Washington, D.C. - Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of the HEROS Act introduced by my colleague from Minnesota, and I want to commend him on this legislation. It is a good bill and it is an important bill.
However, I must say that I am disappointed that we are not using this opportunity today to further strengthen the support we are providing to our men and women fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. We can and should be doing better.
As you heard, the bill before us gives the Secretary of Education the authority to ensure that those men and women who have Federal student loans do not have to make payments on those loans while they are serving overseas, while they are in combat, and while they are on active duty.
But the problem is this: while they are on active duty, although they do not have to make payments, the interest payments on those loans continues to accrue and accumulate. So, then, that man or woman, the soldier, comes back to the United States owing a larger bill than when he or she was deployed.
For example, if you left for Iraq or Afghanistan owing $20,000 in Federal student loans and you were there for a period of time, and your loan interest payments accumulated $2,000, you would return home owing $22,000 instead of the $20,000 payment you faced when you left.
That is why the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) and I have introduced legislation to allow those men and women to defer any interest payments during that period. So when you were deployed, you would truly have a time out on your loan. If you left owing $20,000, you would return owing $20,000.
It is our belief that while our men and women are serving our Nation overseas, they should not at the same time be accumulating greater interest on those Federal student loans during that period of service. Our bill would make it mandatory that the Secretary of Education make sure they did not come back owing more than when they left.
Moreover, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), and I introduced an amendment to the Higher Education Act that would do exactly what I just described. It was taken up by the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and the committee adopted that amendment that said that during the period of time that you are deployed, interest will not accrue.
I was very pleased that on a bipartisan basis the Committee on Education and the Workforce adopted that amendment. The problem is this: that amendment is sitting in a queue. It is sitting in a line here waiting for the House Republican Leadership to move it to the front of the line. And who knows what will happen to the higher education bill in the Senate. They are way behind the House in that area. So there is no reason for us to wait. This was an opportunity to make that change and make it today.
It is especially important for those who are in the Reserves and National Guard, who, when they are deployed, are often making a much larger income here in the United States than the salary they are receiving as soldiers overseas. So they had the income while they were here at work to make these payments, and now they are deployed overseas at lower incomes, yet those interest payments continue to accrue.
For that reason, I would have thought this was a terrific opportunity to address that shortcoming in this bill. This is a good bill, but a bill that we can certainly make better; and there is no reason we could not do it today. The only reason we cannot do it today is this bill has been brought up under a procedure that does not allow the gentleman from Ohio and I and others to offer that amendment, an amendment which, as I say, received bipartisan support in the Committee on Education and the Workforce.
So, Madam Speaker, I had hoped we would have addressed that now, and I am disappointed we did not. I will support this bill, because I think it is a good bill. I just think we could have used this opportunity to make it even better.
Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I urge my colleagues to support this very important piece of legislation that extends the existing authorities and again congratulate the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kline).
I do want to underscore the fact that I thought we should use the opportunity right now to improve this legislation in the way I described. We should not be holding our troops overseas hostage to an artificial legislative calendar.
The higher education bill, whenever it comes before the House, still has to go through a long process. It has to get through the House, as we know; it has to get through the Senate; and then it must be signed by the President. That could be months. It could be years. I do not think we should be asking the men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan to be waiting years while their interest payments on these Federal student loans are accumulating.
We should get it done now. We have an opportunity to get it done now, and I hope we will move quickly to deal with that situation. Especially if the Higher Education Act gets bogged down, it seems to me we should move quickly to address that discrete issue that we can handle by itself without all the other issues that are tangled up as part of the higher education bill.