Anna Paulina Luna, Jared Moskowitz aim to force vote on capping student loan interest

Two Florida lawmakers have launched a bipartisan effort to force Congress to address student loans.

U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Pinellas Republican, announced she would file a petition that can push forward a floor vote if 218 House members, a majority, sign it. She already has the support of U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Parkland Democrat, and the petition in this case would advance a bill (HR 2003) filed by U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican.

“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 debt,” Luna posted on X.

The Florida lawmakers appeared jointly on CNN to discuss the proposal, one that focuses not on existing student debt, which Moskowitz noted had become a partisan issue, but on stopping the problem from worsening.

“There is broad bipartisan agreement that student loan debt is holding Americans back, yet Congress has failed to act,” Moskowitz said.

“Our bill would cap federal student loan interest rates at 2%, helping borrowers get ahead while preserving access to higher education. The more money Americans can save on interest for their loans, the more money they can put into the economy.”

The bill in question would cap student loan interest rates at 2%. Right now, many loans have rates that have climbed as high as 6.39% for undergraduate loans and 7.94% for graduate or professional Direct Unsubsidized loans. For Direct PLUS Loans, rates have climbed as high as 8.94%.

“Student loans were supposed to help people build a better future, not trap them in a cycle where they can barely make a dent in what they owe,” Moskowitz said.

“This discharge petition is about forcing Congress to do its job. Members can either stand with borrowers and support a bipartisan solution, or they can defend a broken system that keeps people stuck under high interest rates.”

The discharge petition process has grown increasingly popular in a tightly divided Congress in recent years, with Luna at the forefront of employing them. She filed the first discharge petition of the current Congress over an effort to allow lawmakers on maternity leave to vote remotely. That reached the required signatures in March, but Luna withdrew it after Speaker Mike Johnson agreed to address the concerns with a different system.

She said the current issue demands more attention than leaders of either parties are willing to give to it right now.

“I joined the military. I don’t have student loan debt,” she told CNN.

“But I also understand what it’s like for someone trying to better themselves. Maybe they don’t have the ability for their family to assist so they have to take out the loans. I think the whole goal and objective is to make sure that these people are not working their entire life in indentured servitude essentially in order to pay back student loan debt.”