Congressional Progressive Caucus

Floor Speech

Mr. ELLISON. Thank you, Congressman Pocan.

Mr. Speaker, this is an extremely important topic.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say that you should look at legislation like a sailboat on a still pond. It takes the American people, the wind, to move that boat sailing along. And on this student loan issue and on the access to education in this country, we need the American people, Mr. Speaker, to rise up and lift their voices and say, ``We demand affordable secondary college education.''

There are great ideas. Congressman Cartwright has a brilliant idea, the Truth in Tuition Act. It is certainly superior to H.R. 1911, which is just deepening and worsening the problem of college affordability. But at the end of the day, the best ideas will sail when the students and the parents across the United States, Mr. Speaker, come together and say, ``We insist on quality, affordable education.''

Do you know that there are at least 20 million borrowers across the United States for higher ed every year? About 20 million people borrow money every year to go to some form of higher ed: for-profit, nonprofit, private, whatever. It's a lot of people.

The fact is, Mr. Speaker, if those people, just them, said, ``These interest rates are not fair. This tuition is not fair. We deserve access to higher education,'' it would change everything.

Thirty-seven million people owe some sort of tuition payment, and about 5 million of those, according to the statistics I have, are late by at least 1 month. If those people came together and said, ``We're going to form ourselves into an organization and we're going to demand better terms,'' they could move mountains.

But this is a civil rights issue. I'm not talking about color or gender or sexual orientation or anything like that. I'm talking about Americans, middle class people wanting to be a part of the American Dream.

Let me wrap up by saying this, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Pocan, you've been doing an awesome job with the progressive message. But I think that what we're doing with the progressive message is trying to help the American people imagine America as a generous, inclusive society that accepts people from all walks of life and that it preserves the ladder of opportunity.

We believe we should have early childhood education so that the young ones can get a head start on a good life.

We believe in solid, quality K-12, and that the kids should have nutrition and be safe while they're at the schoolhouse.

We believe that when they get to college, they should be able to seek their dream and be who they want to be, as Mr. Cartwright so eloquently said.

And we believe people ought to be able to be paid fairly when they're in their adult life and take care of their family and be able to go to the doctor.

And we believe that when people reach their golden years, they ought to be able to retire with dignity, so we protect Social Security.

Cradle to the grave, Americans dream of prosperity. It's not too much to ask for in the richest country in the history of the world, but a key link in that quality life of prosperity in this country is college affordability. And it is something that if you want it, you've got to fight for it. Nobody is going to hand it to you. And when Americans wanted to see civil rights before the law, when they wanted to see African Americans have civil rights, women have civil rights, when they wanted to see people on the job, workers have some voice on the job, they stood up and they said, ``We've got to rearrange this deal.'' When we said that our environment was getting poisoned and dirty and they needed to demand that industry do something to make sure we had a cleaner environment, people stood up, Mr. Speaker, and they did something about it. And this is what we have to do right now.

So I just want to say to you, Mr. Pocan, and you, Mr. Speaker, this is an excellent opportunity to raise key issues about a central issue of American prosperity for working and middle class people.

I do thank the gentleman from Wisconsin.

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