Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), a mid-tier candidate in the Democratic presidential primary, unveiled on Monday an ambitious proposal to cancel student loan debt and make all public universities tuition-free. In what may or may not be a coincidence, the date of Warren's announcement, April 22, just happens to be the birthday of Vladimir I. Lenin, the architect of Soviet communism.
NEW: Elizabeth Warren wants to cancel student-loan debt for 42 million Americans — and make all public colleges and universities tuition-free.
Read about Warren's new higher-ed plan at @RollingStone: https://t.co/6PXn8AOE3t
— Andy Kroll (@AndyKroll) April 22, 2019
Warren's plan, which the candidate has described as "bigger" than the one put forward by her socialist rival Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), would offer $50,000 in student loans forgiveness for Americans earning less than $100,000 a year, and calls for a massive increase in federal spending to eliminate tuition and fees for students at public colleges and universities. Warren's campaign estimates that her plan would cost $1.25 trillion over 10 years, and would be paid for by instituting a "wealth tax" on high net-worth individuals.
Warren, who is currently tied for fifth place among Democratic primary candidates according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, was also the first Democratic presidential hopeful to call on the House of Representatives to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Donald J. Trump following the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Comrade Lenin, a notorious Russian meddler, was born on this day in 1870 in Simbirsk, a town on the bank of the Volga River that has since been renamed (Ulyanovsk) after the father of the Russian Revolution, a controversial event that would unleash widespread suffering across the Soviet sphere of influence for nearly a century, and rack up a death toll in the tens of millions, if not more.
In another possible (albeit unlikely) coincidence, April 22 is also Earth Day.