Student Loan Debt

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I will follow up on the dialogue I just had with Senator Warren.

These are issues that really hit home for families. We have had four issues on the floor of the Senate in the last several months which really define the difference between the political parties.

The Democrats have argued and urged that we extend unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed in America so they can find work, save their homes, pay their utility bills, and have a cell phone to go look for work. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough support on the other side of the aisle when it came to extending unemployment benefits.

The next issue was to raise the minimum wage--which we have not done for a long time--so that those who are struggling--primarily women--will have a basic minimum wage so they can get by from paycheck to paycheck. Many of us believe that if you are willing to get up and go to work every morning, you should not live in poverty in America.

The third issue was gender equality. If my daughter and my son work the same job, they should get the same paycheck. There should not be discrimination against women. Republicans opposed us on that.

Now comes the fourth issue: renegotiating college student loans so that some 40 million student loan borrowers across America have a chance to pay less interest on their student loans, their monthly payments would go down, and they would be able to pay off their loans sooner so they could get on with their lives. We could only get 3 Republicans out of 45 to join us in an effort to start the debate on the bill yesterday, so we fell short. We needed two Republican Senators to join Senator Warren, myself, and others--Senator Franken of Minnesota and Senator Reed of Rhode Island--to join us in initiating this conversation.

I say to my Republican colleagues, when you go home this weekend, try to find some college students and their families and engage them in this conversation. You will find what we found out on the Democratic side. If you listen to working families who are struggling to put their kids through school, they will tell you they need help. We offered help yesterday, but we fell short by two Republican votes.

I hope the Republican filibuster will be overturned next week when we return.

I yield the floor.

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