Thursday January 18, 2007

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Mr. TIERNEY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for yielding.

Madam Speaker, in the last session, the Democrats did, in fact, file a bill that would have done a lot of things to make colleges more accountable and accessible. Unfortunately, that is not the bill that was moved through Congress, and very little of it got discussed or was paid attention to in the committee.

This year, we hope to refile bills along that way and work in a bipartisan manner so those larger issues will have that opportunity, and we intend on doing that. In the meantime, this is a down payment. It is a down payment on the need to make college more affordable and accessible by cutting the interest rates on student loans, as has been described.