Eternal lord god, we pause in these revered halls to give thanks and to offer petition. We acknowledge in this place, you have called all humankind to exhibit righteousness and justice. You desire harmony, accord, peace and wholeness. Bless now, the representatives who gather in this place of policy and procedure. We ask oh god that you would impart the gift of now vision and future sights. We pray for your gifts of discernment, sensitivity and perceptiveness. For those assembled, present, give and grant the posture 6 of patience of cooperation. To those in debate, discussion, discourse and duty, allow calm clarity. Allow truth to reign, justice to reside, and mercy to resonate. Keep ever before us the broken, the disappointed, those in despair, and the destitute. Set ears to hear the cries of the poor, the needs of the sick, and the afflicted. Please allow hearts assembled to do that which is best, for all. In advance, for what you will do, we say thank you. We pray in your holy name. Amen. Amen. The president pro tempore please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Mr. Reid mr. President . The president pro tempore the majority leader. Mr. Reid i move to proceed to calendar number 384, the hey gan sportsman the hagan sportsman act. The president pro tempore the clerk will report. The clerk s. 2363, a bill to protect and enhance opportunities for recreational hunting, fishing and shooting and for other purposes. Mr. Reid mr. President . The president pro tempore the majority leader. Mr. Reid following my remarks and those of the republican leader, the senate will be in a period of morning business until 11 00 this morning with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees. At 11 00 a. M. The senate will proceed to executive session and well have five roll call votes which will be to confirm three judges from florida and one from vermont and also a very important nomination rodriguez to be director of the United States citizenship and immigration services, department of homeland security. Mr. President , its unfortunate that we have still scores and scores of good men and women on the executive calendar waiting to be confirmed, but the delay by the republicans is untoward. Its never happened before. And were working through these as quickly as we can. With the judges, they can only take an hour of postcloture time. But on these nominations, they have eight hours. We can yield back four hours, which we do almost every time, but these stalling tactics have not added to our doing nothing here in the senate by hours. Not days, not weeks, but months. And thats so unfortunate. Weve never, i repeat, had a situation like this before. As everyone knows, weve changed the rules as it related to judges. Thank goodness, mr. President , we did that. Justice can move forward in our country. The delay and obstruction thats taken place over the last number of years and Republicans Holding up judges, we through the chairman of the committee, have moved lots of judges. We have now were going to have four Circuit Court judges we have to move toward and we will do that, even though each one of those takes 30 hours. And were nearly caught up with district caught judges, which speaks well of the Judiciary Committee and senators who are forwarding names to the president for submission to the committee here. Mr. President , tomorrow were going to turn to the workforce investment act, a nice, important piece of legislation. And it is a picture of what we should be doing here on legislation generally. The workforce investment act is a very complicated piece of legislation. Were not going to spend a lot of time on it, but that should not in any way take away from the importance of this legislation. It is a, really an important thing that were doing. Its an example of how we should be able to get things done in the senate. Now i commend senators murray, harkin, and alexander for working to get this bill to us. They have spent untoward hours and hours of time to get us here. I dont everyone knows what a peacemaker Lamar Alexander is. I appreciate his work. I was told just a few minutes ago that he came to the floor and said, why dont we go ahead on the Appropriations Bills, on amendments that appear to be controversial have 60 votes on those. I suggested the same thing yesterday, mr. President. We voted here approximately 50 times on ive been forced to have now what we call the mcconnell rule, 60 votes on everything that is the least bit controversial. Lets move through the Appropriations Bills. People on my side of the aisle want to do this, and i dont know why the republicans would prevent us from doing that. But thats where we are now. So, mr. President , i also just want to say im going to talk to the press in more detail at a subsequent time. But i want to congratulate rand paul, the junior senator from kentucky. About 15 years ago, mr. President , i offered an amendment here on the senate floor that said if someone has been convicted of a crime, a felony, and they have completed their sentence if they go to jail, if theyve completed their probation time if they got probation, if they completed their parole time, this is all over with, they should be able to vote. And thats what rand paul said in his offering legislation saying if its a nonviolent crime, they should be able to vote when theyve completed their time. I went a little further than that with mine, but i so appreciate his suggestion, and ill have more to say about that later. And i hope i dont get him in trouble with his Republican Caucus for congratulating him on this. This is something that is long overdue. As a country, we should allow people who have served their time, who have served their pen nance or whoever you want to state it, they should at least be able to vote. As i said, ill say for the third time, i have a lot more to say about that later today. Would the chair announce the business of the day . The presiding officer under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. Under the previous order, there will be a period of morning business until 11 00 a. M. With senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each, with time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees. A senator mr. President . The presiding officer the assistant majority leader. Mr. Durbin mr. President , thank you. For a number of years years i have come to this floor to talk about an issue that i want to bring up again this morning. And the issue is forprofit colleges and universities. Many people, when they hear me describe this, dont understand which schools im talking about. Its not the public universities that you would think of automatically the university of illinois, Northwestern University and others, private universities like northwestern. It is the forprofit world of Higher Education. The leaders in that forprofit world mr. President , i see that the minority leader is on the floor here, senator mcconnell. Ill proceed. The forprofit colleges and universities are led by the apollo group which owns the university of phoenix, the largest; devry university, based out of chicago, kaplan and corinthian and many others. They bring about 10 to 12 of all the High School Graduates into their forprofit colleges. They receive from the federal government 20 of all the federal aid to education because their tuitions that they charge are very high. And these forprofit colleges have another distinction. Their students account for 46 of all College Student loan defaults. 10 of the students, 46 of the student loan defaults. Whats going on here . Whats going on here is that they are charging these students a high tuition for these forprofit schools, and they are not preparing them to go to work, or at least not to work at jobs where they can pay off their Student Loans. So students will drop out before they finish or theyll finish with a diploma thats worthless. They cant find a job. They cant pay back their Student Loans. And now theyre in the worst of all possible worlds, deep in debt with no education to speak of. Forprofit colleges and universities. The reason i wanted to raise that point is theres been several significant developments. Let me talk to you about some of these schools. Education Management Corporation owns a group of schools called the art institutes. Ive run into them in the chicago land area. Argessy is another one of of these forprofit schools. I. T. T. Tech, another one. I mentioned kaplan and apollo. Career Education Corporation has schools like the American Intercontinental University in the Harrington College of design. They sound very appealing. Harrington, i met one of the students. Hannah moore, she is a young woman from chicago. She went two years to community college. Then she transferred into this Harrington College of design in the suburbs of chicago to get a degree in design. And when it was all over, after she received her degree, she couldnt find a job. Not in that field. It turned out that the diploma, degree, was basically worthless. But when she left Harrington College of design she had a college debt of 125,000. 125,000, and she couldnt find a job, and she couldnt make the payments, and she started to move back in with her parents because thats all she could do. And now because she couldnt keep up with the payments, the debt has grown to 150,000, her college loan debt, and her father came out of retirement to try to help her pay it. Think about that. She did what she thought was a good thing in going to college. She went to one of these worthless, forprofit schools, and now her life is literally changed forever because of this mountain of debt. Then theres a group called Corinthian Colleges that i want to focus on here. Corinthian colleges based out of california. The local colleges name you may recognize is everest colleges. We have six of them in illinois. There are about ten in michigan, a dozen of them in california. Theyre across the United States, everest college. It turns out last year evidence surfaced that everest colleges were falsifying the information they were submitting to the federal government. In some cases they hired employers to hire everest graduates for a short period of time so they could report to the government their graduates found job. Then after the report was made, it turns out that the people were let go. They didnt have a job. Everest was asked to send Additional Information to the federal government about this fraudulent practice, and for five months they failed to do it. And then last week the u. S. Department of education said because everest wasnt provide us with the data theyre supposed to under the law, were going to suspend new student loan money to them for 21 days. Everest colleges, corinthian, their parent corporation, announced that because of this, they were going to not have enough money and may not be able to continue their operations. The value of stock in this corporation, corinthian corporation, went down in the range of 28 cents last week. Nobody would loan them money. Well, right now some 75,000 students across america are enrolled in everest colleges with Student Loans, and theres a very good chance that everest colleges, corinthian as we know it, will not survive. My obvious question is whats going to happen to these students . Theyve got the debt to go to this worthless school that appears to be going out of business. Were working with the u. S. Department of education right now. Im concerned about where these students are going to end up. Ive contacted the Community Colleges in my state and said reach out to the everest College Students, see if you can rescue these kids. But put it in perspective. This is only one of many forprofit colleges and universities. Most students dont know this whole brand of Higher Education is out there. They think its just like every other college. It is not. And were not doing a good enough job at the federal level to regulate these forprofit colleges and universities that are exploiting these students. Let me tell you one story that was reported recently that i think is horrible involving Corinthian Colleges. An article written by david ha halpehalperin. A 37yearold man with what happens to be a developmental disability. He was reading at an Elementary School level, 37 years old, was allowed to enroll in everest colleges criminal justice program. According to the librarian who worked with him and subsequently resigned because of the treatment of this man, the man was rarely able to comprehend sentences, was unable to sound out words, and does not have the ability to read documents he was asked to sign. She was worried about his ability to even understand the debt that he was signing on for, the Student Loan Debt at one of these everest colleges. It apparently didnt matter to everest. They were ready to sign him up, as long as as this man was eligible to take out loans, he waeverest was going to get paid. Is that outrageous to think that they would lure someone with a disability into signing up . The list goes on and on. Ashford university, another one of these forprofit colleges and universities. The obvious question we have to ask is this when will our department of education and when will this congress address this travesty . What is existing across the United States with these forprofit colleges and universities is an outrage. And its exploiting students and families. Sadly, a couple weeks ago we trude to pass a bill on we tried to pass a bill on the floor here so that students could renegotiate their Student Loans, bring down the interest rates. Every democrat voted for it. We needed five republicans to join us so that students in states like new jersey and illinois could renegotiate their Student Loans down, makes them more affordable, we got three republicans, senator collins, senator corker, and senator murkowski. We needed two more to start the debate about renegotiating College Loans p. I think weve got to wake up here. Ththis debt that the families ae facing is an outrage. Part of it is started by these forprofit schools. But another part of it just reflects a debt that is out of control, and we ought to be more sensitive to it. Were going to call this again. Elizabeth warren brought the bill to the floor. This time were going to hope that some of our republican friends go home to their states and actually speak to families who are paying College Student loans. If they will, i think theyll understand they should join us in this effort. Give these College Student loans and their families a fighting chance to pay off the loans, reform the Higher Education system to stop the outrageous conduct by these forprofit colleges and universities. Mr. President , i yield the floor. The presiding officer the republican leader. Mr. Mcconnell last summer i said it felt like the white house had hung a gone campaigning sign oud the oval office. President obama didnt seem seriously interested in passing middleclass conclusions. It was all campaigning all the time. On the rarest occasions when he did come to congress, it was for internal Campaign Rallies with his party. Well, its actually only gotten worse. Since last summer, hes barely picked up the phone and his billsigning bill is literally starting to rust. Heres the reason this summer the Democratcontrolled Senate seems to have put out a gone campaigning sign of its own. Thats why the Democratic Senate has become a ver i veritable ge yard of good ideas. Most people assume the purpose of the senate to pass legislation to help the American People. But these days the democrats that run the senate seem to think their role is actually to just bury good legislation. Theyre more interested in pleasing their farleft political patrons, patrons who appear to oppose everything that could actually help the american middle class. Case in point the republicanled house of representatives has already passed hundreds of pieces of legislation this congress, legislation introduced by members of both parties, including dozens of jobs bills that remain stuck here in the senate. That means president obama hasnt had to sign or veto them and the Senate Majority leader has been all too happy to protect him, choosing between helping the farleft fringe and the vast american middle. In other words, Senate Democrats are on a mission this summer to obstruct solutions for the middle class at every turn and to prevent almost any serious legislating from occurring at t all. Over in the house, the Minority Party has been offered more than 160 votes on their amendments since last july. Here in the senate, the democratic leadership has blocked all but nine republican roll call votes. And i. T its not just republican amendments getting squashed either. The democrats are so afraid of legislating these days that theyre blocking virtually every amendment on both sides. Its gotten to the point where one house democrat, a congresswoman from texas, has now had twice as many roll call votes on amendmen