A deal that freezes interest rates for all student loans issued after July 1, 2013, was reached Thursday by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine.
The measure, backed by King and seven other senators, will go to a vote before the full Senate sometime next week, said Scott Ogden, King’s press secretary in Washington.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would save U.S. taxpayers $715 million over the next 10 years.
Also backing the bill were U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.; Richard Burr, R-N.C.; Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; Tom Carper, D-Del.; Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; and Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
“As elected officials, we have a responsibility to work with one another to move the country forward, and today I am proud to say to the American people that we have done just that by bridging the partisan divide to act in the best interests of our nation’s students,” King said in a prepared statement.
The “Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act” requires that, for each academic year, all newly issued student loans be set to the U.S. Treasury 10-year borrowing rate and not the changing daily rate, according to a release issued by King’s staff.
The resulting interest rates for loans taken out this year, after July 1, 2013, would be 3.86 percent for subsidized and unsubsidized loans for undergraduate students, 5.41 percent on unsubsidized loans for graduate students and 6.4 percent on PLUS loans for parents and graduate students. The interest rate would be fixed over the life of the loan.
“Additionally, this bill protects against the threat of unforeseen circumstances by imposing a cap to ensure interest rates never exceed 8.25 percent for undergraduate students, 9.5 percent for graduate students, 10.5 percent for PLUS borrowers,” according to the news release.
King said he applauded his colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, “for coming together to forge a long-term, market-based solution that will lower and cap interest rates for every student taking out a loan and finally get Congress out of the business of setting rates.
“This type of good-faith, give-and-take compromise is exactly how Congress should work for the country,” King said.
Sen. Manchin echoed King’s comments, saying the bill was a “common-sense” solution.
“It is refreshing that on such an important issue we stopped playing politics with our students’ future to come up with a bipartisan, permanent fix that lowers interest rates for all students, especially the poorest, while also putting in place strong protections to ensure that student loan interest rates never become unaffordable,” Manchin said.
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