Elizabeth Warren releases sweeping student debt cancellation and free college plan

By MJ Lee and Katie Lobosco, CNN Mon April 22, 2019

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday proposed eliminating the student loan debts of tens of millions of Americans and making all public colleges tuition-free, staking out an ambitious stance on one of the central policy debates of the 2020 Democratic primary.

Student debt and college affordability have become a key dividing line in the Democratic race, between more progressive candidates who favor sweeping new tuition and student-loan benefits and others who support more incremental adjustments to the way Americans pay for education.

Warren's new plan would forgive $50,000 in student loans for Americans in households earning less than $100,000 a year. According to analysis provided by her campaign, that would provide immediate relief to more than 95% of the 45 million Americans with student debt. The Massachusetts Democrat and 2020 contender is also calling for a drastic increase in federal spending on higher education that would make tuition and fees free for all students at two- and four-year public colleges and expand grants for lower-income and minority students to cover costs like housing, food, books and child care.

The campaign estimates that the plan would cost $1.25 trillion over 10 years.........To Read More...

My Take From Robin Siskel - This proposal by Warren is about as backwards as it gets. All it would do is serve to do is:

1) increase college costs (after all, if the government's paying for it and handing out even more grants, why not take advantage and raise prices?) and

2) incentivize financial irresponsibility. If there aren't reasonable expectations of being able to pay off the debt, you shouldn't ever be taking out the loan to begin with.

Not to mention the fact that typically the people with the highest student debt are those who chose to go to very expensive universities when far cheaper education is widely available, and who've gotten advanced degrees and therefore also typically have the best career earning potential/ability too. Add to that the fact that "the wealthy" are already paying far more than their "fair share" - e.g., nearly double the percent paid in taxes versus the percent they're earning in income as it is in our very, very progressive taxation system. While nearly 45 to 50% of our population pay NO income taxes at all or even get very significant money from the government.

Any way you cut it these proposals of Warrens are guaranteed to do the opposite of what she claims her intentions are - AND will help the wealthy far more than those who are less well off financially. Not to mention shifting MORE of this onto state and federal budgets all means that all the people who don't go to college (or don't have kids who go to college) or who still can't AFFORD to go to college will in fact be subsidizing those wealthy enough to go. Which makes ZERO sense.

It's one thing for the public to subsidize basic education thru high school on the grounds that all in our society need a base level of education, civics, history, math, etc... it's quite another to say that people who are service employees or tradesmen, truck drivers etc., who don't need and never got college educations ought to be footing the bill for people who choose career paths which require college - or even just decide to go to college because they haven't a clue what they want to do and everyone is saying "everyone SHOULD go to college" so they go, get a useless degree, and then wind up still in jobs which don't require a degree...

All Warren's sop of a "policy" here is, is yet one more big virtue signaling "woke" appeal to emotion for the left - especially aimed at the most gullible and least financially savvy voters who won't even recognize what this is - and which will result in exactly the opposite results than those promised. It's absurd all the way around. Also, I can't believe Warren herself isn't well aware of exactly what she's doing with this - which makes it pretty despicable if she does.

It's yet more of a push towards the grossly destructive Big Brother cradle to grave coddling and zero individual responsibility that the left is so set on - regardless of the fact that history shows us very. very clearly how utterly horrific the long-term results of central planning and Big Brother control always winds up being.