photo credit: Crush Rush // Shutterstock

This week the first 2020 Democratic presidential debate will take place in Miami. On Monday, Senator Bernie Sanders revealed his plan on higher education that would erase about $1.6 trillion in student loans that is currently owed by millions of Americans.

Bernie is proposing that the federal government pay to get rid of the student loan debt that is held by 45 million Americans. He suggest that the money come from an new tax on Wall Street financial transactions. This means 0.5 percent tax on stock transactions and a 0.1 percent tax on bonds. He says this plan will raise more than $2 trillion over 10 years. The plan would also make public university, community college and trade school tuition-free.

“This is truly a revolutionary proposal,” said Sanders, who announced the plan with the support of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and a handful of other House Democrats. “In a generation hard hit by the Wall Street crash of 2008, it forgives all student debt and ends the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation to a lifetime of debt for the ‘crime’ of getting a college education.”

Free college is something that Bernie has been talking about since his 2016 presidential campaign. Others say issues come from trying to clear all debt instead of distributing benefits based off of income or other factors.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, another 2020 democratic candidate, is pushing for free-tuition college as well. She proposed $640 billion in student debt forgiveness. Warren has proposed forgiving up to $50,000 in student debt for those earning under $100,000, or about 42 million people. Under Castro’s plan, borrowers would not have to repay their loans until their income rose above 250 percent of the federal poverty line — about $64,000 for a family of four — after which it would be capped.

The student loan debt has grown from $90 billion to $1.6 trillion on two decades.

Written by Clarke Jones

Source: The Washington Post