Richard Durbin

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, it has been nearly 1 year since Corinthian Colleges, Inc., began its death spiral--falling under the weight of its own wrongdoing. Corinthian Colleges defrauded students, defrauded taxpayers, lied to accreditors, lied to the Federal Government, and on Sunday, this for-profit college, Corinthian Colleges, announced it would close its remaining 28 campuses--campuses in California, Oregon, Hawaii, Arizona, and New York. So, finally, Corinthian has collapsed. We reflect on this disaster and ask a basic critical question: Why did it take this long given the long litany of violations to finally stop the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars--Federal tax dollars-- to Corinthian Colleges, and equally important, how many Corinthian disasters lie ahead in the for-profit college and university industry? There are certainly more questions we need to ask of the Department of Education about how it handled this case and how it must be more aggressive in the future to stop violations earlier, especially to prevent the students at these for-profit education companies from suffering an experience similar to Corinthian. There will be more to come on that in the weeks and months ahead, but today I wish to focus on what is next for the students who attended these Corinthian campuses. We know this for-profit college and university industry pretty well. Ask any high school student in America to go online and to search a word, such as college or university, and watch what happens. As soon as they get to any kind of directory of Web sites, they will start seeing the ads for the for-profit colleges and universities. Some of the names are pretty obvious and well known. The largest of all is University of Phoenix. The next largest is DeVry University, out of the city of Chicago, and the next largest is Kaplan, an entity that was once owned by the Washington Post and now is on its own. These for-profit colleges and universities descend on students, as well as on those who graduated from high school, imploring them to sign up for an education online--to sign up for a for-profit college. It will be so easy. They can do this online and get their degree. It will be a snap. That is what Corinthian did for years. I know that with the news of the closure, students who signed up for Corinthian and went to school there woke up wondering what is next. Their college just disappeared, but their student debt didn't disappear. They signed up for these loans to go to this worthless school, and now the school has disappeared and the debt is still there. There is a Federal law that can help these students. The Higher Education Act gives students who attended a school such as Corinthian-- within 120 days of its closure--the ability to discharge their Federal student loans. I am renewing my call to the Department of Education to reach out directly to the thousands of students who have been exploited by Corinthian Colleges and to provide discharge applications to these students and give them clear, upfront information about how transferring their credits to another school may impact their ability to discharge their loans. If a student transfers these Corinthian credits, which have limited value, to another school, they likely cannot discharge the loan they took out at Corinthian. So a student has to make a choice. The notice that the Department of Education sent to students yesterday is unacceptable. It leaves students to navigate through a series of links to get more information and it glosses over the most basic right of a student to discharge the student loans from bankrupt Corinthian Colleges. Federal regulations clearly state the Secretary of Education's responsibility when a school such as Corinthian closes. According to the law, it says: ``After confirming the date of a school's closure, the Secretary identifies any Direct Loan borrower (or student on whose behalf a parent borrowed) who appears to have enrolled at the school on the school closure date or to have withdrawn not more than 120 days prior to the closure date.'' It goes on to say: ``If the borrower's current address is known, the Secretary mails the borrower a discharge application and an explanation of the qualifications and procedures for obtaining a discharge.'' The law is pretty clear. It is up to the Secretary of Education--the same agency that published an accreditation for this failed school, the same agency which sent the loan forms for students to sign up for loans. That same agency now has an obligation under the law to tell these students there is a way out. Do you know what the average tuition is for a 2-year degree at the failed Corinthian Colleges? About $40,000. Imagine if this were your son or daughter. They just went through 2 years of school and have $40,000 in debt, and the college they are attending, Corinthian Colleges, just essentially went bankrupt, and now they find out people are laughing at them when they show their diploma from Corinthian Colleges. What is wrong with this picture? A young person, 2 or 3 years out of high school, now has $40,000 worth of debt or more and nothing to show for it. Now is not the time for the Department to be concerned with the cost to taxpayers of discharging this debt. That is an important issue, and we will take it on later. The time for that was really over the last 12 months when the Department of Education kept Corinthian alive by pumping in hundreds of millions of dollars to keep their doors open when they were headed for bankruptcy. Now is the time to focus on the students, particularly the students in the States I mentioned earlier. They need the relief from this student debt. The Department has also been doing something which I really want to call them out on. You know what they are suggesting to the students who have just gone through this miserable experience at the for-profit, failed, bankrupt Corinthian Colleges? They are suggesting that they can transfer to another for-profit college. What are they thinking? Students should be warned if they use their Corinthian credits to transfer to another institution, they will likely not be eligible for discharge. I have a few examples of the schools the U.S. Department of Education suggested that the Corinthian Colleges students transfer their credits to and still keep their debt from Corinthian. ITT Tech is one example. We see their ads everywhere, don't we? What we don't see in their ads is the fact that they are being sued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Sixteen different State attorneys general are investigating ITT Tech, and they are on the Department of Education's heightened cash monitoring list. Our Department is recommending that these students transfer to this school? What are they thinking? Here is another example: Le Cordon Bleu and International Academy of Design and Technology--powerful names. What we don't see in all of their ads is that their parent company, Career Education Corporation, is under investigation by 17 different State attorneys general and on the Department of Education's heightened cash monitoring list. And our Department of Education is suggesting that the students at the failed Corinthian Colleges--why don't you pick up a culinary degree from Le Cordon Bleu. Maybe it will stay in business. Here is another example: the Art Institutes and Argosy University. Argosy University--I ran into their signs in Chicago last week, and I could not help but think how many students are lured into believing Argosy University is something more than it really is. It is a for- profit college and university. Incidentally, for the record, the parent company, Education Management Corporation is being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice and investigated by 17 State attorneys general. They are also on the Department of Education's heightened cash monitoring list. This is another school that the Department of Education suggested that Corinthian Colleges students transfer to. Westwood College, one of the most infamous in the Chicagoland area, is being sued by the Illinois attorney general for deceptive recruiting practices. They were suggested to Corinthian Colleges students to transfer to by the Department of Education. DeVry is under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and by two State attorneys general. The University of Phoenix's parent company is being investigated by two State attorneys general. Kaplan is under investigation by three State attorneys general. Has the Department of Education learned nothing? How in good faith can they tell these Corinthian students--who just had their college disappear and are sitting on a pile of debt--that these are viable transfer options for their students? Last summer the Department assured me they would not sell Corinthian campuses to companies being investigated. They didn't want the students to be placed in double jeopardy. Why now will the Department accept that outcome for these students? A move such as this leads me to the sad conclusion that the Department of Education is out of touch with the reality of the danger of students signing up at for-profit colleges and universities. I want to say a word about the students who don't qualify for the clear relief I mentioned under the Federal law--the closed-school discharge. I joined with Senator Elizabeth Warren and others to call on the Department of Education to provide meaningful debt relief for all students wronged by Corinthian. We believe the fraud perpetrated by Corinthian should constitute a defense for repayment to students. The Department should provide clear guidelines on how students can assert their claims. These students need it and deserve it. Senator Warren and I will meet with Secretary Duncan and Undersecretary Mitchell later this week. While Corinthian's fraudulent behavior has left tens of thousands of students in financial desperate straits, the company's leaders have been cashing in for years. The CEO of the failed Corinthian corporation, which received 80 to 90 percent of its revenue directly from the Federal Treasury through student loans, made over $3 million in 2013. The vice presidents didn't do quite as well. They were only paid $1 million. The list goes on. In September of last year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Corinthian. This goes back a few months. They sued them for illegal predatory lending schemes by luring students with false job promises, saddling them with high-cost debt, and harassing them when they were unable to repay their loans. It turned out that only 25 percent of the students coming out of Corinthian Colleges were able to repay their loans--25 percent. Why? Because the tuition is so high, the diploma is so worthless. Why are we complicit? Why is the U.S. Department of Education not blowing the whistle on this school and every other school that is exploiting students all across America? At the end of the day, the losers are not only the students who have wasted their time and ended up with debt, the losers are the taxpayers of America--the taxpayers of America, who provide funds for the student loans and unfortunately do not have the protection they deserve in this situation. I call on the Department of Education to make their highest priority the casualties and victims of this Corinthian College. I yield the floor.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I thank Senator Blumenthal and Senator Carper, and I also thank Senator Lee, who has waited patiently for the last 15 minutes or so. I will conclude my part of this by first saying that I thank my colleagues for joining me. If I said we were dealing with an industry--the for-profit colleges and universities--that has 10 percent of the high school graduates in America attending and 44 percent of all the student loan defaults, it might raise some question. If I said that at least 90 percent of the revenue these for-profit colleges and universities receive is often from the Federal Treasury, a Federal subsidy--sometimes more than 90 percent, which is the point we are making here--and if I said that many of these schools are literally exploiting our veterans and servicemembers, I think that is a clarion call for Members of Congress to stand up and first do something to protect the men and women in uniform and the veterans and second to make sure taxpayers' dollars are well spent. This Corinthian College collapse is an indication of how we can lose $1.4 billion a year for a worthless college system, for-profit college system. If I said at the end of the day that I don't know what the term ``crony capitalism'' means--I will go and look it up after this speech, but it looks to me as if they are calling themselves private schools. They might as well be Federal agencies and, as such, should be held accountable. I thank my colleagues for joining me.

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Maryland (Ms. Mikulski) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy), the Senator from New York (Mr. Schumer), and the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Udall) are necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I came across an article in the New York Times on Sunday that called my attention to the passing of an amazing man, a man who has a connection to the U.S. Senate. I rise to pay my respects to a man of uncommon integrity. Dr. Irwin Schatz passed away on April 1 at the age of 83. Beloved and respected in the medical community, Dr. Schatz spent his career helping people. He was a major contributor to the Honolulu Heart Program, a landmark study with half a century of followup on Japanese American men in Hawaii. Dr. Schatz was the rare critic of the notorious Tuskegee, AL, syphilis medical experiments. From 1952 to 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted the Tuskegee clinical study on poor African-American sharecroppers. They wanted to know about untreated syphilis on African Americans. There were 600 men enrolled in the study. Almost two-thirds had syphilis, while the rest were used as control subjects. Between 1932 and 1947, the date when penicillin was determined to be the cure for the disease, at least seven men died, and their wives, children, and untold number of others had been infected. Men participating in the study were told they were being treated for bad blood. Bad blood wasn't running in the veins of these men, it was running in the veins of those who decided this study was worth more than their humanity. Dr. Irwin Schatz was 4 years out of medical school working as a cardiologist at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit when he came across the December 1964 issue of the journal ``Archives of Internal Medicine,'' which mentioned the Tuskegee study. We cannot be sure how many other people read this issue, but Dr. Schatz read it, and he was horrified. Dr. Schatz wrote to the study's senior author, Dr. Donald Rockwell. His letter was only three sentences long. These three sentences could have put his career at risk. Here was this young doctor criticizing an investigation overseen by some of the leading figures in the American Public Health Service. Here is what he wrote: I am utterly astounded by the fact that physicians allow patients with a potentially fatal diseases to remain untreated when effective therapy is available. I assume you feel the information which is extracted from observations of this untreated group is their sacrifice. If this is the case, then I suggest the United States Public Health Service and those physicians associated with it in this study need to reevaluate their moral judgment in this regard. The sad reality is that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention buried Dr. Schatz' letter, and it would sit in their archives until 1972. A Wall Street Journal reporter found the letter the same year that Peter Buxtun, health service employee turned whistleblower, told the world about this horrific study. Dr. Schatz went on to serve in a variety of hospitals. In 1975 he joined the University of Hawaii and eventually became chairman of their department of medicine. In 2009, he was named a medical hero by the Mayo Clinic because of his career but also because of the moral fury he expressed in that three-sentence letter. Irwin Schatz was truly a hero. My prayers and thoughts go out to his sons, Jacob, Edward, Stephen, and our colleague Senator Brian Schatz, his nine grandchildren and his family. Mr. President, I would like to speak on a separate topic very briefly. The moment is going to finally arrive in just a few minutes when we are going to, I hope, approve by a bipartisan vote the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be our next Attorney General. This is a milestone in the history of the United States--the first African-American woman to become Attorney General of this country. I would like to say that I am sorry--and I am--for the delay in bringing this nomination before the Senate. It should have been done long ago. She is an extraordinary person from an extraordinary family. We have been blessed with her public service for so many years, and now she has reached the top in her career to be able to serve as our next Attorney General. I will, with a great deal of admiration and respect, be voting in favor of this nomination.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I will speak briefly in support of the remarks of the Senator from Maine and the Senator from Vermont. The Cornyn approach on runaway and homeless youth excludes language that would prohibit discrimination against the recipients of these services because of their sexual orientation. How can we have reached that point in the Senate? Haven't we engaged in a national debate that centered on Indiana and other States? Haven't we decided in America that, regardless, we aren't going to allow discrimination against people because of sexual orientation? Sadly, this Cornyn amendment excludes language that prohibits discrimination against LGBT youth. Secondly, to fund a less than $1 billion a year program, the Senator from Texas is eliminating a $10 billion health prevention fund, which serves 50 States to deal with infectious disease and serious health issues. This is, sadly, an effort to attack ObamaCare, and it shouldn't be done in this important legislation. We have wasted 4 weeks on an extraneous issue. Let us stick to the basic issue before us. Defeat the Cornyn amendment and support the amendment being offered by Senator Collins and Senator Leahy.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, is there any time remaining on this amendment?

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, in opposition to the Cornyn amendment, let me say this. Up to forty percent of the overall homeless youth population identify as LGBT, and many have reported that they have been subjected to service denial and discrimination by staff and providers based on their sexual orientation. The Leahy-Collins alternative expressly prohibits discrimination against youth because of their sexual orientation. That should be the gold standard. Defeat the Cornyn amendment and vote for the bipartisan Collins-Leahy amendment.

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) is necessarily absent.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, we are in morning business?

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, it has been 165 days--5\1/2\ months--since the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be Attorney General was announced. Ms. Lynch has been pending on the Senate Executive Calendar for nearly 2 months. She was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in a bipartisan vote--nine Democrats and three Republicans--on February 26. This is a new record, sadly, in terms of delay in appointing an Attorney General. The last seven nominees to be Attorney General of the United States combined--combined--waited on the Senate floor 24 days-- seven nominees, 24 days. Sadly, Ms. Lynch has now been waiting over 50 days. Why? What is it about this nominee that causes so much of a problem? Nothing came up at the Judiciary Committee hearing to suggest a problem. Yes, she was appointed by Barack Obama. Yes, she has said she will serve this President. But when it came to her personally, there was nothing. In fact, we have this tradition that after the nominee has testified under oath, then experts are brought in. Each party can bring an expert in to testify for or against the Attorney General nominee. Senator Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on Judiciary, said to the assembled group-- I think there may have been 10 or 12 of these outside witnesses: Which of you, by show of hands, objects to the nomination of Loretta Lynch for Attorney General? Not a single one raised his hand--none. So even the witnesses that were brought to speak in negative terms all conceded that she should be Attorney General. That is rare. It is rare to have a nominee with that kind of affirmation come out of the Senate Judiciary Committee--and for good reason. When you look at her record, you can understand why. This young woman has an extraordinary record of service. She grew up in North Carolina as the daughter of a minister and a school librarian. Her dad was there at her hearing. Her father was smiling as she recalled those instances when she was a very young girl, and he would sit her on his shoulders and take her to see the civil rights events that occurred when she was so young. She received her undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University. She has private sector experience at prestigious law firms. She has twice been confirmed unanimously by the Senate to serve as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. She served in that position with distinction. Her nomination has been endorsed by a wide range of groups, representing law enforcement, prosecutors, bar associations, business leaders, civil rights organizations, and former Justice Department officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations. In what may be one of the most amazing ironies of this whole situation, Loretta Lynch has been recognized as a leader when it comes to prosecuting human traffickers. Why is that significant? Because the Republican leader announced that he was holding up her nomination until we passed a bill on human trafficking. Here is a woman who, as a prosecutor and professional, has prosecuted the people guilty of that crime, and she is being delayed in her appointment as Attorney General of the United States of America because of a political debate on the floor of the Senate for almost 4 weeks over this bill. Under Ms. Lynch's leadership, the U.S. Attorney's office in the Eastern District of New York has brought many important prosecutions in human trafficking. In United States v. Lopez, three brothers were convicted in 2014 for running a human trafficking ring involving 14- and 15-year-old girls. Ms. Lynch was also involved in the successful prosecution of the Granados-Hernandez sex trafficking ring, in which numerous child trafficking victims were reunited with their mothers. In United States v. Johnson, Ms. Loretta Lynch was involved in a prosecution where a Queens man was convicted for trafficking and prostituting a 15-year-old girl out of his home. Make no mistake, when it comes to the issue of human trafficking, this nominee for Attorney General knows more about the subject than most, and she has a record to prove it. Malika Saada Saar, the executive director of Rights4Girls, is one of the Nation's leading antitrafficking advocates. She said: ``It is clear that as the top prosecutor in Brooklyn, New York, Lynch has a strong record of being tough on crime and human trafficking.'' She has been held up on the floor because of our failure to pass a bill on that same subject. Here is what the President of the National District Attorneys Association, Michael Moore, said about Ms. Loretta Lynch when he wrote to express his organization's strong support for her: ``As prosecutors facing challenges in the field from violent crime, to human trafficking, to gangs and drug traffickers, our membership feels that Ms. Lynch understands the operational nature of these challenges and will be a strong independent voice at the helm of the Department.'' Calling a vote on Ms. Lynch and confirming her would be a big step forward in the fight against trafficking. It is time to end this delay and obstruction. This extraordinary woman nominated by the President of the United States to be the first African-American woman to serve as Attorney General should have been approved by the Senate long ago. While she has been waiting patiently for a long, long time, we have interrupted the business of the Senate to approve the President's appointments for Assistant Secretary of Transportation, Assistant Secretary of Commerce, Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commissioners, Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board Members, Undersecretary for Management at the Department of Homeland Security, Chairman of the National Indian Gaming Commission, and several Federal judges. We have had more than adequate opportunity to call Ms. Lynch for approval. Let us not leave Washington this week without voting on Loretta Lynch to be our next Attorney General. I voted for her in committee and will proudly support her nomination in the hopes that it will come to the floor this week. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, how much time remains on the Democratic side?

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I will be very brief because I see my colleague from Connecticut on the floor. Let me say at the outset, in the most positive way, I thank Senator Cornyn and Senator Klobuchar of Minnesota for their bipartisan effort to bring this issue to the floor and to the Senate Judiciary Committee. We had a hearing in a subcommittee on this subject, and it was heartbreaking to hear about the exploitation of these young women at such a tender age. Unspeakable things were happening to them. Sadly, in many States, when they finally came into the custody of law enforcement, some of them--some of the children--these young girls, were being charged as criminals until it was clear they had been enslaved and they had been exploited for so many years. So thinking on this subject is moving in the right direction. The suggestions of Senator Cornyn and Senator Klobuchar are also in the right direction. So why don't we pass this bill? We have all of this bipartisan support. One provision in this bill turns out to be fraught with controversy. Thirty-nine years ago, a Congressman from Illinois named Henry Hyde offered compromise language on the issue of abortion. It was just a few years after Roe v. Wade. It was still very controversial. He said: We will prohibit the expenditure of taxpayer funds for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. For 39 years, that has been the standard. There has been an uneasy truce between those who see this issue in many different ways. They have come to the conclusion this will be the standard that would be applied to the expenditure of taxpayer funds, and it is renewed year after year. Senator Cornyn, perhaps by accident or perhaps by design, crossed the line and started talking about not taxpayer funds but funds collected in fines from those guilty of human trafficking to create a victims' fund. That has brought all of the debate and controversy--in fairness to Senator Cornyn and to Senator Murray, who has joined with others in this battle, there has been an active exchange of compromise language. We have counted, I think, 12 different versions we have sent over to Senator Cornyn. He sent probably as many our way. So it isn't as if both sides have hunkered down and are just staring one another down. There is an honest effort to find a solution. The solution would not be embodied in the vote that had been scheduled for 11 o'clock; it is the old language. But they are still working on new language, and I hope we reach a point soon where we achieve that. We all agree human trafficking should stop and victims should be compensated. I yield the floor to the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. DURBIN

Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from California (Mrs. Boxer) is necessarily absent.