Eric Swalwell

Mr. SWALWELL of California

Mr. SWALWELL of California. In the GI Bill, it works when we fund it and we give opportunity to veterans. It provides eligible veterans up to 36 months of education benefits. Frankly, I think you and I probably would like to see that greatly expanded to include a full education; 1700 colleges and universities are supplemented by post-GI Bill benefits. Fifty-one percent of student veterans earn their degree from an institution of higher education. From 2009-2012, there has been an increase of veterans using their benefits by 67 percent. When we are faced with the question when it comes to veterans funding or NDAA considerations that we make, should we be expanding the educational opportunities for our veterans, or should we be reducing it?

Mr. SWALWELL of California. This week, we are considering the National Defense Authorization Act. We have done VA funding in the past couple weeks. What are you hearing specifically in your congressional district about whether we are taking care of our veterans? Especially tonight, we are talking specifically about post-9/11 generation veterans who have just, by and large, been underemployed at a much higher rate than the rest of the country. What are you hearing at home, any stories that you can share?

Mr. SWALWELL of California. We are now joined by Jared Polis of Colorado. My question for Jared comes from Ruchit @ruchithmajmudar, and he says: ``Veterans took care of us. We need to take care of them.'' What do you think about that?

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Thank you, Mr. Kilmer. I appreciate your continued participation in Future Forum. I know the veterans in your area are very grateful to have you standing up on the House floor tonight to champion their issues and getting them into the workforce.

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Thank you, Mr. Polis. Thank you, Mr. Moulton, a veteran himself. Also, thank you to Mr. Kilmer. The Future Forum, we will be back in a few weeks talking about a variety of issues that are facing young people; but this is not us talking to you. As you saw tonight, I read a number of tweets live here on the House floor and was tweeting as we were having this conversation. Our goal is to talk about the issues, have a conversation, but really listen to you and what you care about as millennials. We look forward to being back here on the floor and out across America as the Future Forum, looking out for what is best for millennials and standing up here in Congress. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SWALWELL of California. We got a question just a moment ago from Lee Hawn, @LeeAhawn, and he said, ``How are the new VA Director's changes coming along?'' I would ask more broadly, what would you like to see in treating post-traumatic stress to make sure that it is not a stigma in the workforce, and that our veterans are able to seamlessly go from theater or their service to coming home and having a job? Right now we look at the veteran unemployment rate for those who have served since September 11 and the Iraq war, and it is today 6.7 percent. Just last year it was as high as 7.2 percent. It has been as high as 9.9 percent in the last 2 years, always above what the national unemployment rate is. So what can we do with the VA as we fund and authorize programs there to treat PTSD and make sure veterans aren't losing jobs or losing opportunities in the workforce?

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Kilmer, you and I went to Afghanistan back in August of 2013. I know you have a number of servicemembers in your district and people who were servicemembers. I am just wondering, you look at this number, 6.7 percent higher than what the average unemployment rate is, and what are you hearing out there in the Tacoma area in Washington, and what can we do in Congress?

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Approximately how many veterans do you represent?

Mr. SWALWELL of California

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Chair, I rise to offer an amendment on behalf of Mr. Schiff of California and Mr. Polis of Colorado, which would increase funding for the Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy, also known as ARPA-E. Mr. Schiff offered this same exact amendment last year, and it passed the House with bipartisan support. I hope the House will vote in support of it again. Like the House's mark last year, the underlying bill this year provides $280 million for ARPA-E, which is $45 million below the President's request. This amendment would increase funding for ARPA-E by $20 million, with the offset taken from the Department administration. I would like to thank the chairman and the ranking member of the subcommittee for providing at least level funding for ARPA-E this year, which is a substantial improvement from last year, which cut the program by as much as 80 percent over previous years. However, I think that rather than providing flat funding, we should be stepping up our commitment to a potentially game-changing research program, and that is exactly what this amendment does. This is a very modest investment for an agency whose work is helping to reshape our economy. While the amendment would leave us still short of where the funding should be and where it is in the President's budget, passing it would send a strong signal that there is bipartisan support for this kind of research. Started in 2009, ARPA-E is a revolutionary program that advances high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private sector investment. ARPA-E projects have the potential to radically improve U.S. economic security, national security, and environmental well-being as well. ARPA-E empowers America's energy researchers with funding, technical assistance, and market readiness. ARPA-E is modeled after the highly successful Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which has produced groundbreaking inventions for the Department of Defense and the Nation, perhaps most notably the Internet itself. A key element of both Agencies is that managers are limited to fixed terms, so new blood continuously revitalizes this research portfolio. As we cut spending to return the budget to balance, we must not weaken those programs that are vital to our economic future and national security, and ARPA-E is such an agency. Even if we can't make the investment that the President has called for in his budget, let's be sure that we don't hinder an agency that is pointing the way to a more energy-secure future. Energy is a national security issue; it is an economic imperative; it is a health concern; and it is an environmental necessity. Investing wisely in this type of research going on at ARPA-E is exactly the direction we should be going as a nation. We want to lead the energy revolution. We don't want to see this advantage go to China or anywhere else in the world. If we are serious about staying at the forefront of the energy revolution, we must continue to fully invest in the kind of cutting-edge work that ARPA-E performs. By providing the funding I am recommending today, we will send a clear signal of the seriousness of our intent to remain world leaders in energy. I urge the adoption of this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SWALWELL of California

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my amendment, which I offer along with Representatives Perlmutter, Welch, Lieu, Tonko, Matsui, and Connolly, which would cut the increase provided to the fossil Energy Research and Development account back to its fiscal year 2015 level and put that money toward the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, also known as EERE, account. My amendment presents a question for the Congress this evening: Are we going to invest in the future of energy or are we going to continue to look backwards? We are certainly an all-of-the-above country when it comes to where we get our energy; however, that does not mean we have to be an all-of- the-above country when it comes to how we spend our Federal research dollars. For decades, we have relied on fossil fuels, fuels that dirty our environment, that are fundamentally changing our environment, that keep us dependent on foreign sources of energy and are a finite resource. Reliance like this is simply not sustainable over the long-term. Energy that is clean and renewable is where our future lies. To put this in perspective, this budget proposes to cut the investment in renewable energy by $266 million from last year, and increase investments in fossil fuel by $34 million. My colleagues on the other side often ask: Why can't we run government like a business? This would be similar to a business cutting its cell phone, iPhone, laptop, iPad budget and increasing its pager and landline budget. It is time that we start running government like a business and making investments in renewable energy because they will pay off for our future and also for health and jobs that will be created around them. Young people understand this choice well. I have the opportunity to lead a group in the Congress called Future Forum, and we have gone across the country from New York to Boston to San Francisco talking to young people about what issues matter to them. And across the country the issue is always the same: Why can't this Congress be more forward looking as to where we get our energy? Millennials know that they are a generation who will be living with the consequences of the energy choices we make here today. It is their environment that will be damaged. It is their climate that will be altered, and their energy choices that will be limited if we fail to invest in renewable clean sources of energy now. I know the budget is tight and we have to make difficult choices about how to allocate scarce resources, and I understand and appreciate that some of the money supported by the Fossil Energy research and development account are seeking to improve how we use fossil fuels. But how can we take limited resources to increase spending in any way to support fossil fuels and encourage their use over fiscal year 2016 by $34 million while cutting renewable energy by $266 million? This makes no sense. Look at what other countries are doing. Germany right now receives 30 percent, 30 percent of its energy from renewable sources. Can we not do better than Germany? The only way we can is if we invest in the future. We shouldn't be increasing funding to continue to use energy sources of the past. I urge all Members to support my amendment, to undo this increase and redirect that money towards supporting the energy of the future-- renewable energy. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SWALWELL of California

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Madam Chair, I want to thank our ranking member and also the chair for bringing forward this bipartisan and necessary legislation. As we speak right now, Americans are under attack, and these attacks are not coming in the form of anything that we have been used to before. People are not kicking down front doors of homes and businesses; instead, they are attacking us through our networks. Our bank accounts, our health care records, our social media accounts, our cell phones, all are being hacked every day. CNN reported that, in 2014, half of the Nation's adults were hacked. The examples are voluminous: 70 million Target customers were hacked; 56 million Home Depot customers were hacked; 4.6 million Snapchat users were hacked. This is Snapchat, which is supposed to be an impenetrable account that allows data to come in and disappear. They were hacked. Hackings are happening every day. Our privacy is under attack. The problem, today, there is virtually zero relationship between private industry and government--private industry, which has about 85 percent of the networks, and government, which has about 15 percent of the networks but has vast resources that can help protect individuals against attacks. Our government has a duty, a responsibility, to protect the American people, and that is what this bill seeks to do. It does it in a number of ways. First and foremost, this is a voluntary program that is being created. No business is required to turn over their breach or hack information to the government; instead, there is a format, a procedure, that is now in place that will incentivize them to work with the government to identify in a way that strips out, through a number of protections, personal identifying information. The first way that it is stripped out is, when the business that has been hacked reports to a civilian agency, they must scrub the personal identifying information; but that is not the only way that that information is scrubbed. Once the government agency receives this personal identifying information, again, before it can be used or forwarded anywhere else in the government, it, again, must be scrubbed--two protections against personal identifying information being used. Now, should any personal identifying information be passed along to the government, this bill provides a right of action, civil recourse for any individual who is wronged to sue the government. There is also an oversight committee, a biannual inspector general report that must be presented to Congress that would report on any privacy violations that occur. Madam Chair, the American people, day after day, are either learning that they have been hacked or someone they know has been hacked. This will continue to have a devastating effect on our economy and, as my colleague from Connecticut alluded to, perhaps our public utilities if we do not act. I urge support of this for my colleagues, and I thank the chairman and the ranking member for the hard work they have done.

Mr. SWALWELL of California

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to report back to the Congress on the progress of the House Democratic Caucus' newest group, Future Forum. Future Forum is made up of 14 Members of Congress who are going across the country to talk about issues facing young Americans. We launched just last Thursday. We have gone to New York, Boston, and San Francisco, and we are just warming up. Our goal is to listen to--not talk to--young Americans about issues ranging from student loan debt, climate change, access to entrepreneurship, and anything that is on their mind or standing in their way of achieving their dreams, hopes, and aspirations. I encourage anyone watching tonight across America to tweet at me and to tweet at Future Forum under #futureforum, so that we can address your concerns right here on the House floor and across the country. We started Thursday evening in New York City. I was joined by Democratic Policy and Communications chair Steve Israel; Congresswoman Grace Meng, who represents the Queens area; and Congressman Seth Moulton, who represents the greater Boston area. Our first stop was at the District Cowork space in Manhattan in the Flatiron District. You see here in this photo, this was not just any rigid, stuffy townhall. We invited young entrepreneurs across Manhattan and asked them at District Cowork: What stands in your way from achieving your startup success? You have in this room these young, energetic entrepreneurs. They are ready to risk it all for their big idea. They are all millennials, aged anywhere from 18 to 35; and it was a very informal, fluid session. What we heard was not surprising, but it was very striking. For too many of them, when we asked, How many of you have student loan debt, their hands went up. For too many of them, when we asked, How much is your student loan debt, their hands stayed up when I said, Is it above $25,000 or $50,000 or $100,000? Then I asked and my colleagues asked: What would you do with that money? What would you spend it on if you weren't spending it every month on your student loan debt? These young, business-minded people, they didn't say: I would go on a vacation, or I would buy a new toy or a boat or have fun for myself. They said: I would invest it in my company. I would invest it in my company. What do we know happens when entrepreneurs invest money in their companies? They create jobs. They create growth around their industries that put more and more Americans to work. Future Forum members learned a lot at this visit, and what we learned was that student loan debt is a barrier--not just a barrier, it is a tall brick wall that is standing in the way of an entire generation realizing their entrepreneurial dreams. What we heard at District Cowork in New York was not unique. In San Francisco, we went to Hive, and we visited their Impact Hub. Hive looked just like District Cowork. You have tall ceilings, nothing on the walls--they are barely painted--no carpet on the floor, just a building filled with a lot of energy, a lot of good ideas, but a lot of challenges standing in their way. At Hive, these young entrepreneurs, just like other entrepreneurs across the country, they told us student loan debt is standing in their way. Forty-one million young Americans have a collective amount of $1.3 trillion in student loan debt. We heard from people at Hive that their debt was not just standing in the way of them starting their own business, but we asked the room--and at this event, I was joined by Congressman Ruben Gallego of the Phoenix area and Congressman Pete Aguilar of the San Bernardino area in California and Congressman Derek Kilmer of the Tacoma, Washington, area--we asked the room, about 100 people: How many of you own a home? Crickets, dead silent. How many of you have parents who own a home? Most of their hands went up. How many of you are renters now? Most of their hands stayed up. How many of you fear that you will not be able to ever own a home in your life? Again, these young people, full of energy, great ideas, great educations, their hands stayed up. We asked: What is standing in the way? The hundreds of dollars a month they are paying in student loan debt. Homeownership, one of the bedrocks of the American Dream, to have something to call your own, something that we fought during our independence as a country, that right for property, to chart your own course, have your own piece of land, now, an entire generation of millennial Americans, 80 million of them, have mounting student loan debt that is going to delay their ability to buy a home, that is going to delay their ability to start and have a family, that is going to delay their opportunity to chase their dreams. While we were in California, we also visited Chabot College in Hayward, California, in the 15th Congressional District, which I am proud to represent. At Chabot College, we assembled over 100 community college students, and we asked them: How much student debt do you think you will have by the time you take your first postcollege job? What we learned there, again, was very, very bewildering. Most anticipated that they would have $25,000 to $50,000 in student loan debt. We did it in a very interactive way. We used text polling, so we asked the students to text in their answers. We polled the group and said: Are you able to take a full load of courses so that you can get out of community college as fast as possible and move on to a 4-year university and move on into your career field? Most of them said that they couldn't. One student told us he worked three jobs. The jobs, they were all mostly the same. They weren't jobs that were going to put them into the area of industry they would hope and aspire to be in. They were retail and restaurant jobs. The members of Future Forum could identify with this. Congressman Kilmer talked about washing dishes in college, and Congressman Gallego talked about working as a restaurant server, and I harkened back to my days in this town in Washington, D.C., as an unpaid intern and working at Tortilla Coast at the end of the day to make it work. Things are different now. Tuition continues to go up. These students told us, during our Future Forum visit, that they are taking a number of odd jobs just to pay for the rising cost of community college. We talked about the President's plan during the State of the Union in this very Chamber to offer free community college to anyone who was qualified and able and willing. The students were hopeful but not too optimistic. They see too many barriers and walls here in Washington to get anything done that could help them. We also asked the students to participate in a word cloud. A word cloud is you text in an answer, and, on the screen behind us, it put different words in response to different answers. We asked the students: What would you do if you didn't have student debt every month? What would your payment money go to? Again, no one said they were going to buy a bunch of toys or go on a bunch of fancy vacations. They said that they would probably buy a car so they didn't have to take the bus or take the BART to class; they would hope to buy their first home; they would invest--which would help the economy. Future Forum was also at San Francisco State University, and a young girl at San Francisco State University, as we talked about solutions we could offer to address rising tuition rates for current students and the debt burden that 41 million Americans carry, one San Francisco State student told us that she had a dual challenge in her house. She was trying to pay for her own education, make it by, not qualifying for many student loans, while her mother also had $200,000 of her own student debt. This is a family matter--this is a family matter--not just for that young San Francisco State student, but for millions of young people across the country. This debt is beginning to pile up and affect multiple generations. We had the honor of going to Boston, where we were hosted by Congressmen Joe Kennedy and Seth Moulton. We visited Thermo Fisher Scientific, and we met with young scientists, people who invested in their own future by taking student loans and going to college and getting, in many cases, graduate degrees to work in the field of science, to work in the field of therapies and devices, hoping that they could play a critical role in helping people, making the world a better place. At Thermo Fisher, these young scientists told us exactly what we heard in San Francisco and in New York City. Their student loan debt weighs on them. It holds them down like an anchor. Something happened at the Thermo Fisher visit that we didn't expect-- because you have a room full of young entrepreneurs, young scientists, but there was a mother who showed up. She kind of confessed: Well, you know, I know this event was billed as a millennial event. She told us she was worried about her daughter. Her daughter had gone to college, just as we had, as a society, told young people you have to do. Her daughter took out a number of student loans, and her daughter lives at home and can't find a job. What we are seeing for our millennial generation and what was expressed by this mother is that we are at risk of becoming a permanent boomerang generation. We go out, and we study, and we attain a degree or training or technical skills; but because of the rising costs of tuition and the debt that our generation is saddled with, we boomerang back home. This mother told us it doesn't just weigh on her daughter, who has a college degree and is trying to find a job, but that it weighs on the entire household. With 41 million young people across our country with $1.3 trillion in student loan debt, imagine how many families are affected by this. These are typically your parents who are just starting to realize their golden years. They worked so hard; paid into Social Security; hopefully had a pension; and they want to retire, maybe travel, maybe take up a hobby, maybe join a local club; but their hopes and dreams--their golden retirements--are being affected by children who are returning to the home and need their support. We heard this all across America on this tour. This is a family matter, the student loan debt crisis in our country. Finally, in the Boston area, we also went to Greentown Labs, a clean tech incubator I visited with Congressmen Moulton and Kennedy in Somerville, Massachusetts. Here, we heard, again, about student loan debt, but we also were asked by a number of people at this event: What is standing in the way of fixing this problem? We actually asked the audience: What do you think? From your perspective, what do you think is standing in the way? So many of them told us campaign finance laws--a smart, young crowd in Somerville at Greentown Labs--campaign finance laws, people in the audience told us--young entrepreneurs--and I thought they were just focused like a laser on their ideas and on raising money for their first and second rounds of funding and on trying to scale up and getting their ideas off the ground. No. These young people, they get it. They told us exactly what the problem was. Because of unlimited amounts of money that can be spent in elections today, there is less courage in the Congress to do big things, to tackle big problems, and to help a whole country of people who need it. They asked us about climate change. Now, this was the first laboratory we had visited on the tour, and we had met with a number of young scientists who were working in the clean tech and clean energy areas. They asked us about climate change and what we were doing in Congress to address it. I want to just go to some of the people who have tweeted in to us about Future Forum this evening and what their thoughts are. I will first mention Hive, who has tweeted at us in San Francisco that they are excited about the ideas presented and the issues raised and ``let's get to work.'' I want to tell you how we are getting to work. This was not just a one-way talking-to with millennials. Through #futureforum, through medium.com, through the article we wrote and posted there, and through the information we have collected across the country, we are actually putting the ball in the court of the young entrepreneurs and students who are charting this new economy. We told them to help us crowdsource ideas that can move America forward, and they gave us some at these visits. With student loan debt being, probably, the biggest, most pressing issue, there was a general consensus that there are two groups affected by this. The first group is of the students who are enrolled right now and paying tuition and accruing debt. The second group is of the 41 million young Americans who already have student loan debt. The solutions that were thrown at us for the students who are in school now or who will be in school was, one, treat public education as a public good. Find a way to make sure that any qualified, capable person who wants to go to college can do so, and keep the costs as low or as next to zero as you can. We had people who were so excited about the Future Forum who had graduated college 30, 40 years ago who came out and talked to us, and they harkened back to a time in California when, in the UC and Cal State systems, tuition was essentially free--they even threw in the yearbook--yet the return on investment was a whole generation of educated individuals who would contribute to the greatest economy in the United States: California. Their eyes popped out when they saw how much it costs today to go to UC Berkeley: $33,000 today is what it costs a year for a student to go to UC Berkeley. People who had attended 20, 30 years ago talked about when it was almost next to nothing. It is $33,000 a year. Congressman Gallego looked at that number--and he went to Harvard. Harvard is the Berkeley of the East. Congressman Gallego looked at that number, and he said: That is about what I paid when I graduated from Harvard in the early 2000s, $33,000 a year. Treat education as a public good. Keep interest rates as low as possible. The consensus among people who met with us--these current students and entrepreneurs--was that the government should make no money on interest rates on loans that it gives to students. What about the 41 million young Americans who have the $1.3 trillion in debt? There was a general consensus that those debtholders should be able to refinance their student loans. You can refinance an auto loan. You can refinance your home loan, but for the 86 percent of loans that are the Federal loans of those 41 million Americans, you can't refinance them. Congressman Joe Courtney, a colleague of mine from Connecticut, has a bill that would allow just that. Our Future Forum members are on that bill, and we are hoping that it gets a vote in this Congress because this should be a bipartisan issue. Those 41 million Americans are not Democrats--they are not all Democrats, and they are not all Republicans. They are hopeful, aspirational young people who should benefit from the same refinancing laws that you can use with your home mortgage or with your auto loan. There were other big ideas, and no idea was too big or small for this crowd. There was the proposal to have a jubilee for all of the federally funded student loans--to take every borrower, return that money to those borrowers, to put them at zero, and watch where the money would go. The hypothesis was, if these students did not have to pay anywhere from $100 to $1,000 every month, they are not going to pocket the money; they are going to put the money back in the economy, and it would essentially be a stimulus. I encourage everyone across the country--every young person, every parent of a young person, every grandparent of a young person--to give us your ideas. Future Forum is just getting started. We already are working with our colleague Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, who is excited and eager to host us in Michigan, and with other colleagues who want to bring us to their States to talk to young people. Give us your ideas. You can tweet them at #futureforum. Put it on Instagram. You can find us on Facebook. Tweet. Facebook. Instagram. Use social media, #futureforum. Give us your ideas because the goal is for us to listen to you and then to work here in a bipartisan way to act on your behalf. This conversation will continue. Our work will go on until we have lifted the burden that stands in the way of young, aspirational entrepreneurs. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SWALWELL of California

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to recognize and honor the accomplishments of Las Positas College in Livermore, California. Las Positas has been serving residents of the Tri-Valley with quality educational and vocational training for the past forty years. Las Positas serves 8,500 students from all walks of life. Their dedication to training and educating all those that seek to better themselves, from recent high school graduates to veterans to mid-career professionals, is second to none. In the heart of one of America's fastest growing business and residential regions, Las Positas College has been a staple for higher education and skill development for decades. The college provides the local rapidly growing technological, science, and business industries with the trained personnel they need to be successful. Las Positas' slogan is ``Students First,'' an ideal mantra that all institutions of higher education should follow. It exemplifies the goals of providing an excellent, equitable, and complete education. On this day we recognize Las Positas College as being one of the premier educational institutions in the California Community College System for the past forty years and I urge my colleagues to join me in wishing them continued success in the future.

Mr. SWALWELL of California

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of an exemplary scientist, Richard Post. Post was a remarkable physicist and inventor at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, California. Post was a passionate inventor who had his name on over 34 patents. In the 1970s he introduced the possibility of lightweight composites that could possibly store great amounts of renewable energy. In recent years, his research focused primarily on methods of storing renewable energy in a flywheel. Post's research sought to combat global warming by using flywheels to make renewable energy sources more accessible and affordable. Post's extraordinary career spanned over 60 years. After World War II, when Post was stationed at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and assigned to Pearl Harbor, he completed his graduate studies at Pomona College and earned a Ph.D. in physics in 1950 from Stanford University. Post spent a year at what would become Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working with Nobel Prize winners and noted nuclear physicist Herb York, who would become LLNL's first director. Post followed York to LLNL just months after the lab opened in 1952. In 1978 he received the prestigious James Clerk Maxwell Prize in Plasma Physics. Post will long be remembered for his contribution to sustainable energy and his work and efforts will be continued by his colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I invited my colleagues to join me in honoring the life of Dr. Richard Post.

Mr. SWALWELL of California

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Speaker, today I recognize and congratulate the Chabot College women's basketball team on a remarkable championship run that ended with the Gladiators bringing home the first place trophy for the California Community College Athletic Association women's state basketball championship. On Sunday, March 22, the Gladiators of Chabot gave Mt. San Antonio College their first loss of the year in the championship game. This was the Gladiator's first state championship, but we know that it will not be their last. Prior to this year, Mt. San Antonio had won six of the last ten state championships. I am proud of the Gladiators for bringing the trophy home to Hayward and Northern California. Since 1998 only one other Northern Californian team has won the championship. The Gladiators showed grit, determination, and focus in their narrow victory over a tough Mt. San Antonio team. A late three pointer put the Gladiators on top and free throws down the stretch sealed the deal. Head Coach Mark Anger and his staff have led a truly exemplary group of student athletes for the entirety of the season, finishing with 31 wins and only four loses, and clinching Chabot College's first Coast Conference North Championship in 13 years. I want to give special recognition to stand out players Morgan Green, who received the State Player of the Year, the MVP Final Four, and the MVP Coast Conference North awards; Alana Simon, who was first team All State, All Tournament Final Four, and fist team All Conference; and Michelle Townsend, who was third team All State, All Tournament Final Four, and first team All Conference. I wish the best of luck to all of the players and coaching staff of the Chabot College Gladiators. Go Gladiators!

Mr. SWALWELL of California

Mr. SWALWELL of California. So I would ask the gentleman, I am looking through our Twitter feed here, and we have got a number of people who have kind of chimed in on it. One young person just tweeted at us, Dolores Tejada. She is a child of immigrants from Guatemala, and she is the first in her family to go to college. Her parents, she said, make the minimum wage, and she has been working for 6 years at a nonprofit and pays $350 a month on her student loan debt. She said without this payment, she would buy a car--she currently has to share one with the entire family--and she would move out of her parents' house. Have you heard stories like Dolores' in your district or across our country?

Mr. SWALWELL of California. Thank you. I don't think we could end on a more inspirational note than the eloquent words from our former chairman from Connecticut, Mr. Larson. This is about the future. I am proud to be a sponsor of the Social Security Fairness Act. I am glad that is getting some attention this evening. To summarize, the Future Forum and what we aspire for young people to have is not a handout when it comes to student loan debt, not a complete free pass where you just take on government investments and you don't give anything back. What we are saying is that if you are qualified and you worked hard and you have the student loan debt, it should be easier than it is today. We should be able to pass Joe Courtney's bill and allow you to refinance. We should find every way possible to reduce this debt for each person as low as we can. And if you are a student today, the government should not make money on your student interest loan. They shouldn't make money. If you are qualified and able to go to college, especially if you are like the gentleman from Pennsylvania or myself and you are the first person in your family to go to college, we should reduce every barrier to college because it is a part of achieving that American Dream of starting a family, owning a home, buying a new automobile, and saving for a secure golden retirement. So I thank the gentleman from Connecticut for his help this evening and coming down as a special cameo guest appearance. And I also thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for, again, being a part of our Future Forum. You can tweet us at #futureforum and we will continue this conversation until we address what is the greatest moral crisis of our generation--student loan debt. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SWALWELL of California. We have become in the Bay Area a place where approximately 75 percent of the venture funding is going right now. There are a lot of smart, young, energetic determined people with good ideas, but they don't have a lot of funding. And for them the decision becomes, well, I have got this job right now that pays my student loan debt and pays my other bills, but I have this great idea, which is my passion, which is my dream. But if I leave my job and I risk it all, I still have this debt; it is going to follow me, and it is going to be really hard if this doesn't take off. I see that decision point so often across the Bay Area. I just think, as you said, we are not asking to just completely say to every bank, You no longer can collect on this debt. I think what we are asking is, Let's start the conversation. How do we reduce it? How do we refinance it? How do we give people more money in their pocket every month so that they can help themselves lift up their families and help our economy? I see in the Chamber here with us our former caucus chair John Larson, the gentleman from Connecticut. I am putting him on the spot a little bit here. But I know he cares just as much as the gentleman from Pennsylvania and I do about what young people in his district are doing and how student loan debt affects him. So I am just wondering if our former chair could weigh in on what we can do in the Congress to help young people with student loan debt.

Mr. SWALWELL of California. The bay area is a beautiful place to live. It is 80 degrees there this week. It is one of the most educated places in the world. It has an innovation economy that is charting the course for the new American economy and is really defining how the American worker is going to work going forward. But the biggest downfall, the downside, if there is any in the bay area right now, is the cost of living. It costs so much to own a house. It costs so much for health care and starting a business. There are so many costs to be in the bay area today that it is pricing out young people. So if you go to a good school, you are qualified, you make it to a good school, you take on the student loan debt, and you want to go into the workforce, with the debt that you carry, first, chances are you are not going to be able to live anywhere near where you are going to work because you are not going to be able to afford it. I had the California Association of Realtors in my office today. Our local rep, Otto Catrina, was telling me how hard it is for him. He told me the story today of somebody who works at one of the largest tech companies in America. This person makes, he said, over $100,000 a year. And because of the student loan debt that she has, she is having a very, very difficult time buying a house. That is somebody who makes over $100,000 a year, and that is in the upper echelon of incomes in our country. Can you imagine the middle class worker, the hard-working American who is making $40,000, $50,000 a year, wants to maybe go do some good and teach in a classroom? How is that person going to live near where they work? How is that person going to buy a home? How is that person going to start a family and have kids? So I am glad the gentleman asked that, because those are the stories I see back where I grew up. That is why people care about that issue.

Mr. SWALWELL of California. We are looking at Twitter, and I see Jenna on Twitter from New York City, who says: I chose a State school as the affordable choice over better schools where I was accepted and still have $30,000 in student loan debt. Are you seeing that in Pennsylvania where the State universities are starting to see their tuitions go up almost as much as the tuition at private universities?