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- Path: sparky!uunet!dtix!darwin.sura.net!wupost!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!rich
- From: nigel.allen@canrem.com (Nigel Allen)
- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
- Subject: Sen. Simon Reaction to President's Signing Of Higher Education
- Message-ID: <1992Jul24.232244.1135@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
- Date: 24 Jul 92 23:22:44 GMT
- Sender: news@mont.cs.missouri.edu
- Followup-To: alt.activism.d
- Organization: Echo Beach
- Lines: 47
- Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
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-
- Press release from U.S. Senator Paul Simon
-
- Sen. Simon Reaction to President's Signing Of Higher Education Act
- To: National Desk, Education Writer
- Contact: David Carle of the Office of U.S. Sen. Paul Simon,
- 202-224-7115
-
- WASHINGTON, July 23 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The big new idea in
- the new five-year charter for all federal student aid programs that
- President Bush signed into law Thursday is a new "direct loan"
- plan that means more college help for middle income families,
- easier repayments for some students, and an end to some subsidies
- now paid to banks.
- Beginning in 1994, several hundred schools -- perhaps 15 to 20 in
- Illinois -- will test direct loans in a pilot program in which all
- first-time and older students on those campuses will have lifetime
- loan accounts they can draw down directly from the Department of
- Education, and some students for the first time will be able to repay
- their loans in variable installments based on their after-college
- income. The program also allows the possibility of loan repayments
- through IRS withholding. These reforms -- the savings of direct
- lending, universal eligibility, payments based on post-college
- income, and IRS collection -- were included in the "IDEA Credit"
- plan introduced last year in the Senate by Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.)
- and Sen. David Durenberger (R-Minn.)
- The test program is part of an extensive rewrite of the Higher
- Education Act. Simon is a leading member of the Senate Education
- Committee and led Senate negotiations on the direct loan issue in the
- House-Senate conference that hammered out the compromise version of
- the package. The direct loan issue dominated debate on the package,
- and the White House recently dropped its veto threat over the direct
- loan idea shortly before Congress gave final approval to the bill on
- July 8.
- "This higher education package makes many promises that won't
- become real unless they're funded," said Simon. "But the benefits of
- the direct loan plan are real and do not rely on extra funding. This
- is the fresh new idea in this bill, and it will deliver. It's a
- better approach for students, schools and taxpayers. I wish we could
- go farther than a pilot program right now. The status quo always has
- more than its share of soldiers when a major change like this is in
- the wind. But this bill gives us the chance to prove IDEA Credit's
- superiority to today's GSL program. It opens college opportunities
- to more students and uses tax dollars more wisely.
- -30-
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