In weekly calls and in meetings over the past few months, Hillary Clinton’s policy team has been soliciting input from policy experts with ties to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, with the goal of making student loan reform the core of Clinton’s economic agenda.

The effort to make college more accessible — a litmus test for liberals and key to attracting grass-roots support on the left — comes as the Clinton campaign finds itself under increasing pressure to accommodate progressive demands. Yet it also could provide Clinton with a signature domestic policy issue, similar to health care for Barack Obama in 2008. With a student debt crisis climbing upward of $1.2 trillion, Clinton’s camp views the issue as one where the former secretary of state could drive the conversation and create a mandate for reform.


In one of the clearest signs of the importance the policy team — headed by senior adviser Ann O’Leary — is placing on the issue, student loan reform is expected to be one of the earliest policy rollouts after Clinton’s campaign kickoff Saturday. The campaign is expected to unveil its student loan plans in detail in mid-July, multiple sources said.

To the great relief of restive progressives, Clinton’s campaign has sought out policy experts with strong ties to Warren, who has crusaded on the issues of making college more affordable and refinancing student loans so that students get the same interest rates on federal loans as banks do on theirs.

Heather McGhee, president of the liberal think tank Demos, has discussed the issue directly with Hillary Clinton, sources said. McGhee’s think tank is aligned with Warren, whose daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, serves as chairwoman of the board of Demos.

The Clinton campaign has also sought advice from Rohit Chopra, the top student loan official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who was hired by Warren when she launched the agency. Chopra remains close with Warren, who recently endorsed him as her top candidate to replace Ben Lawsky as the next New York State superintendent of financial services, after his name was floated in the news media.

Other experts who have also been involved in discussions with O’Leary and her team, sources said, include Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos; economist Gene Sperling; James Kvaal, who was Obama’s policy director in the 2012 election; and longtime Clinton advisere Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress.

None of the policy details have been finalized, and it’s still unclear how Clinton plans to pay for any of the proposals currently being discussed.

But on the table is a plan to support debt-free college — including in that reducing the cost of attendance. That goes further than either of Clinton’s Democratic opponents, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, have discussed when addressing the issue of debt-free college. Sanders has used it to mean simply covering the cost of tuition, and O’Malley has focused more on capping student loan payments.

It’s not clear yet exactly what form Clinton’s debt-free college proposal will take — whether students will pay based on a percentage of their income or carry some obligation based on their ability to pay.

But covering the cost of attendance is appealing to the progressive policymakers advising Clinton. “The total cost of attendance is a more expansive view of the actual cost of higher education,” said Huelsman. “We and other groups have encouraged Clinton to include the cost of attendance as the definition of debt-free college. That would be a big deal.”

Also under discussion is allowing students to refinance their loans, an issue that Warren championed in a bill that was defeated last year by Republican opposition. “It would help a lot of middle-class families with student debt,” said Huelsman.

Outside experts are also pitching the campaign on a bill of rights for student loan carriers and risk-sharing for colleges, which means a school would be penalized if a student defaulted on loans. Both of those are currently under discussion with campaign officials.

“It doesn’t hurt to have had a lot of people in the more progressive side of the Democratic Party say we want this to be a key issue going into 2016,” Huelsman said. “It seems like they want to do something big on this. I’m extremely encouraged.”

O’Leary has invited a group of experts to an hours-long briefing at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to discuss these issues.

A campaign spokesman declined to comment about the meeting or the policies under review.

But the Clinton campaign has made it clear that, even in its ramp-up phase, the issue is at the forefront of their planned agenda. “What voters are looking for in this election is someone who is going to be a champion for everyday people,” campaign manager Robby Mook said in a CNBC interview in May. “For young people, that’s debt-free college, that is finding that job after you graduate.”

Clinton herself has addressed it in her early forays on the campaign trail. “We have to deal with the indebtedness — to try to move toward making college as debt-free as possible,” she said last month in Iowa.

Clinton’s most engaged moment so far during the roundtables she has participated in was with Bryce Smith, a 23-year-old bowling-alley owner in Iowa, who told her student loans were harming his ability to access credit for his small business. “I’ve never heard anyone so persuasively link it to the slowdown in business startups,” Clinton told him.

She has also praised Obama’s $60 billion community college plan, which would provide students with two years of free community college. Her plan, however, is expected to be more expansive and influence more institutions than just community colleges.