1. Sen. Roberts visits ESU, discusses student loans,
healthcare
Rocky Robinson
United States Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) was greeted at the
doors of the Sauder Alumni Center by children from the Center for
Early Childhood Education last Friday afternoon. The kids made sure
Roberts did not leave empty handed, sending him home with a poster
they made.
“I don’t know if they knew how important of a person he was,
but they always enjoy meeting new people,” said Keely Persinger,
director of the CECE. “We talked about how he is an important
person that their moms and dads go to for help. I think Roberts was
really excited as well, and I think he would have rather sat down with
kids than go to the meeting. They are good ambassadors.”
Roberts took the podium for about an hour at the town hall
meeting. He covered a range of issues from higher education to
national security, saying over-regulation is the biggest problem facing
Washington.
Compromise is what Roberts said Washington needs to focus
on most.
“People do not want to give up their convictions, but they also
want to reach across the aisle and see if they get at least some
compromise to show they are working together,” Roberts said.
“Kansas I am not really worried about in regards to having town hall
meetings, to talk and to boast because we are going to agree 90, 95
percent of the time.”
In an interview after the meeting, Roberts weighed in on the
cost of higher education. He said he was not happy with President
Barack Obama’s takeover of the student loan program.
“The cost to the student is now about 6.2 (percent),” Roberts
said. “The difference goes to pay for the stimulus and Obamacare….
I really objected to that and that was my executive order, but
Congress didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Roberts said lack of discipline to the student loan program is
making it harder for students get and pay off their loans.

2. “Once again, you are paying 6.8 percent for that student loan
when a community banker might have given it to you for 3.8,” Roberts
said. “It is too expensive. These things should be paid off in five or 10
years. They shouldn’t be strung out over a 40-year period. That just
isn’t right.”
President Michael Shonrock met with Roberts before the
meeting.
“I appreciate when someone says, ‘What can we do to help
Emporia State University’,” Shonrock said. “It was wonderful to have
a U.S. senator come visit Emporia State.”
Roberts was born in Topeka and graduated with a degree in
journalism from Kansas State at Manhattan and still carries a
reporter’s notebook with him, which he showed to a student journalist
after the town hall meeting. Roberts served in the U.S. House of
Representatives for 16 years, beginning in 1981. He was elected to
the Senate in 1997 and is now the senior senator from Kansas.