Warren Announces Sweeping Plan for Free Public College and Student Loan Debt Forgiveness

Sen. Elizabeth Warren continued her rollout of impressive policy proposals Monday morning, unveiling her plan to overhaul secondary education and forgive student loans debt.

In a post on Medium, Warren detailed a $1.25 trillion plan to cancel the student loan debt of tens of millions of Americans and make all public colleges tuition-free. Warren claimed the whole plan could be funded by what she calls her “Ultra-Millionaire Tax”—a two-percent annual tax on families with $50 million or more.

Warren’s plan also calls for the creation of a $50 billion fund for historically black colleges and universities, as well as increasing federal grants meant to help students cover other costs like books or room and board. On the student loan front, Warren said she would immediately drop a maximum of $50,000 of debt from anyone with a household income under $100,000; those that make less than $250,000 would also have the chance to have a portion of their loans forgiven. As some on the left have already pointed out, her plan is far wider in scope than Sen. Bernie Sanders’ College for All plan, which called for student loan refinancing and lower interest rates.

Coming on the heels of Warren’s call for Congress to impeach President Donald Trump on Friday, the college plan is the latest in a long line of exhaustively detailed policy proposals the Massachusetts senator has championed since jumping into the 2020 race. Warren’s extensive public lands policy proposal, rolled out last Monday, included a call to end all oil drilling on public land or offshore sites and laid out protections from future attempts to monetize culturally and spiritually important landmarks. She’s also called to end the filibuster, nix the Electoral College, and bust up the Silicon Valley corporations, among about a dozen other fantastic ideas.

We’ve had our significant differences, but at this point (he writes, almost a full year before the first primary) it feels pretty clear that Warren deserves to be among the frontrunners in the crowded Democratic field. Unfortunately, the question isn’t solely one of good ideas, but also one of whether her campaign can match the fundraising efforts of milquetoast white guys named Pete and Beto. Up to today, despite the limp half-ideas foisted by the non-committal cardboard cutouts, the answer to the latter question has been a firm “no.” For the sake of my savings account, here’s hoping that changes.