April 2, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 57 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session
RECESS; Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 57
(Senate - April 02, 2019)
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[Pages S2180-S2183] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] RECESS The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate stands in recess until 5:30 p.m. Thereupon, the Senate, at 4:30 p.m., recessed until 5:30 p.m. and reassembled when called to order by the Presiding Officer (Mr. Rounds). The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire. PROTECT Students Act Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin, to discuss the work we are doing to protect students and taxpayers from predatory higher education practices. I want to thank Senator Durbin for his incredible and steadfast leadership on this issue. All hard-working students deserve the opportunity to receive a quality education that will prepare them to compete in this 21st- century economy. Education is the cornerstone of expanding opportunity, and it is vital that we ensure that more students have access to quality, affordable higher education that will help them thrive. Unfortunately, too often, hard-working students, including our veterans and servicemembers, are taken advantage of by predatory for- profit colleges. We have seen this issue time and again. Years ago, we witnessed the collapse of Corinthian Colleges, Inc., and ITT Tech. Recently, we saw the collapses of Education Corporation of America, Vatterott College, and Dream Center Education Holdings. Students attended these institutions with the hope of furthering their education and building better lives for themselves and their families. In reality, though, these companies were raking in billions of taxpayer funds that enriched their executives and investors, all while their students were receiving subpar degrees at high costs even though they were often recruited with the promise of a good-paying job after graduation. This has left tens of thousands of student borrowers with huge amounts of debt that they will never be able to repay, credits or degrees of little value, and few job prospects. Unscrupulous actions by for-profit colleges have also widely impacted our country's veterans who bravely fought in defense of our freedoms and then, in turn, were taken advantage of by predatory, corrupt schools. Our current system has done little to stop these bad actors. Students and taxpayers have been exploited in astounding ways and to an outrageous degree. We need to do more to address and to stop these predatory practices. That is why I was pleased and honored to join with Senator Durbin last week to introduce the Preventing Risky Operations from Threatening the Education and Career Trajectories of Students Act of 2019, otherwise known as the PROTECT Students Act. This legislation would implement a number of commonsense protections to hold predatory institutions, including for-profit schools, accountable when they engage in unfair, deceptive, and other fraudulent practices. To start, the PROTECT Students Act would safeguard our veterans and servicemembers from predatory practices. It would close a loophole in existing law that allows colleges to count GI benefits as non-Federal dollars toward a required 10 percent of their revenues that must be from a non-Federal source. This has led some predatory for-profit schools to deliberately and aggressively recruit veterans and even provide false information to them regarding their programs, including the expected level of student debt and what kinds of jobs would be available to the students once they graduate. By closing that loophole through the PROTECT Act, we can eliminate the incentive for these schools to prey on veterans and prevent veterans from going into significant debt for a credential or degree of little practical or economic value. Next, this legislation would add a new review process for for-profit institutions that seek to convert to nonprofit or public status-- something they have been doing as a strategy to escape key accountability requirements. Our bill would also take steps to ensure that career education programs actually prepare students for good-paying jobs because if students invest thousands of dollars in their education, they should be able to find a job that will help them pay back their loans. The PROTECT Students Act would also codify the 2014 gainful employment regulation that helps prevent students from enrolling in low-quality programs that charge more than what a student can reasonably pay back after they graduate. This provision requires improvement by schools whose students are found to have too much debt compared to their earnings, and it cuts off Federal financial aid for those schools that don't improve. The measure also has the obvious benefit of preventing Federal taxpayer dollars from being wasted on worthless programs. The PROTECT Students Act would help student borrowers who have been cheated or defrauded by predatory institutions, including for-profit colleges, by improving the process for borrowers to have their loans forgiven if the school they attend engages in fraud. This legislation would increase consumer protections by banning the practice of mandatory arbitration, which has limited students' ability to seek legal action if they have been defrauded. These are just some of the vital steps the PROTECT Students Act would take. This bill would be a strong step forward for both students-- including veterans and servicemembers--and taxpayers. We are at a time when the Department of Education, led by Secretary Betsy DeVos, is doing everything in its power to undermine protections for students on these issues. Secretary DeVos has done a disservice to students by hiring into the Department officials who have close ties with companies that have defrauded students. They then, unsurprisingly, have supported her mission of rolling back student protections in favor of predatory companies. Secretary DeVos has worked to gut key consumer protections and weakened relief for students who were victims of fraud. This is unacceptable. By supporting the PROTECT Students Act, Members of the Senate can send a message to Secretary DeVos that we will not stand for these actions. I want to take a moment to thank my friend and colleague, Senator Durbin, for his consistent leadership on this issue. For years, Senator Durbin has been sounding the alarm about the dangers of for-profit colleges, introducing legislation, and taking to the Senate floor and bringing much needed attention to this matter. It is time that more of our colleagues listen to his calls to stop these predatory institutions from taking advantage of students all across the country. Senator Durbin, thank you again for leading on this issue. I am thrilled that we have been able to work together to introduce the PROTECT Students Act, and I look forward to working with you to pass this legislation as part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Thank you. I yield the floor to my colleague from Illinois. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate Democratic whip. Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, let me thank my colleague from New Hampshire for being my ally in showing real leadership on this issue. As a member of the HELP Committee, you will be sitting there in those key hearings when we discuss the reauthorization of higher education. That will be our opportunity to bring in some of these reforms that make a difference in terms of this industry of for-profit colleges and universities. I thank you for that, and I join you in this PROTECT Students Act, as I have come to the floor so many times to talk about this sector. Most Americans don't know what we mean by for-profit colleges and universities. Who are they? Well, some of the familiar names are the University of Phoenix, DeVry University and others like it, which portray themselves as institutes of higher education, and in [[Page S2181]] some respects, they bear similarity. Yet when it comes to the actual performance of these schools, it is much different. Many families don't know the difference. I find in the city of Chicago, IL, that students--particularly when they reach their junior and senior years--are inundated with all this advertising on social media about for-profit colleges and universities. I would say to Senator Hassan, there was a time in Washington before she arrived where you could find television ads that showed a young lady who appeared to be about 20 years old, in her pajamas, saying: I am here in my pajamas going to college at a for-profit college and university. They tended to make it sound like it was a pretty easy formula. All you needed to do was log on, and the next thing you knew, you had a diploma, a certificate, and you were off for employment. That is not the real-world of for-profit colleges and universities. The real world is a much starker place. I have often said that you can define this issue between for-profit colleges and universities and non-profit and public universities and colleges in America with two very simple numbers. This will be on the final. The numbers are 9 and 34. For-profit colleges enroll 9 percent of all postsecondary students. Nine percent go to for-profit schools. Thirty-four percent of all Federal student loan defaults are students from for-profit colleges and universities. Nine percent of the students and 34 percent of the loan defaults. What is going on here? The answer is very obvious, and it really tells the story about for-profit colleges and universities. They charge too much. All the surveys we looked at say their tuition is higher than you might run into at a local community college or a public university or a not-for-profit school. They charge too much tuition. Secondly, too many students drop out before they finish. They are in so much debt, they can't continue. Third, those who do finish and get a diploma find out it isn't worth much. They don't really end up in a job where they can pay off their student loans, so they stumble and fall despite their best efforts, deep in debt from these for-profit colleges and universities. Along the way, they learn something interesting: These credits they are supposedly earning at the for-profit colleges and universities often can't be transferred anywhere. No one recognizes them. These students have been lured into something called a ``college'' or ``university,'' lured into deep debt, and if they finish, they find they have something that isn't worth a job in the future. Senator Hassan and I are trying to protect these families and these students from this type of exploitation. We know and I think most Americans know that going to college can be an expensive experience, but it can be a life-changing experience for the better. If you pick the right school and get yourself a college education, you will be in a better position, in most cases, when it comes to your future life. Right now, we are finding that when it comes to these schools, there is a much different outcome. Throughout this higher education debate, you are going to hear a common refrain from this industry. They often say that different types of institutions of higher education shouldn't be treated differently under the law, that everybody should play by the same rules. They go on to say that any regulations or requirements that apply only to for- profit colleges discriminate on the basis of tax status. Last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos accused me of discriminating based on tax status, for-profit versus nonprofit. I couldn't care less, from my point of view, whether it is for-profit or nonprofit; the question is, What are they giving to these students? What are the students receiving for the money that is being paid? In her final report to Congress, retired Department of Education Inspector General Kathleen Tighe wrote: ``The [for-profit college] sector continues to be a high-risk area for the department.'' She went on to say that the industry's own practices and performances ``provide a clear demonstration of the need for particular accountability.'' Let's start with the basics. As I said, 9 percent of the students; 34 percent of the student loan defaults. Students at for-profit colleges graduate with an average debt of nearly $40,000; students at nonprofit and public colleges and universities, $28,000. In 2014, more than half of the top 25 schools whose students held the most cumulative student loan debt were for-profit colleges. Eight of the top 10 students with the most debt were for-profit colleges. The average cohort default rate over 5 years at these eight colleges was 33 percent. Over 5 years, a third of the students were going to default on their student loans. The average, incidentally, for the two not-for-profit institutions in the top ten was 6 percent. So, at the end of 5 years, one-third of the students who graduated from for-profit schools in the top ten for cumulative student debt had defaulted. For the students from the nonprofit schools in the top ten for cumulative student debt, it was only 6 percent. These for-profit schools are notorious for luring these students and sometimes their families into debt, and then the students can't find the jobs to pay off the debt. A basic reminder: Of all of the debt you can incur in the United States of America--think about it--that being for your home, your car, your boat, whatever it happens to be--there is one category of debt you can never discharge in bankruptcy: a student loan. You are going to carry student loan debt with you for the rest of your life. We have a case in which a grandmother literally cosigned a note so her granddaughter could go to college, and the granddaughter defaulted on the student loan. Guess what happened to the grandmother's Social Security payment. The government came and took part of it in order to pay off that student loan. It never, ever goes away. It is a loan--a debt--for life. That is why it is different. We can make a mistake on a home; we can lose a job or have an illness in the family and default on a mortgage and have the debt we owe discharged in bankruptcy, but it is not so when it comes to student loans. In a 2017 letter to Secretary DeVos and congressional leadership, 19 State attorneys general, led by then-Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, wrote: ``Over the past 15 years, millions of students have been defrauded by unscrupulous for-profit postsecondary schools.'' These chief State law enforcement officers noted the specific risks to students from the for-profit college sector. The recent closures of so many of these schools have left these students stranded. Imagine if your son or daughter were going to one of these for-profit colleges or universities, and then it went out of business. Would that mean you would have to pay off your student loan? Technically, yes. In order to be relieved from your student loan, you would have to submit a borrower defense claim to the U.S. Department of Education. How often do these schools fail? Let me read to you a list of some of these for-profit colleges and universities that have gone failed: Corinthian, ITT Tech, Education Corporation of America, Vatterott, and Dream Center. How many students who attended these schools were left high and dry when the schools went out of business? There were 140,000 students. Of the more than 218,000 borrowers who have sought discharges from the Department of Education as a result of being defrauded by their institutions, the vast majority have been students from for-profit colleges. The for-profit colleges promised them jobs that never materialized. The for-profit colleges said: If you take the following course, you can become a computer technician of some kind. It never happened. They were defrauded by these schools. They signed up for the loans, and then the schools went out of business. So here they are with the loans and no jobs. We have this borrower defense process by which the students can go through the Federal Government to try to be relieved of their student debt. Yet I can't understand this. The U.S. Department of Education is not processing these students' borrower defense applications. When we said to Secretary DeVos, ``Come on. Give these young kids a break. Their lives are on hold until they figure out what has happened to their student loan debt [[Page S2182]] from their for-profit schools,'' she hasn't gotten around to it, and we have been waiting patiently for that to happen. I thank Senator Hassan for putting a finger on it. The people who are running this Department of Education are former executives of these for-profit schools. So, it's no surprise. So, no, Madam Secretary. Meeting our obligation as lawmakers to focus accountability and protections where there is the greatest risk to students and taxpayers is not discriminating based on tax status; it is acknowledging reality. The bill we are talking about today doesn't target for-profit colleges, and it doesn't seek to put an end to for-profit education. It is not a witch hunt or a liberal conspiracy; it is a response to the objective risks to students and taxpayers that the for-profit college industry represents today. The PROTECT Students Act would close the 90/10 loophole. Incidentally, can you imagine that these are so-called for-profit colleges and universities and that they are the most heavily federally subsidized businesses in America? We took a look around. We looked at defense contractors and everything we could think of. The highest level of Federal subsidy goes to this industry. Imagine, a student signs up. The student may first qualify for a Pell grant of $6,000. The for-profit college takes that Federal money in. Then the student still owes some debt. They say: Well, you need a government loan. So the student borrows from the government. At that point, all we have seen across the table are Federal dollars that are directly out of the Treasury. The student still carries the debt, but the money to this so-called private business is all straight out of the Federal Treasury--hardly a hearty example of capitalism at work. The 90/10 rule was designed to prevent for-profit colleges from depending on more than 90 percent of their revenue coming straight from the Federal Treasury. It didn't work. Unfortunately, a loophole in the law only counts the Department of Education's title IV funds as Federal revenue while counting billions from the Department of Veterans Affairs' GI bill and the Department of Defense tuition assistance as non-Federal funds. Here is what it means: If you are serving in our military and are entitled to GI bill education benefits that are going to help pay for your education, for-profit colleges have a financial incentive to aggressively target and recruit you. It turns out they can take virtually 100 percent of their revenue directly from the Treasury by enrolling large numbers of students eligible for Federal benefits that are not included in the 90/10 rule. We think that is wrong. We think the 90/10 rule should count these veterans' benefits and other Federal education benefits as Federal funds. I see there are others on the floor, and I am not going to make this any longer. I will bring it to a close because Senator Hassan has covered the elements of this bill that I think are very important. To my friends who serve with me in the U.S. Senate, here is what it boils down to: Do we care about these students and their families? Are we worried about the fact that 9 percent of the postsecondary students end up at for-profit schools and account for over one-third of all student loan defaults? Are we willing to hold these schools accountable and every school accountable so they treat students fairly? Are we willing to say, for example, the University of Illinois has a relationship with its students who enroll? The University of Illinois does not have a mandatory arbitration clause, but many for-profit schools do. What does it mean? If you feel you have been mistreated by the school, those at the school will sit down and decide your fate through an arbitration process, which students virtually always lose. Most schools don't do that to their students, but these schools look at them as cash-paying customers, and that is how they treat them when it comes to arbitration. There are a lot of things we can do in this bill to protect the students who are currently being exploited. What is more important than making sure these students don't get off to a bad start in life but are treated fairly and honestly and not exploited at the expense of their families and the expense of American taxpayers? I thank Senator Hassan for being the lead sponsor of this legislation. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas. Electoral College Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, I want to comment briefly on the proposed constitutional amendment to eliminate the electoral college that my colleagues are introducing this week. It is just the latest radical proposal by the Democrats to upend our constitutional system of government. Why all the sudden interest in these changes? It is very simple. The Democrats and their media wing still can't get over that they lost the 2016 election, so they have spent the last 2 years looking for scapegoats. First, it was the collusion hoax, but the Mueller report has put an end to that. Now they blame the Constitution itself and want to eliminate the electoral college, which they claim robbed the so- called popular vote winner of her rightful office. Let's be clear about something up front: We have never had a Presidential election with a popular vote winner or loser in the genuine meaning of those words. It is not how we contest the Presidency, and it never has been. Campaigns organize their entire strategies around the electoral college. Guess what. Hillary Clinton did too. She just didn't do it very well. For the losers to complain afterward that they really won is like a football team that gets outscored but says it won the game because it made more first downs or like a basketball team that got outscored but says it won the game because it made more free throws. Yet let's suppose that we do change the rules of the game. Let's suppose we get rid of the electoral college. What would we get? Get ready for nationwide recounts and election contests. If you thought Bush v. Gore was a circus or that California's ballot harvesting operations were a fraud, wait until you see a nationwide recount. Getting rid of the electoral college would also encourage fringe third parties with all of the instability we see in European parliamentary elections. Neither candidate received 50 percent of the vote in 2016. Imagine an election in which a winner would not even get 40 percent of the vote. How would the Democrats respond to that? Of course, getting rid of the electoral college could further reduce the role of the States in our elections. The Founders believed, rightfully, that the States were sovereign political communities that had real interests and real views that deserved to have a voice in the national government apart from simple, nationwide majority rule. The Founders didn't want our vast continental Nation to be ruled like colonies from a few coastal capitals. They wanted our one, true national officeholder to understand and account for the diverse ways in which we work and live and think. Under the electoral college, which I hasten to add is just like in the Senate, the States can express their will as States. Hawaiians get to speak as Hawaiians about whom the President ought to be. The same goes for Vermonters and Arkansans. Doing away with the electoral college would be especially harmful to the small States while it would concentrate power in big States and in a few megacities. So it is not surprising to see Senators from California and New York and Illinois supporting this radical proposal. They have obvious reasons to weaken the smaller States. I have to confess that I am a little surprised that my colleague from Hawaii is joining their effort because it would relegate his small island State to the status of a colony--ruled from afar by a few vast cities on the mainland. Hawaii, with its 1.4 million people, would have less say in our Presidential elections than would San Diego. It would barely outpace Dallas, TX. Politicians who support abolishing the electoral college say it would break the supposed stranglehold that rural red States have on our elections, but this isn't really a red or blue issue. Hawaii, Rhode Island, Vermont, and the District of Columbia all have a greater say about who leads our country, [[Page S2183]] thanks to the electoral college, and the last I checked, none of those places are Republican strongholds nor does one party ever have a so- called stranglehold on the electoral college. It is far from it. In the 1980s, people spoke about the Republicans' electoral college lock. In more recent times, they have spoken about the Democratic Party's blue wall in the electoral college. My State and New Mexico, for instance, were fiercely contested in the Bush era--not so much anymore. In 2008, Barack Obama won Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes in a cakewalk. Eight years later, Donald Trump eked out a victory in the Keystone State. Next year, Ohio might not be a competitive Presidential election State, but Texas may be. Politics can change fast, and the electoral college changes with it, which forces candidates to consider our entire vast country. Without it, a candidate could actually ignore Wisconsin, yet still win. I should also point out that my colleague's amendment this week is not the only proposal to scrap the electoral college. A number of States have also signed on to a so-called interstate compact that would require those States to ignore the express will of their voters and award their electoral votes to whoever wins the national popular vote. It is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. I would prefer to call it the ``Small State Suicide Compact.'' It is designed to circumvent the difficult process of amending our Constitution, which of course means it is unconstitutional. There is already a process for changing the Constitution. It is called the amendment process. So I will give some praise to my colleagues this week for filing a constitutional amendment to change the electoral college legally, but I would point out that the Democratic Party's willingness to bypass our Constitution to eliminate the electoral college reveals that what is at stake here is not really democratic principle but one single thing-- power, seizing it and holding on to it. Me? I think I will stick with the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton said of the electoral college: If it be not perfect, it is at least excellent. I am with Hamilton. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader. ____________________