Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said on Friday’s broadcast of “CBS This Morning” that she was not telling parents who have already paid their children’s tuition “tough luck.”

Last night at an Iowa town hall, a father who saved for his daughter’s higher education costs questioned Warren on her student loan forgiveness plan, which would cancel student loan debt for approximately 42 million Americans.

Warren said, “We build a future going forward by making it better. By that same logic, what would we have done? Not started Social Security because we didn’t start it last week for you, or last month for you? Think of it this way, when I was growing up, I wanted to be a public school teacher, my family had no money —”

Host Tony Dokoupil interjected, “Are you saying tough love to these people, senator?”

Warren continued, “No, what I’m saying is there was a $50 a semester option for me. I was able to go to college and become a public school teacher because America had invested in a $50 a semester option for me. Today that’s not available, and our kids have taken on a trillion and a half dollars in student loan debt. We have got to back that up and say we’re doing better going forward. That we’re not going to say the next generation has to take on $2 trillion in debt, and what? The next one $3 trillion or $4 trillion, or $5 trillion? We don’t build an America by saddling our kids with debt. We build an America by saying we’re going to open up those opportunities to kids to be able to get an education without getting crushed by student loan debt.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN