It Costs A Lot Less To Forgive All Student Debt Than It Does To Give The Wealthy Another Tax Cut

The post-debate Morning Consult poll shook up the Democratic primary quite a bit— at least for Kamala Harris. She surged into 3rd place behind Biden and Bernie and tied with Elizabeth Warren, after beating up on Biden in a way that seemed effective for many in the audience. She gained 6 points and Biden lost 5. In fact, everyone in the top 5 lost ground, except Kamala and Bernie.

• Biden- 33% (-5)
• Bernie- 19% (flat)
• Warren- 12% (-1)
• Kamala- 12% (+6)
• Pete- 6% (-1)

That polling surge for Kamala was reflected in her campaign's fundraising efforts as well. She raised around $2.5 million since the debate. 

While the corporate media focuses on all the superficial anti-Bernie crap it can muster, his ideas continue to dominate the Democratic narrative and move the party closer and closer to being a working peoples’ party again, something that was killed by both Jimmy Carter and especially Bill Clinton. Mona Chalabi, reporting for The Guardian, emphasized how the college debt forgiveness plan that Bernie introduced in the Senate— with a companion bill by AOC in the House— costs less than the Republican tax cut for the wealthy. “A 2016 plan for free college tuition,” wrote Chalabi, “didn’t go far enough for Bernie Sanders. In this election cycle, the candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination is promising to forgive all outstanding student loan debt. Although Congress has the legal power to write off such debts, voters might be skeptical about the government’s financial power to do so. In 2006, total student loan debt stood at $481 billion Since then, total student loan debt has more than tripled, now standing at $1.6 trillion.”

A counter-argument put forward by politicians like Sanders and the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is that Republican tax cuts have cost the government more money than would student loan forgiveness.

These claims are correct.

Estimates of the cost of the Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 vary. But the most recent and reliable numbers come from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which is the federal agency whose job it is to provide budget information to Congress.

This year, the CBO estimated that the new tax law would add $2.3 trillion to national debt by 2028. Those losses would partly be offset by economic growth of about $461 billion meaning that overall, the tax cuts would cost the country $1.9 trillion.

Without policy change, the US student loan debt crisis is projected to keep growing. Each minute, approximately $157,000 of student loan debt is repaid. But in the same minute, according to data from the Federal Reserve, $191,000 of new debt is borrowed.

And then there's the cost to Americans of Trump's tariffs/tax increases on average working families. I haven't heard and fiscal conservatives screeching about "how you going to pay for it," have you? Watch former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explain how this sleight of hand works: