Student Loan Debt

Floor Speech

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I wish to very briefly join my colleagues here in support of the effort being led by Senator Durbin, Senator Warren, Senator Reid, and Senator Harkin. They have done such incredible work on behalf of students all across the country.

One of the most amazing statistics to me is a simple one. Not so long ago the United States was No. 1 in the world when it came to the number of young people who had college degrees. In a very short amount of time, we have precipitously fallen from No. 1 to No. 12 due to the fact that other countries have caught up, which is an issue in and of itself, but it also has something to do with the fact that the cost of college has become calamitous for students all across this country, and it is taking kids a lot longer to complete their degrees--many of whom are starting and never even finishing.

I am an example of the squeeze that American families are in. I don't complain about the income my wife and I make, but we are both paying back our student loans and we are saving for our kids' student loans. So I know the amount of a family's income that can be gobbled up trying to pay back prior college and save for future college, and I know where that money would go if it weren't going to pay for those two costs. For us, that money would go into the local economy.

So this is the middle-class issue of our generation, as my colleague Senator Schatz often says, because it is not just about families trying to pay back college and save for college; it is also about all of the places that money could go if it weren't going to the banks and the Federal Government, which are making a pretty profit off of this system as it is.

Finally, I will make a pitch for a piece of legislation that Senator Schatz, myself, and Senators Murray and Sanders have introduced because I think we need to have two conversations. One is about making sure we reduce the financial burden for families, but there is also a conversation we need to have about putting pressure on schools to reduce the ticket price, the sticker price of attending college. We, frankly, haven't done a very good job of leveraging the $140 billion we spend on financial aid to pressure colleges to do the right thing.

There is one for-profit college in California that takes in 1.6 billion every year of taxpayer dollars, and the average student there spends only 3 months on campus because they start school and never finish it. Their loan default rates are above 30 percent. That is a terrible investment for those kids but also for the Federal taxpayers' dollars.

Our piece of legislation--which we hope will be considered in the broader reauthorization of higher education statutes in this country--would say it is time we hold colleges to a different standard and force them to get serious about costs and quality. In the end, that will be just as helpful--keeping control of quality and cost at our colleges--as the effort being led by so many of my colleagues on the floor here tonight.

I am very glad to join in this effort. It is a personal cause for me and my family given that we are living this reality today but one that is a much greater imperative for all families who have been struggling with this burden across the State the Presiding Officer and I represent.

I yield the floor.

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