Fixed rates: student loan fight.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Citings - Brief article

ON JULY 1, the rate paid by new recipients of federally subsidized student loans jumped from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. Lawmakers knew the agreement setting the lower rate was set to expire but did not act in time to keep it from doubling.

After having missed their due date, members of Congress started pulling all-nighters in an attempt to figure out how to keep offering this expensive giveaway to young voters and their anxious parents. It has not been lost on Democratic lawmakers that student loans were one of the major issues animating the Occupy Wall Street movement.

While the loan debate was heating up on Capitol Hill, the Congressional Budget Office released a report showing that the proposed reforms, which would tie loan student rates more closely to market rates and impose an overall cap, would cost about $22 billion during the next 10 years. The report...