Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren doesn’t just want to cancel student debt for 42 million borrowers — she wants to do it on Day 1 of her presidency.

In a new plan released Tuesday, the Massachusetts senator wrote that after years as a policymaker on Capitol Hill, “I learned two key things. First, the student debt crisis is deeper than many experts thought was possible. And second, the Department of Education has broad authority to end that crisis.”

Hence, “we can’t afford to wait for Congress to act,” she added. “So I will start to use existing laws on day one of my presidency to implement my student loan debt cancellation plan that offers relief to 42 million Americans.”

Warren’s accelerated timeline of cancelling student debt for a wide swath of borrowers was noteworthy, experts said, because she was going to give the Education Department much more power to do so.

View photos Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks during a campaign event, Sunday, Jan. 12, 2020, in Marshalltown, Iowa. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) More

“What she's saying is that the [Education Department] has some existing authority under law to either modify or cancel student loans, and that she would use that authority to enact a big chunk of her legislative proposal on essentially Day 1 or something close to that,” Ben Miller, vice president for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress, told Yahoo Finance.

It’s a more “ambitious” interpretation of what the department can do though, he said. “Historically, the full tools of the Department of Education have not been used as much as they should have been. So I think it's interesting,” said Miller.

View photos (Graphic: David Foster) More

Warren’s Education Secretary will cancel student debt for 95% of borrowers

American borrowers hold more than $1.6 trillion in outstanding student loans as of November 2019, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

If elected, Warren said she would appoint a Secretary of Education to “modify, compromise, waive, or release ” existing federal student loans to match her student debt cancellation plan, which impacts 95% of borrowers (or 42 million people).

Warren would also direct the secretary to “use every existing authority” to “rein in” for-profit colleges, crack down on predatory lending, and “combat” racial disparities in higher education.

“Systemic discrimination in our broken student loan system has become a significant civil rights issue — the sense of urgency couldn’t be greater,” Student Debt Crisis Executive Director Natalia Abrams told Yahoo Finance. “Warren's plan... shows that presidents can take decisive action to combat racial disparities and restore the value of higher education for those working towards a better, more just future for us all.”

But does an Education Secretary have the right to cancel student loans without congressional approval? Warren and her team seem to believe so.

In a letter supporting her plan, experts from Harvard Law School's Legal Services Center wrote that Warren’s proposal “calls for a lawful and permissible exercise of the Secretary’s authority under existing law.”

View photos Sen. Elizabeth Warren, (D-MA) and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) hold a press conference to introduce the Student Loan Debt Relief Act to cancel student loan debt for millions of Americans on in July 2019. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) More