Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, has kept his identity as a millennial and student-loan borrower front and center during his several years as a congressman. Now he’s hoping that experience will propel him to the White House.

“I want to be the student-debt solutions candidate,” Swalwell, 38, said in a recent interview with MarketWatch.

“ Swalwell’s proposals for dealing with student debt and college affordability fall in the middle of the progressive spectrum of what the Democratic candidates for president are proposing. ”

Swalwell’s proposals for dealing with student debt and college affordability fall somewhere in the middle of the progressive spectrum of what the Democratic candidates for president are proposing. But it’s a top priority for Swalwell: He said he’s committed to addressing student debt and college affordability in his first 100 days in office.

His urgency comes in part from his first-hand knowledge of what it’s like to pay back student loans. Swalwell began college paying almost nothing, thanks to athletic and academic scholarships he earned as a soccer player. But after two years, Swalwell got injured, transferred to different college and had to figure out how to pay for it. Then he went on to law school.

Despite working during both his college and law-school career, Swalwell graduated with about $150,000 in student debt. He’s paid some of it down — he says he owes a little bit less than $100,000 currently — and, if he won the presidency, he’d still be sending in student-loan payments from the White House. His intimate understanding of what it’s like to pay back student loans is part of what motivated his run for president, Swalwell said.

“ Swalwell began college paying almost nothing, thanks to athletic and academic scholarships he earned as a soccer player. But after two years, he got injured and transferred to different college. ”

“Washington is largely removed from the issue because over half of the members of Congress were millionaires before they got to Washington and many of them went to college at a time when it was affordable,” he said. Though the new Congress may have more motivation to address student debt, due in part to its relatively young make up, Swalwell said he believes,“it’s also going to take a president who knows this issue uniquely and personally.”

It’s a sign of the ubiquity of the nation’s $1.5-trillion student-loan problem that candidates for office aren’t just talking about it as an issue, they’re making themselves the face of the problem, said Mark Huelsman, associate director of policy and research at Demos, a left-leaning think tank.

“To the extent we have had baby boomers running for president for the past few decades, they got an education in a world when you did not have to take on debt,” said Huelsman, who authored a white paper on debt-free college that was influential in the 2016 election. “There are politicians of a certain generation that talk about student debt as a problem because they did not have to experience it.”

Candidates like Swalwell on the other hand, grew up in a world where student loans are essential for most students to complete a bachelor’s or graduate degree.

Here are his proposals:

Offer an option for debt-free college — with a few conditions: Many of the Democratic candidates for president have said they’d support some form of debt-free or tuition-free public college, if elected. Swalwell has proposed offering a path to a debt-free college education for students who attend public universities, participate in work-study and commit to some kind of community service after graduation — not necessarily as a full-time job.

Making it harder for poor performing colleges to access federal student loans: If elected, Swalwell said he’d like to “leverage” the government’s role as the biggest student lender. He’d do this by evaluating colleges in certain categories, like how well they do at graduating their students in a timely manner, placing them in jobs within six months and keeping tuition low.

“If you’re a good actor on metrics like those, you would be the most eligible for student-loan aid, if you’re a bad actor you’re less eligible,” he said.

Over the past several years, lawmakers and presidential candidates have made similar, but more limited, proposals, which they describe as risk-sharing. They would require colleges to be on the hook when their students struggle to repay their student loans. This kind of expansion of the way the government evaluates colleges’ access to federal student loans would require an act of Congress.

The Department of Education already has the power to cut off colleges’ access to federal financial aid if too many students default on their student debt, though schools rarely lose access to federal financial aid funds, even when they struggle to meet the default rate metrics.

Slashing the interest rate of federal student loans to 0%: Right now, new student loans made by the federal government have anywhere between a 5% and 7.6% interest rate, depending on the type of loan. If elected, Swalwell said he’d work to turn federal student debt into no interest loans.

In his short time on the campaign trail — Swalwell announced his candidacy earlier this month — he’s found that proposal “is probably one of the most well-received ideas that I have out there.”

“It’s an issue that so many people get,” he said. “It’s rooted in wanting to see more money in more people’s pockets at the end of the month.”

Swalwell said his only other proposal that gets a similarly enthusiastic reception is his plan to ban assault weapons.

Make it easier for employers to contribute to their workers’ student debt: As our outstanding student debt has ballooned, the list of employers offering student loan repayment as a company perk has also grown.

But right now, any money an employer puts towards their workers’ student debt is considered taxable income. That means that for tax purposes, the student-loan help is no different than earning a higher salary.

Bills introduced in both the Senate and the House aim to change that by allowing companies to contribute up to $5,250 tax-free to their workers’ student loans. As president, Swalwell said he would work to turn those proposals into law and sign them as soon as they reached his desk.

The spectrum of proposals from 2020 Democrats

All of these proposals essentially put Swalwell in the middle of the pack in terms of the progressiveness of proposals offered by Democrats to address college affordability and student debt, Huelsman said. For example, other candidates have floated making four-year public college debt or tuition-free with few conditions.

In addition, ideas like making it easier for employers to contribute to workers’ student loans have been derided by critics who say that would provide a greater benefit relatively well-off student loan borrowers, instead of those struggling the most with their debt. To benefit from employer-based student-loan help, one needs to have a job. In addition, many of the companies that are offering it so far employ a relatively elite group of workers.

Nonetheless, Swalwell’s student debt and college affordability proposals — and his decision to place them front and center — are the latest sign of how far the discussion on these issues has come since the 2008 election, Huelsman said.

“The barrier to entry into this conversation is going to be supporting some form of — at minimum — free community and technical college or some way to address student-loan debt,” he said. “Overall, the conversation is definitely going in a bolder direction than it was several years ago.”