Republicans (predictably) filibuster Elizabeth Warren’s bill to ease student loan debt

A bill spon­sored by Mass­a­chu­setts Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren to ease stu­dent loan debt has sad­ly become the lat­est wor­thy piece of leg­is­la­tion to be stalled in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate by the Repub­li­can Par­ty, which might as well offi­cial­ly rename itself the Par­ty of No (because that is its answer to just about every good idea).

Ear­li­er today, Sen­a­tor Har­ry Reid invoked clo­ture on S.2432, the Bank on Stu­dents Emer­gency Loan Refi­nanc­ing Act, which would allow most of the coun­try’s stu­dents to refi­nance into new fed­er­al direct loans at low­er inter­est rates.

Fifty-six Sen­a­tors (not count­ing Reid, who ulti­mate­ly vot­ed against the bill in a par­lia­men­tary maneu­ver that allows him to bring it back up again) vot­ed to pro­ceed with debate on the leg­is­la­tion, includ­ing Repub­li­cans Lisa Murkows­ki of Alas­ka, Bob Cork­er of Ten­nessee, and Susan Collins of Maine.

But the rest of the Repub­li­can cau­cus vot­ed no. The final vote on clo­ture was fifty-six to thir­ty-eight; six sen­a­tors did not vote. Six­ty “aye” votes were need­ed to break the Repub­li­can fil­i­buster. Had Claire McCaskill of Mis­souri been present, the Democ­rats would have had a total of fifty-eight poten­tial aye votes, and would only have need­ed two more Repub­li­cans to go along.

The roll call from the Pacif­ic North­west was as fol­lows:

Vot­ing Aye: Democ­rats Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Mur­ray (WA), Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden (OR), Jon Tester and John Walsh (MT), Mark Begich (AK); Repub­li­can Lisa Murkows­ki (AK)

Vot­ing Nay: Repub­li­cans Mike Crapo and Jim Risch (ID)

As usu­al, Ida­ho’s ter­ri­ble two­some were on the wrong side of the vote.

Ahead of the vote in remarks on the floor, Reid cas­ti­gat­ed Sen­a­tor Mitch McConnell and his fol­low­ers for refus­ing to sup­port the bill.

I was dis­ap­point­ed to learn that my col­league, the Repub­li­can Leader, does not sup­port this leg­is­la­tion. Not too long ago, he referred to Democ­rats’ pro­pos­als to address stu­dent loan debt as a “fake fight.” For the twen­ty-five mil­lion Amer­i­cans who stand to ben­e­fit from this bill, I assure my friend that there is noth­ing fake about help­ing work­ing fam­i­lies pay off debt and save mon­ey. To the sin­gle moth­er work­ing two jobs just to take care of her fam­i­ly and make her stu­dent loan pay­ments on time, this leg­is­la­tion is very real. Instead, the Repub­li­can Leader has reaf­firmed his com­mit­ment to the sta­tus quo. Why reform today, what he and his par­ty say they’ll reform next year?

On the oth­er hand, Sen­ate Democ­rats are not stand­ing around wait­ing for a new year or a new Con­gress to tack­le the prob­lem of stu­dent loan debt. We are anx­ious to extend a help­ing hand to the more than 40 mil­lion Amer­i­cans who are fight­ing to keep their heads above water. Let’s come to the aid of those indi­vid­u­als strug­gling with stu­dent loan debt, and keep them from sink­ing deep­er into finan­cial quicksand.

Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren, S. 2432’s spon­sor, was more blunt. In an appear­ance on MSNBC, she exco­ri­at­ed the entrenched Ken­tu­cly Republican.

“Mitch McConnell is there for mil­lion­aires and bil­lion­aires,” War­ren told host Chris Hayes, host of All In. “He is not there for peo­ple who are work­ing hard play­ing by the rules and try­ing to build a future for themselves.”

She then vowed to cam­paign against him in response to a ques­tion from Hayes.

“One way I’m going to start fight­ing back is I’m going to go down to Ken­tucky and I’m going to cam­paign for [Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate nom­i­nee] Ali­son Lun­der­gan Grimes,” War­ren said. “She’s tough, she’s feisty, she endorsed the stu­dent loan bill, said she want­ed to bring down inter­est rates for Kentuckians.”

“I’m going to get out there and try to make this hap­pen for her.”

Grimes slammed McConnell in a state­ment released to the press after the vote.

“Sen­a­tor McConnell’s bla­tant dis­re­gard for the hun­dreds of thou­sands of Ken­tuck­ians crushed by stu­dent loan debt is deeply dis­con­cert­ing,” she said.

“This vote against our mid­dle-class fam­i­lies under­scores the fact that my oppo­nent has been in Wash­ing­ton for far too long and just does not get it. I call on the Sen­ate to pass both the leg­is­la­tion to ease stu­dent loan bur­den as well as the bipar­ti­san bill to address prob­lems with­in the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs. Ken­tucky stu­dents and vet­er­ans deserve a cham­pi­on who will fight for them in the U.S. Sen­ate – not stand idly by and ignore the needs of real people.”

Our own Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell went to the Sen­ate floor after the vote on clo­ture to urge the Repub­li­cans to recon­sid­er. Here’s an excerpt from her remarks:

I know some of my col­leagues on the oth­er side of the aisle did­n’t sup­port this leg­is­la­tion, but the Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Office projects that the bill would actu­al­ly reduce the deficit by about $14 bil­lion over the next decade. That’s impor­tant because we want to see poli­cies that are going to help our econ­o­my in the short-run, in the long-run, but they have to be fis­cal­ly responsible.

I want to make sure that those crit­ics who say, oh, well if you make the inter­est rate low­er that stu­dents are going to bor­row more money.

I don’t think that stu­dents are look­ing to bor­row more to add to their debt. I don’t think stu­dents that I talked to, who had loans as high as $180,000, want to bor­row more mon­ey just because you are going to reduce the inter­est rate. They want to refi­nance, reduce their oblig­a­tion and get back to study­ing. There’s much more that we need to do to mit­i­gate the costs of high­er edu­ca­tion and I know my col­leagues and I are going to be work­ing on that. But the Bank on Stu­dents Emer­gency Loan Relief Act was a very good step to help stu­dents and to focus them on their careers and their education.

So again, I hope my col­leagues on the oth­er side of the aisle will look again at this issue and get back to it.

We need to make sure that col­lege edu­ca­tion is more afford­able. It’s time for us to extend the same ben­e­fits that we do for busi­ness­es and mort­gages to stu­dents, so that they can refi­nance and that 25 mil­lion stu­dents in Amer­i­ca could refi­nance their stu­dent loans.

So I thank Sen­a­tor War­ren for bring­ing this issue up, and I hope we will get back to it again.

Sen­a­tor Cantwell’s full floor speech can be viewed on YouTube.