US Election 2020: Bernie Sanders Offers To Forgive All Student Debt

US President hopeful Bernie Sanders has offered to cancel all of $1.6 trillion student debt as Democrats compete to offer student loan fix.

The Vermont senator's plan has no eligibility criteria and will be available to approximately 45 million student loan borrowers of the country.

The plan gives a new financial model that will put 0.5% fee on all stock trades, a 0.1% fee on all bond trades and a 0.005% fee on all derivatives trades. Sanders expects it will raise more than $2 trillion over the next 10 years.

"We will make a full and complete education a human right," Mr Sanders told reporters on Monday.
"The American people bailed out Wall Street," he said as he outlined the plan on Capitol Hill. "Now it is time for Wall Street to come to the aid of the middle class of this country."

"This proposal completely eliminates student debt in this country and ends the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation, the millennial generation, to a lifetime of debt for the crime of doing the right thing - and that is going out and getting a higher education."

The race for Democratic Party's presidential nominee is heating up and the candidates are proposing solutions to tackle mounting student debt.

Other than Bernie Sanders the race is dominated by former Vice President Joe Biden and another progressive Elizabeth Warren.

Under senator Elizabeth Warren's plan only households with limited income will be eligible for the relief in student loan and the plan will require $1.25 trillion to be spent. She also proposed to eliminate tuition at public colleges.

The Republicans are presenting Bernie Sander's proposal as a choice between socialism and capitalism while the Democrats themselves seem leery of the heavy expense.

“That’s Trumpian,” said senator Jon Tester (D-Mont.) of Democratic Party.

“Higher ed is out of control cost-wise, we’ve got to do some things about it, but you can’t just say it’s going to happen. You have to have a plan to make it happen,” he said. “I agree with what he’s trying to do here, but I don’t think just saying it makes it happen.”

“It is a lot of money,” he added.

Mr Sanders' proposal is co-sponsored by Democratic congresswomen Pramila Jayapal and Ilhan Omar.

Democrats are scheduled to pick a White House nominee in summer next year to run against Republican President Donald Trump in the election of November 2020.