Student Loan Interview- Rodrigo

In this video, it shows what democratic candidates wants to do with student loans. Building on his plans to make community college tuition-and-fee free in his 2017 College for All proposal, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders unveiled a new plan on Monday to cancel all student loan debt in America, partnering with Reps. Pramila Jayapal, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. On Monday, the group announced a new proposal that would relieve $1.6 trillion of debt for approximately 45 million people, regardless of income, including all private and graduate school debt as well. Sanders’ support for this latest plan represents an escalation in his policy arms race with Warren, who released a plan in April that would eliminate up to $50,000 of student loan debt for people earning less than $100,000 per year. In total, Warren’s proposal would cancel approximately $640 billion of student debt for approximately 42 million people. At a press conference on Monday morning, Sanders cut off a reporter who tried to ask a question about Warren’s proposal. Julian Castro, the former Housing and Urban Development Secretary and San Antonio mayor, has also called for partial student loan debt relief as a part of his larger education plan. On his campaign website, he has said that monthly payments should be capped at $0 until borrowers are earning 250% of the federal poverty line. Sanders and Castro have both said they would aim to make public college, community college, and trade schools / technical and vocational programs tuition-free. The Sanders-backed bill would allocate $48 billion per year for this purpose. Warren, by contrast, has written that she would eliminate tuition and fees at two- and four-year public colleges. In addition, the Sanders bill would triple work study, expand Pell grants, and allocate $1.3 billion per year for low-income students at historically black colleges and universities. By comparison, Castro’s education plan would allocate more than double that amount to HBCUs, at $3 billion annually. Warren’s plan is popular, with a Politico/Morning Consult poll indicating that a majority of registered voters supported the idea, when it was presented to them with no attribution. It remains unclear how much approval the Sanders or Castro plans currently have with voters. Over the last four years, college affordability and student debt have taken on a bigger role in presidential politics, but how to deal with the problem is still a contentious issue among the candidates in 2020. Just about every Democrat running for president has endorsed one of a variety of plans to make at least some public colleges or technical schools tuition-free or debt-free. All have proposed ways to reduce or even cancel student debt. Public higher education institutions are run by state and local governments, and the federal government is limited in how much it can affect their decisions. A plan by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would have the federal government pay two-thirds of the cost of free tuition (about $47 billion per year, according to his office’s estimate) and put states on the hook for the remaining third.To collect the funds, states would have to pledge to eliminate tuition and fees while maintaining their current funding levels for education. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has put forward a similar plan. Of course, it’s possible some states would choose not to participate. Other candidates have proposed different approaches. Several, including Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California and Warren are signed onto a bill that would provide 1:1 matching funds to states that commit to use the money to pursue “debt-free” public college for students to help them graduate without taking on loans. Still others like former Vice President Joe Biden have backed making college tuition-free, but only for two-year community colleges, an idea President Barack Obama proposed. On student debt, Sanders and Warren again represent the left flank of the party. Warren put out a means-tested plan to cancel up to $50,000 in student debt per individual. Households making as much as $250,000 could qualify for at least some debt cancellation, which would cover 95 percent of student debt holders by Warren’s estimate and wipe out all loans for 75 percent of student debt holders. Sanders has gone even further, proposing a wholesale elimination of all $1.6 trillion in student debt at once, financed by new taxes on financial transactions. Warren estimates her plan would remove $640 billion of debt.