Is Elizabeth Warren's College Plan Really Progressive? Yes

By Ganesh Sitaraman, Guardian UK

05 May 19

Some have argued that Warren’s plan isn’t progressive because middle-class and upper-middle-class people benefit from it. But that is misguided

ast week, a number of commentators and thinktank analysts pounced on Senator Elizabeth Warren’s plan to cancel student debt for 95% of Americans, provide universal free college at public schools, increase Pell Grants, end federal support of for-profit colleges, and invest heavily in historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Their criticism: the plan isn’t “progressive” because middle-class and upper-middle-class people benefit from it.

As I read these critiques, it struck me that although these commentators use the phrase “progressive”, they mean it in a narrow way that is not only misleading when applied to the Warren plan, but also at odds with how the new generation of economic progressives think about public policy. Let me explain. (And full disclosure: I have been a longtime adviser to Senator Warren).

Critics of the plan, at times, seem to use the term “progressive” to mean that benefits go to those at the bottom of the income distribution and not at the top. Think of this as akin to the phrase “progressive taxation”, in which tax rates are lower for the poor and higher for the wealthy. This is fine so far as it goes – except that the critics gloss over the fact that the proposal is paid for by a 2% wealth tax on people with more than $50m in assets. In other words, a fraction of the top 1% is paying for the entirety of the plan. On this definition, then, the plan is obviously – and extremely – progressive, because it puts the burden on the wealthiest people and gives benefits (debt cancellation, Pell Grants, free college, HBCU investments) to the vast majority who are not wealthy.

But the critics also suggest that if any significant amount of benefits go to middle-class and upper-middle-class people, then the plan is also not progressive. This is where things get confusing. The critics can’t mean this in a specific sense because the plan is, as I have said, extremely progressive in the distribution of costs. They must mean that for a policy to be progressive that it should benefit the poor and working class more than it benefits the middle and upper classes. This is a bizarre and, I think, fundamentally incorrect use of the term progressive.

The logic of the critics’ position is that public investments in programs that help middle- and upper-class people isn’t progressive. This means that the critics would have to oppose public parks and public K-12 education, public swimming pools and public golf courses, even public libraries. These are all public programs that offer universal access at a low price (or free) to everyone. And I can assure you that middle-class and upper-middle-class families visit national parks, send their kids to public schools, and check out books at the public library. On the critics’ theory, these are all “regressive” because middle-class people benefit – and in some cases might benefit more than poor and working-class people from their use.

Perhaps the critics believe that these public institutions (and indeed, all public institutions of this type) are regressive and are bad public policy. But I doubt most people who identify as progressive would take that view – and indeed, many progressive economic policymakers would be quite hostile to it because progressives have long supported the creation of public goods. Schools, libraries and pools are all more than a century old, as are public utilities in electricity and water. Other public investments – like the national highway system – benefit everyone as well.

Progressives support public funding for these goods because they offer universal access to all people in our society, thereby expanding freedom and opportunity. They improve the economy in countless ways. And they stitch us together as a democratic society, both offering us places to encounter those who are different from us and giving us a shared set of institutions to debate about in the public sphere.

The critics might respond that they do not object to building public institutions but simply to debt cancellation for middle-class and upper-middle-class families, and that this aspect of the Warren plan is regressive. But this response shows that the critics have missed the point completely. The system of higher education financing has failed America. It has burdened a generation in debt, it has excluded millions from access to post-secondary school training and enrichment, and it has put the economy in a straitjacket.

The aim of a higher ed plan whose wide scope covers debt cancellation, universal free college, expanded Pell Grants, end federal support of for-profits, investments in HBCUs, is to make a fundamental structural change to how higher education works in this country. It is an attempt to clear out the failed neoliberal philosophy of debt-fueled education, and instead move towards a robust public higher education system. Some kind of post-high school training or education is now necessary for almost everyone, and so our democracy should offer it for free to everyone – regardless of race, wealth or geography – just like we do for K-12 education. And that ambition is quintessentially progressive.