Liz's Big Idea

The news media has apparently decided, without any votes being cast, that there are five (count 'em) five major players for the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 2020.

They are Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Kamala Harris, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg.  You may notice  Congressman Eric Swalwell is not listed. That is because Congressman Swalwell looked at the facts and realized nobody has ever heard of him that didn't watch the 24-hour news channels 24 hours a day, so he dropped out of the race. Or maybe, it was because of the vicious pounding he took in this blog a couple of weeks ago. Either way, he is out of the race and now there are only 500 Democrats running for their party's nomination.

The Big Five contains two very old men, a gay man of a medium-sized city, someone who wants to relitigate forced school busing, and a person who went out telling people she was a member of an aggrieved minority group when it happened to benefit her career.

That's who I want to focus on today; our buddy, Elizabeth Warren, Senator from Massachusetts.

Like the rest of The Big Five, Elizabeth Warren wants to fight.  She is always saying she is going to fight unlike the party's last nominee, the wallflower called Hillary Clinton.  On her website, Warren says she wants to  "fight to build an America that works for everyone, not just the wealthy and the well-connected".   If you want to join her in this "fight", she has conveniently added boxes showing $10, $25, $50, $100. and other, you know, just to make it easy for you.

Unlike the rest, Warren has decided to talk about her "plans" for the county.  She has "plans" out the wazoo. She has a plan for immigration. Politico says, "Warren calls for eliminating criminal penalties for people 'entering the country without authorization' but would leave in place civil penalties for illegal border crossings."   Translation:  Hey, y'all, just come on in.

But to me, Warren's plan on "student loan debt" really piqued my interest.

If you know anything about college, you know college is expensive for reasons that are not actually very clear.  The kids have to borrow money to go to school.  But there is a catch: you have to pay the money back. I know it sucks kiddos, but that's the way the world goes round. Just wait till you get a job and that stupid boss expects you to work and not look at your Instagram.

Warren, however, has come up with a "plan".  What if, by magic, it turns out the student didn't take out a loan, but rather, was given a gift?  Warren's plan is to cancel student loan debt.

Forbes magazine reports, "The ambitious student loan forgiveness plan would cancel student loan debt for more than 95% of borrowers, and would entirely cancel student loan debt for more than 75% of Americans with student loan debt. Warren believes that her plan would reduce the wealth gap in America and provide an economic stimulus to the middle class to increase home purchases and help start small businesses."  (Just for the record, Warren believed for years that she was a Native American.)

Forbes notes that student loan debt is the second highest category of debt behind mortgages and by 2023, 40% of the student loan borrowers could default on their loans.

Specifically, Warren's plan is this:

• Cancel $50,000 in student loan debt for every person with household income under $100,000.
• Provide substantial debt cancellation for every person with household income between $100,000 and $250,000.
• Not tax as income student loan debt that has been canceled.
• Also, make private student loan debt eligible for cancellation.
• Streamline the student loan debt forgiveness process using data and income information already available to the federal government.    (Forbes, Zach Friedman, 6/17/19)

Question: where will Warren find the money to pay for all of these loans?  Answer:  From the money tree. Her campaign says it will be a 2 percent tax on "Ultra Millionaires".  These are the 75,000 families whose net worth is over $50 million in net worth.  Fortunately for me, I made only $49 million last year, so I would be exempt.

I decided to see what the average voter thinks about this so I did what any well-rounded person would do. I created a highly scientific poll on my Facebook page.  I asked people to vote Yay or Nay on student loan forgiveness.

I had 60 responses. All were Nay.

Granted, most of my Facebook friends fall into the demographic category political scientists refer to as "old farts", but all of the reactions were negative.  The closest anyone came to a Yay was my pal William Joseph Wade III of Bangkok, Thailand  who said,  "Well they forgave banks that made much worse decisions than many of the students who had to borrow money just to find decent jobs." 

Bruce Burns, who was in my second-grade class, probably reflected the general mood of my friends that responded by saying, "HELL no. But one thing we should do is to crack down on schools that encourage students to go $200k in debt for junk degrees like 18th Century Bavarian Hygiene."

For the record, I did remind him that there is a big market for 19th Century Bavarian Hygiene majors.

I would say Warren's plan probably won't go over well in Middle America for the simple reason most Americans think if you borrow money you should pay it back unless something catastrophic happens and you graduate with a history degree from a small state school in the early '80's.  

But what do I know? I spent two years saying Trump would never become President.