Arne Duncan Quotes

I voted for the Deficit Reduction Package with significant heartburn over the student aid provisions.

We simply can't keep providing money from the federal government in the form of subsidized or actual loans and Pell Grants when we don't have the money.

So I think there's a potential to make tuition free at public universities as part as young people doing national service. I think that is the most realistic option.

We need to make college affordable in price, and also have lower-cost student loans and more available grants for students.

Is there any more important problem than our lack of need-based scholarships? I think not.

When bright young minds can't afford college, America pays the price.

Pell Grants open a lot of doors, but they rely on a solvent government.

I haven't met one parent or one teacher in Missouri who thinks we should balance the budget by taking money from kids' classrooms.

Students often approached me about state-paid tuition while I was out campaigning. After I explained to them that if the state pays their tuition now, they will pay higher taxes to pay other people's tuition for the rest of their lives, most of them ended up agreeing with me.

It seems everyone knows a college degree is important, but few have a plan to keep it affordable.

I personally do not worship at the alter of a balanced budget.

The less that is applied to education, the less they [the people] will have to pay in taxation

Foreign policy debates are frequently segregated from domestic policy ones, so commentators who propose increasing the defense budget or sending more foreign aid are seldom asked to explain which domestic programs they’d cut or which taxes they’d raise, in order to find the money.

You can't balance the budget on the backs of nondefense discretionary spending.

Students can spend their money better than government can. It should not require a federal loan and decades of debt for students to get a college degree. Price limits access - plain and simple.

As Speaker of the North Carolina House, I've proven I'm a problem-solver, balancing budgets, cutting wasteful spending, and providing teachers with historic pay raises.

Connecticut would not be Connecticut if we cut $3.5 billion out of the budget. We are a strong, generous, hopeful people. We'd be taking $800 million out of education. You can't do that in this state.

We all have a role to play - the President, Congress, parents, students and schools - in making college affordable and keeping the middle class dream alive.

We should be trying to make education less expensive, not more.

We need to increase education budgets.

Given the best of all possible worlds, I would make a few changes. I would place emphasis on increasing the amount of funding that goes into programs like Pell Grants, that purely and simply award funds to students who really cannot afford full tuition.

I strongly support extending current student loan interest rates and increasing the college tuition tax credit for students and their families.

The promise of education reform can never be fulfilled without adequate funding, and by shortchanging our schools, President Bush is breaking his promise to our children.

However, this President sees no problem eliminating funding for Perkins Loans in his budget, even though the cost of tuition is rising and will continue to rise as the administration's policies force inflation.

So if a college education is indispensable, the challenge as I see it is how to make it more accessible.