Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed Tuesday to ease federal student loan debt with executive authority, in a policy rollout aimed at attracting young voters.
Warren said that as president, she would not wait for Congress to approve her plans to cancel or modify federal student debt. Instead, she would directly authorize the Department of Education to provide as much as $50,000 in relief to about 95% of student loan borrowers.
She has said she would relieve $640 billion of student debt, a pledge that would be funded by her proposed tax on wealth for households with assets of more than $50 million. That, however, depends on the wealth tax passing Congress, which would take longer and might be difficult.
Warren trails Senator Bernie Sanders in support from younger voters, a crucial bloc for Democrats in the November election.
Under the Higher Education Act, Warren argued, the Department of Education has the discretion “to modify, compromise, waive or release student loans.” She says that would allow her administration to cancel federal student debt.
In her proposal, she vowed to simplify the cancellation application process, increase outreach to borrowers to encourage them to apply for relief and assist in improving borrowers’ credit history.
”It would take a tremendous amount of creative legal reading to allow for a blanket discharge of nearly all student loan debt within the existing regulatory framework,” said Dennis Cariello, co-chairman of the education practice at Hogan Marren Babbo & Rose Ltd. and a former senior attorney at the Education Department.
The rules governing the federal student loan program and the secretary of Education’s authority to cancel debt are “really designed for individual determinations, like a specific borrower’s inability to repay in a reasonable amount of time, not for widespread forgiveness,” he said.
Student loan experts and consumer advocacy groups, who pushed President Barack Obama on a similar idea, found his administration as too timid to tackle the burgeoning student debt crisis and its impact on the household balance sheets and U.S. economic growth.
Warren also promised to end federal aid to for-profit colleges, crack down on predatory lending and address racial disparities in the education system.
“Our government has cleared far bigger hurdles to meet the needs of big businesses when they came looking for bailouts, tax giveaways, and other concessions,” Warren said in a Medium post on Tuesday. “Instead of catering to the needs of the powerful and wealthy, a Warren administration will make the system work for the millions of Americans who worked hard to get an education, only to be trapped in debt.”
Her tax on households with assets of more than $50 million would, she said, eliminate private student loan debt for an estimated 42 million Americans. The campaign estimates that of the $2.75 trillion the wealth tax would raise over a decade, $640 billion would go to student debt relief.
The plan would eliminate as much as $50,000 in student debt for anyone with household income of less than $100,000, and partly cancel debt for those who make as much as $250,000. Beyond $100,000 in income, the $50,000 in per-person debt forgiveness falls by $1 for every $3 earned, zeroing out after $250,000.