Floor Speech: Higher Education and Student Debt
Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to speak on behalf of the good people of Pennsylvania's 13th district. I am grateful that they have permitted me to act in their service in this auspicious chamber.
I would like to take my first opportunity speaking on the floor of the House to confront the unbearable burden that student debt has placed on our young people and on the nation as a whole. I applaud President Obama's announcement of the America's College Promise proposal, which would provide two years of community college to responsible students, but we need to make the expansion of higher education more enduring through the weight of legislative action.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, student loan debt has become the largest form of consumer debt, other than mortgages. The financial load on America's students has more than tripled over the past decade to well over $1 trillion. The formidable costs that aspiring students face as they consider college or trade school pose an enormous obstacle to their personal and professional development. But more broadly, our precariously high levels of student debt threaten to destabilize our recovering economy, and we could topple into a default crisis similar to what we saw when the housing market collapsed and cast us into the Great Recession.
Broadening access to affordable higher education will make the American economy more resilient against such shocks, in addition to bolstering our workforce's competitiveness against other countries. Our educational performance is being outpaced and Congress must intervene so that we can maintain our edge in both the academic and industrial realms. It is vital to the stability and the stature of our nation to fully invest in and cultivate the potential of the American people, who are our most potent resource.