Cancel Student Debt

Forty-three million Americans collectively owe $1.6 trillion in federal student loan debt, a burden that crushes economic mobility, delays homeownership, prevents family formation, and traps borrowers in decades of financial precarity.¹ The average borrower owes approximately $37,000, but many owe far more—particularly graduate students and those who attended for-profit colleges that delivered worthless credentials while extracting maximum tuition.¹ This debt crisis did not emerge by accident. It resulted from deliberate policy choices: decades of state disinvestment in public higher education, federal failure to regulate predatory lending and for-profit colleges, and a political consensus that treated education as a private investment rather than a public good.

The economic consequences extend far beyond individual borrowers. Student debt suppresses consumer spending, reducing economic growth. It prevents young workers from starting businesses, buying homes, or investing in their communities. It forces people to delay having children or forgo parenthood entirely due to financial insecurity. For millions of Americans, student debt represents a permanent sentence of economic precarity imposed in exchange for accessing the education our economy demands as a prerequisite for middle-class employment.

The Crisis Is Getting Worse

The Trump administration has made clear that it intends to punish rather than help student loan borrowers. In December 2025, the Department of Education announced it will begin garnishing wages of borrowers in default, with notices going out starting January 2026.² The administration has eliminated the SAVE Plan—an income-driven repayment program that provided affordable payments for millions of low-income borrowers—and transferred approximately 7 million enrolled borrowers to other plans with less favorable terms.³

Currently, more than 12 million borrowers—over 25 percent of all student loan borrowers—are in delinquency or default.³ Rather than helping these struggling Americans access affordable repayment options, the administration has chosen aggressive collection tactics: garnishing wages, seizing tax refunds, and intercepting federal payments. The Student Borrower Protection Center has called this approach “cruel, unnecessary, and irresponsible.”²

This punitive approach does nothing to address the underlying crisis. Garnishing wages from people who already cannot afford their payments does not magically create ability to pay—it simply pushes struggling families deeper into poverty while enriching debt collectors. Meanwhile, the administration has proposed gutting federal student aid programs to help fund tax cuts for the wealthy, ensuring that future students face even higher debt burdens than current borrowers.⁴

The College for All Act: A Real Solution

While the Trump administration punishes borrowers, members of Congress have proposed a comprehensive solution. In May 2025, Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Pramila Jayapal, and their colleagues introduced the College for All Act—the most transformative investment in higher education in sixty years.⁴

The College for All Act would make public colleges and universities tuition-free for 95 percent of students. All community college students would pay no tuition regardless of family income. Students from households earning up to $150,000 for single filers, or $300,000 for married couples, would attend four-year public universities without accumulating tuition debt.⁴ This covers the vast majority of American families while ensuring that higher education becomes accessible based on ability and aspiration, not ability to pay.

The legislation goes beyond tuition. It would double the maximum Pell Grant award for students at public and private non-profit colleges, helping cover living expenses, books, and other costs that prevent low-income students from completing their degrees.⁴ It would establish a $10 billion grant program to address equity gaps at underfunded public colleges and universities. It would triple funding for TRIO programs and double GEAR UP funding, expanding support services that help first-generation and low-income students succeed.⁴ And it would double mandatory funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and other Minority-Serving Institutions that have been systematically underfunded for generations.⁴

The College for All Act would be funded through the Tax on Wall Street Speculation Act, which imposes a modest tax on financial transactions: 0.5 percent on stock trades, 0.1 percent on bond trades, and 0.005 percent on derivatives.⁴ This financial transaction tax would raise an estimated $220 billion per year—well over $2 trillion over ten years—while curbing destabilizing high-frequency trading that serves no productive economic purpose.⁴ Wall Street speculation crashed the economy in 2008 and has produced repeated bubbles that harm working families. Making speculators pay a small fraction of their trades to fund education represents basic fairness.

The legislation has historical precedent. Over fifty years ago, many of America’s most prestigious public universities were tuition-free or virtually tuition-free. Countries including France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland currently provide tuition-free higher education and produce more educated workforces than the United States.⁴ Since the College for All Act was first introduced a decade ago, several states have already moved toward free college, including New Mexico, which now offers free tuition at all state colleges, and New York through the Excelsior Scholarship program.⁴

The Economic Case for Debt Cancellation and Free College

Critics claim student debt cancellation and free college would be fiscally irresponsible. These arguments collapse under scrutiny. Canceling student debt would stimulate economic growth, reduce inequality, and cost taxpayers far less than the corporate subsidies and tax cuts routinely approved by Congress.

Canceling $1.6 trillion in student debt would boost GDP by $86 billion to $108 billion per year, creating up to 1.5 million jobs annually over the first decade.⁵ Freed from monthly loan payments averaging $400, borrowers would increase consumer spending, start businesses, buy homes, and invest in their communities. The economic multiplier effect of debt cancellation would generate far more economic activity than the same dollars spent on high-income tax cuts, which recipients largely save rather than spend.

The fiscal cost must be understood in context. The federal government has already disbursed these loans; cancellation affects future revenue collection, not immediate budget outlays. Moreover, much of this debt would never be repaid under current programs. The government already expects to forgive hundreds of billions through income-driven repayment plans. Canceling debt now rather than collecting payments for decades and then forgiving the remainder provides immediate economic stimulus while acknowledging fiscal reality.

Congress routinely approves far larger expenditures for far less worthy purposes. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cost $1.9 trillion over ten years, primarily benefiting wealthy individuals and corporations.⁶ Annual military spending exceeds $800 billion. Bank bailouts during the 2008 financial crisis exceeded $700 billion to rescue institutions whose reckless behavior caused economic collapse. If the federal government can find trillions for tax cuts for the rich and bailouts for Wall Street, it can certainly afford to cancel student debt and make college free for working families.

We Must Cancel Student Debt and Make College Free

I support the College for All Act and will cosponsor it on day one. We must make public community colleges tuition-free for all students and public universities tuition-free for families earning up to $150,000. We must double Pell Grants so students can afford living expenses while pursuing their education. We must double funding for HBCUs, Tribal Colleges, and Minority-Serving Institutions that have been systematically underfunded. And we must pay for it all through a modest tax on Wall Street speculation.

The student debt crisis is not inevitable. It resulted from policy choices that prioritized austerity over investment, privatization over public goods, and corporate profits over student welfare. Different choices can solve it. We can cancel student debt. We can make public college free. We can treat education as the public good it has always been.

While the Trump administration garnishes wages from struggling borrowers and guts student aid to fund tax cuts for billionaires, we must fight for a different vision: one where every American can access higher education without being crushed by debt, where Wall Street speculators help fund the education of the next generation, and where the promise of opportunity is real for everyone regardless of their family’s wealth.

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