why?

But now we have something else, which is a rule from the Trump administration that will make it very hard for ordinary children coming from modest means--families of modest means or very restricted income-- to be able to go on to college and to go to graduate school.

In fact, that bill--that Big Beautiful Bill, as Trump called it-- eliminated the Grad PLUS loans, which allowed students to borrow the full amount of their program, and replaced those loans with two categories. A graduate degree student is limited to borrowing $20,500 a year and up to $100,000 in total.

So that restriction--a graduate degree student--whom does that apply to? Well, it applies to nurses, to social workers, to physician associates, to teachers, to engineers, to physical therapists, and to many other categories.

And so those professions are told: You can only borrow $20,500 a year.

So what does that mean? It means that since tuition is often much higher than $20,500--and then throw in the dormitory and throw in the food--well, you are talking $40,000 a year.

There is a survey from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, which reports the average cost of a nursing program is $38,500 a year--the average cost--so often over $40,000.

So what is the effect of putting this limit of $20,500? Well, this is a gift to the predatory lenders. Now, one friend of my son's, well, she had 6 percent loans that were the government loans, and then she had to get private loans. What was the interest rate on that? It was 11 percent.

We are basically saying: Hey, if you are wealthy and your parents can pay your tuition and your dormitory and your food, hey, you are golden. The avenue of opportunity is for you.

But if you are from a family that doesn't have the ability to pay that cash and you have to borrow, we are going to force you to borrow loans that are 9, 10, 11, 12 percent because we don't want that avenue of opportunity for you. We only want it for the rich kids.

This is a rule for rich America, and this is a penalty against normal people. That is wrong. I thought this democracy was supposed to be of, by, and for the people, not special, gold-plated avenues for the kids of the richest families.

And I know that this Chamber is full of multimillionaires--maybe a few billionaires--who don't know the darnedest thing about how families struggle across this Nation and how much they want their kids to have opportunity too.

So this is very simple. Let's reject this rule that puts up a huge barrier for the children of families of modest means and medium incomes or low incomes. Let's knock down that barrier. Let's not force them into predatory lending.

Now, there are some who say: But wait. We think that the schools will lower their tuition as a result of us making loans unavailable.

That is a false premise. Never worked anywhere because the schools have to pay the professors. They have to pay for the infrastructure. They have to pay interest on the buildings they have already built. And so they have to charge accordingly.

When we saw before--and we have been down this road--when there was a limit on public loans and people had to go to private loans--like the friend of my son--you end up with those 10, 11, 12 percent interest loans. They are predatory against our children of the next generation.

So who here wants to speak up for the rich to be the only ones with opportunity in this country? Let's strike down this rule and say to the President's team: When this bill was passed, no one in this Chamber meant to say that opportunity is only for the wealthy kids.

This is our opportunity. It is a Congressional Review Act. It means we can say no to a rule that puts up a hurdle to ordinary children.

So it isn't as if everything is rosy for the children of the next generation--hey, housing prices, up through the roof. Home ownership median age has risen from 33 to age 40 over just a 5-year period because the next generation can't afford to buy a home. Rents are pressing people against the wall. Tariffs have added so much cost to the families.

Why are we going to pile this predatory loan program on top of everything else? It is absolutely wrong. So let's just join together and say: Let's put this rule in the rubbish bin. Let's put it through the shredder because it only hurts the next generation that we should be striving to help thrive.

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Mr. MERKLEY. Will my colleague yield to a question?

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Mr. MERKLEY. I believe I understood you to say that you are citing a university that has lowered its tuition.

Did I understand that correctly?

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Mr. MERKLEY. Which university was that?

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Mr. MERKLEY. Is that a private or public school?

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Mr. MERKLEY. So here is the thing. There are 4,000 universities in the country. Do you have any idea how many have followed that example and lowered their tuition?

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Mr. MERKLEY. My colleague has got it completely wrong. There are less expensive ways to get a nursing degree. Indeed, my wife is a nurse, and she got her 2-year nursing degree at a community college. We were very, very fortunate to get even some scholarships to help her do that at a time when our income was extremely little.

But here is the thing: There aren't very many slots like that. With the 4-year programs that are throughout Oregon at private universities, you can't come close to paying your annual expenses at $20,500. We need a lot more nursing slots because there are a lot of folks who are coming out of high school with straight A's. They can do the statistics, and they can do all the prerequisites, but there just aren't enough slots. So we are wrestling with the fact that we are importing a lot of nurses from overseas rather than providing opportunities for our kids.

What this means is, yes, you are right. There are some ways to get a nursing degree--a 2-year degree in particular--that are less, but most folks have to do another 2 years because now hospitals won't take a 2- year nurse. They often have to go to a private program, and those programs average $38,500 a year.

The math is simple. For the families like the family I come from, wherein you have to borrow, borrowing at 6 percent is a hell of a lot better than borrowing at 11 percent. With the rich, their families have home equity loans. If they are going to borrow, they borrow at 6. So we are saying: Here is this big obstacle for ordinary people who don't have parents who are affluent.

It is just the math.

The idea that all of those programs are going to be able to lower their $38,500, on average--many are much more--to $20,500 is just false. There may be one or two universities that have lowered it, and by the way, they did it in anticipation--and maybe for different reasons--because this hasn't gone into effect yet. It is going into effect a few days from now. That is why we are talking about this now. It is going to affect folks who are going to school next year. So this is very disturbing to me that we are creating this obstacle for families who need help.

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