US Senator and progressive icon Bernie Sanders, running for President as a Democrat, will propose cancelled more than US$1.6 Trillion in college student loan debt.

He's proposing paying for this with a Wall Street tax that would reportedly raise more than $2 Trillion over the course of ten years.  This is uncharted territory for the Democrats, going even further than the proposal from Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of Bernie's rivals for the party's presidential nomination.  The Sanders plan would forgive all student debt, while Warren's proposal would cap the amount and base levels on income.

"This is truly a revolutionary proposal," said Sen. Sanders as quoted by The Washington Post.  "In a generation hard hit by the Wall Street crash of 2008, it forgives all student debt and ends the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation to a lifetime of debt for the 'crime' of getting a college education."

Bernie's proposal would go a long way towards easing economic and racial inequality.  A Brookings Institution study found that four years after graduation, "black graduates have nearly $25,000 more student loan debt than white graduates".  But if that student loan debt was eliminated, research from the Roosevelt Institute found that the racial wealth gap of white to black households - which was 12:1 in 2016 would drop to just 5:1, meaning that more young people would begin their careers on an even playing field.