Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has backed or proposed plans during her 2020 presidential campaign that total up to $129 trillion in spending over the next 10 years.
Along with backing the Green New Deal ($94 trillion) and Medicare for All ($32.6 trillion), which total an estimated $126.6 trillion in estimated government spending over the next decade according to various studies, three of Warren’s major proposals alone cost $2.365 trillion: opioids ($100 billion), canceling student debt and offering free public college ($1.25 to $1.565 trillion), and universal child care ($700 billion).
Warren has won praise on the left for saying she has “got a plan” for various issues, and she has proposed an “ultra-millionaire,” 2 percent tax on Americans worth $50 million or more—it rises to 3 percent on Americans worth at least $1 billion—to pay for many of her projects, claiming it will raise about $2.75 trillion over the next decade.Alongside Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.), Warren unveiled a $100 billion initiative to combat the nation’s opioid epidemic on Wednesday. She wrote in a Medium post that the federal funding would be doled out over 10 years to provide state and local governments resources for prevention, treatment, and recovery.
Last month, Warren pitched a plan to offer universal free public college and cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt for nearly 45 million Americans. Her own campaign found the price tag to be $1.25 trillion, with eliminating tuition costing $610 billion and forgiving debts costing about $640 billion. The Urban Institute guessed the actual cost of forgiving debts was $955 billion, which would raise the price for the proposal to $1.565 trillion.
Warren’s plan has been criticized as being favorable to the rich and universities. Among other concerns, some policy analysts fear it could create an “arms race” of sorts that forces people to buy more education in a trend called “credential creep,” which would wind up hurting lower-income Americans, particularly blacks and Hispanics. It could also cause universities to hike tuition costs.
