What is Elizabeth Warren’s New Student Loan Debt Proposal?

Of all the President Candidates running in 2020, Senator Elizabeth Warren has proposed the biggest and best possible plans for getting rid of student loans.

Not only has she called for cancelling 95% of outstanding Federal student loans, but she’s also asking to make 100% of public schools tuition-free.

Here are the core tenets of her newly proposed plan:

  • Immediately eliminate $50,000 in student loan debt for anyone who has a household income under $100,000 per year
  • Offer a varying level of debt cancellation for anyone with a household income between $100,000 and $250,000 per year
  • Don’t require anybody to pay taxes on the debt forgiveness elements mentioned above (typically, Forgiveness IS taxed, see my page on Student Debt Forgiveness & Taxable Income for details!)
  • Make Private Student Loans eligible for Cancellation benefits as well (this is unheard of – no one has EVER suggested offering similar benefits for Private Loans!)
  • Streamline the whole process for approving Federal Student Loan Forgiveness Benefits, using data the Government already has access to (this be HUGE for making BDAR, Closed School Discharges, PSLF, etc. much more useful programs)

To be perfectly honest, this isn’t just the best student loan platform I’ve seen presented, it’s a revolutionary one that’s light-years ahead of everybody’s else’s plans, including the wildly popular Bernie Sanders Free College Plan from the last Presidential election cycle.



But Before I Unveil the Details of Her Plan…

Let me first explain something that you should definitely keep in mind – even if Senator Warren wins the Presidential Election, it would take YEARS before any real financial relief could arrive.

In the meantime, you’re going to need to look elsewhere for assistance with your student loans.

If you're truly struggling with student debt, then you should also consider paying a Student Loan Debt Relief Agency for help. Why? Because the people working at these companies deal with student loans all day, every day, and they're your best chance at figuring out how to get your loans back under control.

I've interviewed all sorts of debt relief agencies over the past 10 years, talking to all sorts of so-called "experts", and I can tell you that in all honesty I've only found two companies I trust to offer actual financial relief to people struggling with student loans.

For help with FEDERAL Student Loans: Call the Student Loan Relief Helpline at 1-888-906-3065. They will review your case, evaluate your options for switching repayment plans, consolidating your loans, or pursuing forgiveness benefits, then set you up to get rid of the debt as quickly as possible.

For help with PRIVATE Student Loans: Call McCarthy Law PLC at 1-877-317-0455. They will negotiate with your lender to settle your private loans for much less than you owe, then get you a new loan for the much lower, settled amount. NOTE: McCarthy Law can ONLY help with Private student loans.

If you do decide to call one of these companies and you have a bad experience with either of them, PLEASE make sure to come back and let me know about it in the Comments!


Who Wouldn’t Senator Warren’s Plan Help?

One thing I do want to make crystal clear is that the new Warren Proposal will NOT help everybody with student loans, and basically, that it’s only useful for people who don’t make a ton of money.

First, there’s a hard cap on benefits, with people who have a household income over $250,000 being excluded completely from any of her new programs.

Second, there’s a soft cap on benefits, with a phased or gradual decline in value to anyone who has a household income between $100,000 and $250,000.

So you can see how that sliding scale would operate, Warren’s Proposal explains that someone who’s household income is $130,000 would receive $40,000 in cancellation benefits, while someone who’s household income was $160,000 would receive $30,000 in cancellation benefits.

As you can see, that means a pretty substantial savings even for people who make quite a bit of money.

And that may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your politics and your financial status.

For MOST Americans, this sounds like a great thing. For MOST student loan debt holders, it’s a fantastic one.

Personally, I am wholeheartedly in agreement with trying to help Elizabeth Warren get this Proposal through Congress.


Understanding Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Free College Plan

Another tenet of Senator Warren’s student loan debt reform proposal is to make college 100% tuition-free for everybody.

In her own words, she seeks to:

Give every American the opportunity to attend a two-year or four-year public college without paying a dime in tuition or fees

If her proposal were approved as written, then the Federal Government and State Governments would be forced to split the costs of tuition and fees, funding the full price of a college education for basically everybody.

With that said, she wants this to be put into place WITHOUT having any impact on “need-based financial aid or academic instruction”, which is a little bit of a misnomer to me, because I think that while you could keep academic instruction exactly as is (colleges won’t care as long as they’re still being paid), I don’t understand why we’d keep need-based financial aid around after costs are totally covered.

Maybe she’s thinking of retaining FAFSA-driven funds for other costs? Like living expenses, food, etc. I’m not entirely sure, and it’s not clarified, but I’m sure we’ll get additional details as discussions about her proposal continue in the days, weeks and months ahead of the 2020 Election.


How Does the Warren Plan Seek to Pay for These Benefits?

The first question most people will ask after hearing this new Warren Proposal should be, how will it be paid for, as it’s going to be wildly expensive.

But it sounds like Senator Warren has that all buttoned up pretty simply, and she thinks that placing a new 2% annual tax on “ultra-millionaires” will be enough to cover all of the costs.

Specifically, this ultra-millionaire tax would only be felt by families who are worth at least $50,000,000, which seems pretty fair to me considering that once you reach that level, a 2% loss isn’t going to have any impact on your actual daily life.

In terms of numbers, there are only 75,000 families in the entire United States who would get hit by that ultra-millionaire tax, so it’s a very small portion of the population, and one that most people would argue already has plenty of money.

I think you’ll see HUGE push-back on this plan from Conservatives and the Elites, because that 2% will add up to some significant costs from the truly excessively wealthy Americans who basically pull the strings in the Media and in Congress.

But we’ll see how it goes…


How Does Elizabeth Warren’s Plan Compare to the Other 2020 Presidential Candidates?

Senator Warren’s Student Loan Debt Proposal is much, much better than any of the other suggestions I’ve seen from the other 2020 Presidential Candidates thus far, but it’s still pretty early and too tough to tell where the full details of everybody else’s plans will end up.

For example, Bernie Sanders hasn’t announced his full plan yet, and now that Warren has the best thing out there, I can’t really see him doing less than she’s calling for.

Also, Beto O Rourke and Kamala Harris will have to get pretty competitive with their plans if they want to catch the eyes and ears of young people, and while I can’t imagine Joe Biden proposing anything even remotely close to this, he’s also going to need to get pretty aggressive to get any attention as well.

We’ll just have to see how things shake up.

To keep track of how things play out, make sure to bookmark my Guide to the 2020 Presidential Election Candidates Plans for Student Loans.



Read Elizabeth Warren’s Student Debt Plan for Yourself

As with so many other things these days, it can be hard to find the actual source of news, but in this case, all you need to do is follow the Senator on Twitter.

Here’s a link to her original Tweet introducing the new Warren Student Loan Proposal, which will link you to her full Proposal on Medium.com:



Have Other Questions About Student Debt?

Even if Elizabeth Warren’s Proposal is shot down completely, don’t let that dismay you, because there are all sorts of other EXISTING benefits packages available to people with student debt.

In fact, I’ve created over 100 different Guides on all the Federal and Private student loan relief programs currently on offer, and you can find them right here throughout my site!

To find out how to get Help with Federal Student Loans, look at my Guides on:


And for Help with Private Student Loans, see my Guides on:

No matter how much student debt you’ve got, whether it’s Federal or Private, you’re almost certain to find some form of financial assistance from one of the programs outlined above.

And if you still have questions about dealing with your loans after reviewing my Guides, please feel free to ask them in the Comments section below.

Just make sure to tell me if your loans are Federal or Private, because that’s going to be the big determining factor deciding which benefits packages you’ll have access to!


Finally, Please Help Me Out!

This website is basically a second full-time job, and I can only continue to spend so many hours writing new Guides like this one, updating old ones, and offering personalized advice if more people start visiting FSLD.

If you found the content here to be useful, please consider doing your part by sharing a link to my site with your friends and family.

Post a link to this Guide, or any other page of the site, on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit or anywhere else that you share content.

The more people who visit, the more time I can spend writing up helpful, informative posts like this one, and helping people like you.

Thank you for your support!


Disclaimer:Information obtained from Forget Student Loan Debt is for educational purposes only. You should consult a licensed financial professional before making any financial decisions. This site receives some compensation through affiliate relationships. This site is not endorsed or affiliated with the U.S. Department of Education.

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Tim's experience struggling with crushing student loan debt led him to create the website Forget Student Loan Debt in 2011, where he offers advice, tips and tricks for paying off student loans as quickly and affordably as possible.