<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><BillSummaries>
<item congress="115" measure-type="s" measure-number="1628" measure-id="id115s1628" originChamber="SENATE" orig-publish-date="2017-07-25" update-date="2017-09-05">
<title>Know Before You Owe Federal Student Loan Act of 2017</title>
<summary summary-id="id115s1628v00" currentChamber="SENATE" update-date="2017-09-05">
<action-date>2017-07-25</action-date>
<action-desc>Introduced in Senate</action-desc>
<summary-text><![CDATA[<p><b>Know Before You Owe Federal Student Loan Act of 2017</b></p> <p>This bill amends title IV (Student Assistance) of the Higher Education Act of 1965 to expand lender disclosure requirements. </p> <p>A lender must provide a quarterly statement to a Federal Family Education Loan or Direct Loan borrower during a period when loan payments are not required. Such statement must include the current loan balance, original principal loan amount, interest rate, total interest paid, aggregate payments, the lender's or servicer's contact information, accumulated interest amount, and information about making payments while a student to offset interest accrual. It must also explain the option to pay accrued interest before it capitalizes and suggest a payment amount based on interest charged. </p> <p>Additionally, the legislation modifies loan counseling requirements for an institution of higher education (IHE) that participates in federal student aid programs. </p> <p>Currently, an IHE must provide one-time entrance counseling to a student who is a first-time federal student loan borrower. This bill requires an IHE to provide pre-loan counseling to a student borrower of a federal student loan at or prior to the first disbursement of each new loan. </p> <p>It revises and expands required elements of pre-loan counseling to include a borrower's estimated debt-to-income ratio at graduation, a statement to borrow the minimum necessary amount, a warning that high debt-to-income ratio makes repayment more difficult, options to reduce borrowing, and an explanation of the importance of on-time graduation. </p> <p>Prior to certifying a Federal Direct Loan disbursement to a student, an IHE must ensure that such student manually enters the exact dollar amount of the loan.</p>]]></summary-text>
</summary>
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<dc:language>EN</dc:language>
<dc:rights>Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain.</dc:rights>
<dc:contributor>Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress</dc:contributor>
<dc:description>This file contains bill summaries for federal legislation. A bill summary describes the most significant provisions of a piece of legislation and details the effects the legislative text may have on current law and federal programs. Bill summaries are authored by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress. As stated in Public Law 91-510 (2 USC 166 (d)(6)), one of the duties of CRS is "to prepare summaries and digests of bills and resolutions of a public general nature introduced in the Senate or House of Representatives". For more information, refer to the User Guide that accompanies this file.</dc:description>
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