Sherrod Brown: “a couple of months ago a distraught mother from Cincinnati wrote me about the private loan her daughter had taken to go…”

“a couple of months ago a distraught mother from Cincinnati wrote me about the private loan her daughter had taken to go to college. Her daughter had borrowed $21,000, was facing a bill for over $100,000 as a result. She sent me the disclosure sheet on the loan represented in this chart because she could not believe what she saw. She took out a loan for $21,000 for 2 years of school. That loan grew, at an 18 percent interest rate, to almost $35,000 because there was a deferral on payback of the loan during her 2 years in school. So she ended up owing $67,000 for the life of the loan. That is why she ended up paying $102,000 because of this incredibly high interest rate for student loan, 18 rac{1}{4} ext{ percent}. I have shown this statement to a loan officer at a bank and also to my attorney. They both expressed to me they had never seen anything such as this and there must be a mistake. Unfortunately, the only mistake is Congress has failed to act to restrain the costs of these loans, which as we have seen, can carry interest rates sometimes in excess of 18 percent. It is not an isolated problem.…”