Elizabeth Warren: Let’s Tax Millionaires To Allow Students To Refinance Their Debt

[kpete]

Elizabeth Warren: Let’s Tax Millionaires To Allow Students To Refinance Their Debt

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) laid out a new plan that would tax millionaires and use that revenue to help students refinance their student loans.

Delivering the keynote address at the Higher Ed Not Debt Campaign launch event on Thursday at the Center For American Progress, Warren argued that America faces a choice: “Do we invest in students, or millionaires?” Warren plans to introduce a bill that would create an “America that invests in those who get an education” by revising the tax code and enacting the Buffet rule

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Warren’s plan would allow students with outstanding student loans to refinance at lower rates. The cost of the change would be covered by a “dollar for dollar” effort where for “every dollar the Buffet rule brings in, we use that dollar to refinance student loan debt,” she explained. She estimated that recent graduates who borrowed the maximum in undergraduate loans could see their payments drop by $1,000 a year and total interest paid over the life of the loan could be cut nearly in half. Students with graduate loans or borrowers from private lenders would save even more, Warren projected.

If the Buffet rule exceeds its expected revenue, then the plan would call for lowering the interest rates even further. All college graduates still repaying federal student loans would have the option to refinance to a lower rate, saving graduates thousands of dollars per year.

MORE:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/03/06/3370141/elizabeth-warren-student-debt-buffet-rule/

[polemic_realism]

1. I am an indentured servant.

All I wanted was to better myself.

[JDPriestly]

2. Those side are you on? That of the billionaires, or that of the students who wanted to make

a difference in the world that they couldn't make without higher education, of the students who sought upward social mobility or of those who so often as with the Koch Brothers, inherited their wealth or at least enjoyed some advantage at birth that led them to become wealthy later on?

I have friends who, in their 50s still owe large student debts and who, because they teach or have some other career that does not pay enough to enable them to pay their debts quickly, will be paying for their debts until the day they die.

Are they indentured servants as someone suggested above?

Yes. They are, and they dare not anger their employer because they can't even discharge their student loan debts in bankruptcy. And by the way, chances are the billionaires and the corporations from which the incomes of billionaires are likely derived, can discharge their debts in bankruptcy.

The bankruptcy law as changed in , I think maybe 2005, during the Bush era, to place an unfair burden on people who owe on student loans. A lot of Democrats voted for that change.

A good place to start in correcting our out-of-balance economy would be to make our bankruptcy code more equitable, to make the laws that apply to bankrupt students apply to bankrupt corporations and vice versa.

When students take out education loans, they are investing in their business. They should be able to deduct all the costs of education from their earnings after they return to the working world, and if a corporation can discharge a debt for equipment used in its business in bankruptcy, then a student should be able to discharge the debt for his education in bankruptcy.

[MindMover]

3. The one trillion dollar ticking time bomb ... tick, tick, tick .....

[DhhD]

4. Good Frame of Reference: Its Students or Billionaires, not one political party against another.

[xocet]

5. How about free education for all up to and including a Ph.D. if that is the desired goal? n/t

[Plucketeer]

7. LOL.... like that'll ever happen

The most terrorizing thing for a Rethug is an informed and intellectual individual. No way are they gonna get behind fostering such folks!

[panfluteman]

6. The Big Political Smokescreen

You said that it's not Democrats against Republicans here, it's students or billionaires. As with so many other issues, the big, all purpose smokescreen of Democrats versus Republicans is being used here as well to obscure the real issue, which affects all Americans, and the very future of our country, and what kind of country would work best for all of us. Divide and conquer is what the fat cat billionaires at the top have to do to keep us in the dark, and to keep us divided and squabbling amongst ourselves, so that nothing gets done. And it's worked out pretty well for them, don't you think?

[fasttense]

8. It sure does work out pretty well for the fat cat billionaires

And when the fat cat billionaires destroy the economy with out of control betting and get bailed out, we blame the politicians. We should put the blame exactly where the blame belongs on the fat cat billionaires.