Stop Quoting Talking Points

From the Times piece on student loan reform:

"The Democratic majority decided, well look, while we're at it, let's have another Washington takeover," said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and a former federal education secretary. "Let's take over the federal student loan program."

The rest of the piece is really solid, with some nice info and analysis covering everything from CBO scores to HBCUs. But these kinds of boilerplate quotes never really give you a clear idea what the other side actually thinks. I think (though I don't know) that conservatives would hate this because you don't get a full sense of their opposition. It just feels like a quote stuck in there to say "See, I called somebody."