Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is moving to force a House vote on capping federal student loan interest rates at 2%, bypassing her own party's leadership to deliver relief to the 42 million Americans trapped in what she calls "indentured servitude" to the education debt machine.
A discharge petition lets lawmakers rip a bill out of leadership's grip and onto the floor if a majority of House members sign on. Luna, a Florida Republican, is wielding it because nobody in GOP leadership was going to schedule this vote on their own. The bill also has a Republican co-sponsor in Rep. Mike Lawler of New York and Democratic backing from Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida — a sign the issue cuts across party lines, even if the political class prefers to keep it as a wedge.
"This is not a bailout," Luna said. "This is about making sure Americans who are trying to build a better future don't have to spend their whole lives trying to pay off their debts."
Moskowitz laid out the math plainly: "It's very hard to pay principal when you're at 6%, 7%, 8%. You're mostly paying interest." He's right. The typical borrower in the now-defunct SAVE plan carries roughly $57,000 in debt at a 6.7% interest rate, according to higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. At that rate, principal barely moves — the government gets its cut first.
The pressure is mounting. Federal Reserve Bank of New York data shows delinquent student debt hit a record $171.4 billion in the first quarter of 2026. More than 300,000 borrowers have already exited the dead SAVE plan, and millions more face higher payments if they don't switch to new options before policy changes hit July 1. The Education Department's response? A temporary 1% rate reduction for auto-pay enrollees through June 2028 — a band-aid on a hemorrhage.
Luna's 2% cap would let borrowers actually pay down what they owe instead of feeding compounding interest indefinitely. No debt cancellation, no handout — just a ceiling on what the federal government can charge its own citizens for the crime of trying to get an education.
The question now is whether enough House members — Republican or Democrat — will sign the petition and force the vote, or whether leadership on both sides will let it die quietly. The education debt industrial complex has spent years extracting wealth from working Americans with Washington's blessing. Luna just called the bluff.
Fortune's coverage of the same date focused entirely on adjustable-rate mortgage structures, offering no reporting on the Luna discharge petition — a telling editorial choice about what the business press considers newsworthy when 42 million Americans are drowning in federal student debt.
