Fresh from being named one of the nation’s 10 Best Senators in the April 24 issue of Time Magazine, Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill., SFS ’66, LAW ’69) returned to the Hilltop last night to reflect on his path into politics during a speech in Gaston Hall.

“It meant so much to me to be a student here,” Durbin said “I didn’t make much of an impact here, but it made an impact on me – a big one.”

Durbin, who ran – and lost – in three straight elections before being elected to the Senate, said that many of his experiences at Georgetown shaped the policy decisions he makes today.

“It was a tenuous situation that I became a student at Georgetown and was able to finish,” Durbin said, citing the value of the 1958 National Defense Education Act in enabling students to receive loans for their education.

“It meant that a lot of students, many the first in the family, could go to college,” he said. “I was one of them.”

In light of the recent passage of a $12.7 billion cut to federal student loan programs, Durbin said the “financial institutions won” over the rights of students to consolidate and pay student loans.

“It is so typical of the [Republican Party] to give financial institutions the opportunity to profit at [students’] expense,” he said, criticizing the “attitude” of the Republican Party. “That’s the kind of battle we fight all the time.”

With President Bush’s approval rating waning in the low thirties in most polls, Durbin predicted that the 2006 midterm elections will serve as a referendum on the current administration and that Democrats will increase their seats in Congress.

Durbin also weighed in on the immigration debate in Congress. While he said that he supported Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward Kennedy’s (D-Mass.) immigration bill, which includes provisions for tighter border security, stricter enforcement of immigration laws and a visa program for workers, Durbin said the nation must also address the 11-12 million illegal immigrants in its borders.

“I think we need to create a path, not an easy one, not a short one, for them to become citizens,” he said.

Durbin also charged members of the Bush administration with misleading the American public with intelligence reports before going to war in Iraq.

President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “were exaggerating to the point that average Americans thought there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” Durbin said. “They were wrong.”

In response to later questions about the war in Iraq, Durbin said that it now falls to the people of Iraq to become a nation.

“I think we need to say to the Iraqis `If you’re going to be a nation, then act like a nation, defend yourself like a nation,'” he said.

The speech was sponsored by GU College Democrats.