Sen. Elizabeth Warren set to roll out student debt plan with Rep. James Clyburn

[babylonsister]

https://thinkprogress.org/sen-elizabeth-warren-set-to-roll-out-student-debt-plan-with-rep-james-clyburn-028b2185dd7b/

Sen. Elizabeth Warren set to roll out student debt plan with Rep. James Clyburn
The two plan to put forward legislation in the coming weeks that dovetails with a proposal to cancel student loan debt made by Warren on the campaign trail.
Jason Linkins
Jun 16, 2019, 1:23 pm


Among the myriad proposals that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has offered up while on the 2020 campaign trail is a plan to confront the nation’s growing student loan crisis by cancelling a significant amount debt currently held by tens of millions of Americans. Now, with an assist from House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC), Warren will move the timetable on this proposal up, with an eye toward introducing legislation in a few weeks’ time.

As Roll Call’s Niels Lesniewski reports, this Warren-Clyburn team up is set to happen ahead of the South Carolina representative’s “World Famous Fish Fry,” which is one of those primary season confabs that traditionally draws Democratic presidential candidates to South Carolina to parlay with state Democratic officials and voters eager to hear from the contenders. Per Lesniewski:

According to a statement provided to CQ Roll Call, the student loan debt relief legislation would terminate up to $50,000 in student loan debt per borrower. The two lawmakers say the proposal, which they plan to introduce sometime in the coming weeks, would help 95 percent of borrowers, with three-quarters of people with student loans seeing their debts wiped out entirely.

These details broadly track with the proposal Warren pitched on her campaign’s blog at Medium. There, Warren provided the brass tacks:

My plan for broad student debt cancellation will:

Cancel debt for more than 95% of the nearly 45 million Americans with student loan debt;

Wipe out student loan debt entirely for more than 75% of the Americans with that debt;

Substantially increase wealth for Black and Latinx families and reduce both the Black-White and Latinx-White wealth gaps; and

Provide an enormous middle-class stimulus that will boost economic growth, increase home purchases, and fuel a new wave of small business formation.

Warren plans to pair her debt relief proposal with a plan to prevent the next student loan crisis by opening the door to a free college education that would give “every American the opportunity to attend a two-year or four-year public college without paying a dime in tuition or fees.” Warren has proposed that the proceeds for her universal free college plan to be paid for via what she calls an “Ultra-Millionaire Tax ,” which would levy a 2% tax on the 75,000 families with $50 million or more in wealth annually.

more...

https://thinkprogress.org/sen-elizabeth-warren-set-to-roll-out-student-debt-plan-with-rep-james-clyburn-028b2185dd7b/

[VarryOn]

1. Prediction

This will be a very popular proposal on the campaign trail, and the rest of the candidates will be in favor. But, some will set a higher limit than $50,000.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. Just curious what other student borrowers think of this proposal...anyone? thanks, nt

[customerserviceguy]

3. Can I get a refund

of the payments I made on my student loan a few decades ago?

[SWBTATTReg]

4. Yeah, I thought about this too (mine) but somehow I doubt the writers of any legislation would...

ever allow past student loan payments to be recaptured...

[customerserviceguy]

5. Of course, it's not going to happen

It's all about feeding the ever-gaping maw of the higher education industry. If you gave each college student $50,000 a year, the cost of tuition would go up by that much.

If I went to get a business loan, I'd have to show some reasonable plan to pay back the loan. Maybe student loans should face at least a bit of the same type of scrutiny.

[SLClarke]

6. The opposite

If you look at what happened in Ireland when college education became funded, the Irish had an influx of companies wanting an expert and well-educated work force. Also, schools do not get the student loan money - banks do. However, imagine what it will do to this country in terms of education. Maybe education will become important here.

[customerserviceguy]

7. Maybe we'll prioritize what education

can be funded by a student loan. Engineering and nursing, sure. Philosophy and art history, maybe not so much.

[Turin_C3PO]

8. The liberal arts are very valuable to society.

Many people in various industries have a liberal arts degree.

[customerserviceguy]

9. Yes, I met several of them when I went to work

I dropped out of the University of Washington after two years, and went to work in a title insurance company in 1976. There were people there with economics and art history degrees doing the same thing I did with my lousy couple of years of the basics. And we were all being paid the same money.

Their four year degrees didn't get them anything more than my couple of years of college. And that was back when having a four year degree pretty much guaranteed you a job, it's just not like that any more.

How many of those liberal arts majors are working in a field even remotely connected to the high priced education they got?

[Turin_C3PO]

10. I argue that a well rounded, educated, society

benefits from having people with liberal arts or any other type of degree. A college education isn’t just about job training.

[customerserviceguy]

12. And there are more ways to get an education

than simply shoving more and more money into a bloated higher education system. Maybe we ought to start exploring them. Online universities charging tuition at the same rates as brick-and-mortar institutions is an outrage, for what is essentially glorified television. We have the infrastructure in place to give education without the massive expense of travelling to and/or living at an educational edifice.

And if there's no job at the end of the tunnel, there's no way to pay back the student loan. Maybe someday, we'll have a society that produces things for "free", and people can lay about and get educated on all kinds of things that suit their fancy, but we're nowhere near there yet.

[Turin_C3PO]

13. The cost of education is ridiculous.

Students shouldn’t have to borrow small fortunes to pay for school. I’m not sure why college was so much cheaper in the old days but we need to, somehow, go back to that.

There’s no easy answer frankly.

[customerserviceguy]

14. I can think of one

Look at the two areas of the economy where inflation is much higher than the rest of the economy. One is higher education, and the other is healthcare. Both have a situation where payment is third-partied, in other words, "somebody else" pays the bill. Or, in the case of higher education, the cost is deferred over many years, often without the borrower having to have a workable plan to pay off the debt, or even realizing just what it's going to cost in the long run.

Medical expenses and higher education costs are the only two places where a person with little or no credit can rack up an enormous debt. There's waste, fraud, and abuse at all levels of both systems. The so-called "Varsity Blues" scandal was just the tiniest tip of the iceberg. Oh, well, at least people still have bankruptcy to get out of medical debt.

[MichMan]

16. Loan availability is one of the reasons costs go up so fast

As long as students keep borrowing regardless of cost, what incentive is there for colleges to not keep charging more ?

[MichMan]

17. The student loan program was taken over by the Federal gov in 2010

Banks are no longer the ones giving the loans.

Of course the colleges are the ones benefiting from the loans. Where do you think the money goes?

[ecstatic]

15. I've dramatically slowed down the repayment of my loans

ever since she proposed that idea. lol. I only have a few thousand left to pay though.

Regardless of my situation, I think it's a great idea! If corporations can get billion dollars in relief, so should regular people. trump & rethugs gave trillions to corporations with their taxscam. Money they did not need or even want. I don't want to hear SHIT from those assholes regarding the national debt. They fucked up the national debt. Period.

[LiberalLovinLug]

11. Now if they'd just show some appreciation and vote