Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is looking to eliminate all student loan debt for tens of millions of Americans.
The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate unveiled the details of her plan in a Medium post on Monday, calling for the cancellation of up to $50,000 in student loan debt for those with a household income of less than $250,000. Those making below $100,000 would have $50,000 forgiven, while those making between $100,000 and $250,000 would be entitled to $1 forgiven for every $3 above $100,000. For example, she says someone with a household income of $130,000 would have $40,000 canceled. Those with a household income of more than $250,000 a year would not have debt eliminated.
Warren says that this plan would cancel all student loan debt for 75 percent of Americans and at least some debt for 95 percent of Americans.
Additionally, she says every American will be able to attend a two-year or four-year public college tuition-free. This plan will cost $1.25 trillion over 10 years, according to Warren's estimates, and she says her proposed wealth tax will pay for it.
This is just the latest major policy proposal to be announced by Warren in recent weeks; she previously announced a plan to break up the major tech companies and unveiled a universal child-care proposal. Warren in an interview with CNN's MJ Lee touted her new plan and said it "goes further" than Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Brendan Morrow
The second and final presidential debate was supposed to have a section devoted to national security, and perhaps that's what a few unilluminating questions about North Korea and foreign election meddling were intended to be. Or perhaps, as I first assumed given the topical order, that section was cut for time. Either way, this bare minimum of attention to foreign policy is inexcusable for an examination of the two candidates running to be commander-in-chief in a country addicted to perpetual war.
Our Constitution assigns power to initiate military conflict to Congress, and Congress, as a matter of habit, does its best to abdicate that responsibility in favor of unaccountable executive war-making. The Constitution also gives the president authority to prosecute wars already underway. As it happens, we have several.
The war in Afghanistan is our nation's longest ever, now in its 19th year and long since lost to any sort of American "victory." It was given no substantive attention tonight, nor was it discussed in the first debate.
The war in Iraq was also not addressed. That failed regime change project has cost us about $2 trillion, created the power vacuum that led to the rise of the Islamic State, and has a civilian death toll estimated in the hundreds of thousands. Too boring for a debate, perhaps?
Yemen, where the United States is enabling the world's worst humanitarian crisis, was ignored. So too recent (and in some cases ongoing) U.S. military interventions in Syria, Libya, Somalia, and more than two dozen locations in North and Sub-Saharan Africa.
These are literally matters of war and peace, life and death. They are also matters in which one of these men soon will have considerable discretion to leave or stay the course of two decades of inhumane and counterproductive foreign policy. That discretion requires interrogation. It didn't get it tonight. Bonnie Kristian