Following up on Allison's post about a tentative deal in the Senate on student-loan interest rates, this Bloomberg story spells it out. Here are the basics, including a description of what has already been passed in the House:
The House-passed plan, H.R. 1911, would charge students 2.5
percentage points more than the yield of the last 10-year
Treasury note auction before June 1 and would cap rates at 8.5
percent. Under the tentative deal reached last night [among Senators], the interest rate for all Stafford undergraduate loans, subsidized and
unsubsidized, would be set annually at 1.8 percentage points
above the yield of the last 10-year Treasury-note auction before
June 1. The rate for undergraduate Stafford loans would be
capped at 8.25 percent…. This year, the yield of the last 10-year Treasury auction
before June 1 was was 1.81 percent; if the bill’s provisions
were effective now, 11 million students taking out undergraduate
Stafford loans this year would be charged an interest rate of
3.61 percent…. Under th[e deal] …, there would be larger
markups for graduate student loans, which would be capped at
9.25 percent. Borrowers of PLUS loans — who include graduate
students and parents of undergraduates — would be charged a
4.5-percentage-point markup from the yield of the last 10-year
Treasury auction before June 1…. Those borrowers
currently pay 7.9 percent interest; according to [Senate] aides, they
would pay 6.31 percent under the Senate compromise.
A Washington Post story explains that "[a]ll of these numbers are tentative and could likely change when senators
receive an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, which is
expected on Thursday, according to four aides with knowledge of the
negotiations. A deal has not yet been finalized, but if it is, a vote
could come next week."
The New York Times also has a story here.
