Scripps Howard Foundation Wire

Students Duncan Robinson, left, of University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Julia Burzynski of Washington University and Josh Odam of University of Massachusetts-Amherst promote debt free college at the Capitol. Democratic lawmakers say they want Hillary Clinton to join other Democratic presidential candidates to endorse the idea. SHFWire photo by Quentin Misiag

WASHINGTON — Progressive Democrats rallying behind a national bipartisan goal of debt-free college who have received love from half of 2016’s Democratic presidential hopefuls had a firm message to Hillary Clinton: It’s your move.

Armed with over 400,000 petition signatures and more than 70 congressional backers, several liberal lawmakers, lobbyists and college students took to the Capitol on Wednesday June 10 to help more students go to college without sinking into debt.
“The next thing would be to have Hillary Clinton mention student loan debt in her [campaign],” said Marissa Barrow, a spokeswoman for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

The committee’s co-founder, Adam Green, said financial liabilities “must be a central issues in the 2016 presidential debate.”

The lawmakers and progressive group representatives also said they hope that Republican presidential candidates will come around to the idea.

According to a January poll conducted by GBA Strategies, 71 percent of likely 2016 voters across all political parties and affiliations support debt-free college. The idea of debt-free college is the number one issue that would have gotten Democrats who didn’t vote in the 2014 midterms to do so, the poll found.

[I]n a May 18 visit to Iowa, Clinton appeared to have embraced a national debt-free college standard saying: “We have to deal with the indebtedness – to try to move toward making college as debt-free as possible.”

Half of the Democratic presidential hopefuls have explicitly supported the idea.

“Our ultimate goal should be simple: Every student should be able to go to college debt-free,” Democratic presidential candidate and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said in a recent national email to his supporters.

And while he hasn’t publicly thrown his support behind a college graduation sans debt, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., did endorse President Barack Obama’s proposal for free education at two-year community colleges, while going a step further to include the first two years at public colleges.

A pair of the seven co-sponsors in attendance Wednesday said 2016 congressional leadership need to make a debt-free college system a priority.

In an interview following the address, Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., said he plans to introduce legislation that would regulate for-profit colleges if the Department of Education doesn’t take action soon.

That move, Grijalva said, would come on the heels of the collapse of one of the nation’s largest for-profit higher education systems, Corinthian Colleges Inc.

Grijalva and six co-sponsors from the House and Senate led the effort from inside a room packed with about 100 people at the Capitol Visitor Center: Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii; and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Reps. Grijalva, Keith Ellison, D-Minn.; Mark Pocan, D-Wis.; and Katherine Clark, D-Mass.

Warren, who many had urged to run for president, spoke about her early life.

“Good morning, I am Elizabeth Warren and I am a former student,” she said before raucous applause.

She described growing up on the fringes of the middle class and raising a family as a single mother: “College was not in the cards for a kid like me.”

But Warren said that a move as a teen to an area with nearby community college kick-started her collegiate career for just $50 a semester.

“I grew up in an America that was investing in a kid like me,” Warren said.

Schatz, Schumer and Warren and Grijalva, Ellison and Clark introduced two separate resolutions in late April to allow college students to graduate without debt.

But the resolutions don’t say how they would pay for the plan. Instead, they are waiting for their party’s presidential candidate to draw up the specifics. It could involve either the states or the federal government each paying part of the cost.

Maija Ross-Hall, 19, a rising junior at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Duncan Robinson, 21, a senior at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, were two of many students at the press conference.

Robinson said he owes some $25,000, despite commuting to school to save money.

“Debt is like an inconsolable anchor,” said Ross-Hall, who said that at least 12 of her hometown friends had to opt for a community college path or no college because they couldn’t afford it.

Some GOP presidential hopefuls, such as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., have said colleges need to do more.

“Our colleges and universities must do their part by making it among their highest priorities to find the right balance between quality and cost. And simplifying the tax benefits of higher education will help students deal with the cost of higher education as well,” he said in a February address at Miami-Dade College.

Rubio also proposed an “income-based repayment system,” that would peg repayments to income.

Schatz, who has been one of the more vocal proponents of the debt-free system, called the Democrats’ announcement “an outside-in-strategy,” but one that will likely be thwarted by influential Republican House Speaker John Boehner.

“What we’re doing here is an act of patriotism,” Schatz said. “If we don’t do anything, that torch is going to flicker.”

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