Thank you Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking Member, and thank you all for this opportunity to testify before you this morning on an issue so critical to the families of this country.

Finding new ways to expand college access to all Americans is a goal I think we all share. I believe that starts with making the Higher Education Act more responsive to the needs of families. But for all the progress we have made in increasing the opportunity to receive a college education in America, I hardly need to tell you that very serious obstacles face students today.

Among these obstacles is the increasing cost of higher education, which has risen by nearly 40 percent in the last decade. In my state, which faces a billion dollar budget shortfall, public university tuition is being increased by 14.5 percent at the same time the Connecticut University system is cutting programs and services and reducing the size of faculty. These trends, as you know, are not unique to Connecticut. These trends, as you know, are not unique to Connecticut, as the front page article in today’s Washington Post confirms.

One of the biggest obstacles to students and families is the high amount of debt they accrue during college and carry with them for decades after they graduate. At a time when young people and families are looking to start out on their own, to make a life for themselves, they are finding instead that they are burdened with massive debts that limit their professional opportunities and reduce their quality of life.

Some of you may be familiar with a recent article in USA Today that chronicled how difficult it has been for Kathy and Jerry Dillon from Georgia to pay off a $30,000 student loan, despite having a good credit rating, no credit card debt and an affordable home loan.

One of the reasons this problem persists for so many families is that the interest rate on these loans can only be consolidated once. As a result, families like the Dillons, who consolidated their student loans in 1996, are stuck paying an 8 percent rate. Even though interest rates are at a historic low today—3.42 percent—federal law does not allow borrowers like this family to take advantage of them. The issue of loan consolidation is an issue my colleagues Mr. Miller and Mr. Wu have worked on for some time.

Rising debt, coupled with large debts and little recourse to refinance are why I introduced the College Loan Assistance Act, which would allow students that have already locked in at a much higher interest rate to take advantage of these historic lows and consolidate their debt. In addition, the College Loan Assistance Act would eliminate loan and origination fees charged to student borrowers. Currently, the government charges student borrowers a fee of up to 4 percent on the loan principal, accruing interest and adding to the burden of a student’s debt – in effect a tax on student borrowers.

Along those same lines, I would like to echo the comments of my chairman on the Labor HHS subcommittee, Mr. Regula, regarding the need to repeal the Single Lender rule so that students have the opportunity to consolidate their loans with another lender at a lower interest rate. The only thing that I would add to what my distinguished Chairman has said is that I believe we should include increased consumer disclosure to ensure that the borrower is well-informed of all their financing options.

While we need to find solutions to make student loan debt more manageable, we also need to make college education more affordable. In the next decade, more than 15.3 million undergraduate students will attend the nation’s colleges and universities—an increase of more than 14 percent. Historically, the Federal government has played a major role in college tuition assistance, with federal grant, loan, and work-study programs accounting for two-thirds of all available student aid in academic year 2001-2002 – $57 billion out of $85 billion. That year, more than 8.3 million students received federal student aid, with an average award of more than $3,500.

One of the most powerful tools we have had to help students has been the Pell Grant, which is targeted to the neediest families, providing grants to nearly 4 million undergraduate students who have average family incomes of $17,300. But as the cost burden of higher education has increased dramatically, the strength of the Pell Grant has decreased, from covering 84 percent of the tuition in 1975-76 to 39 percent today.

The need is particularly pronounced when you consider that, despite gains in overall postsecondary education participation during the past 3 decades, the rate at which high school graduates from high-income families enroll in college is about 27 percentage points greater than that for low-income families.

The College Loan Assistance Act would restore the original purchasing power of the program by increasing the authorized level of the maximum Pell Grant to $7,000. Not only will increasing the Pell Grant maximum grant make the dream of college a reality for millions of low-income families, it will also mean students would not have to borrow as much – making reconsolidation and consolidation in general cheaper. Increasing the Pell Grant maximum is a common sense idea that is long overdue.

I am hopeful that some of these provisions, which are similar to many of those in Mr. Miller’s recently-drafted College Opportunity Act, will be included in the bill reported out by the full committee. At a time when we have serious challenges before us in the coming decades, when budget cuts in so many areas are imminent, we need to maintain and improve the Federal government’s commitment to higher education, so that we can continue to give every motivated student the opportunity to grow and contribute to our society.

I would like to thank the Chairman and the distinguished ranking member again for giving me this opportunity today and I look forward to working with the Committee as it moves forward with the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.