Sen. Kamala Harris Pushes For $2,000 Monthly Stipend, Student Loan Forgiveness

California Sen. Kamala Harris is pushing Congress to adopt her plan for a $2,000 monthly stipend for Americans and student loan forgiveness.

According to Forbes, Harris made the case for both on Joy Reid’s new show The ReidOut, pitching former Vice President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan for economic recovery and racial equality.

The plan includes a broad $10,000 student loan forgiveness for borrowers with federal loans, as part of the coronavirus relief. Harris also discussed Biden’s proposal to make public colleges and HBCUs tuition-free for families making less than $125,000 annually.

Harris, who is the frontrunner to be Joe Biden’s vice president, also pushed her plan to help Americans suffering financially from the coronavirus pandemic with a monthly stipend of $2,000 until the pandemic ends. A plan she’s been campaigning for the stipend along with Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Ed Markey (D-MA) since May.

“Together, with Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey, I’m proposing that we have not just that one-time check of $1,200,” Harris told MSNBC last week. “Through the course of this pandemic and crisis, we need to give people $2,000 a month as recurrent payments—people below a certain income level—to help them and sustain them through these months of crisis so at the end of it, they can get back up on their feet instead of falling deep, deep, deep into the crevices of this crisis.

“It does not make any sense, to your point, when we have Republicans in Congress who are standing in the way of supporting working people who have recently lost their jobs—[and] have every intention of working—when we can get through this crisis and [they] just need help from their government,” Harris added.

The Senate is still working on its second coronavirus package, known as the HEALS Act. The bill drops the monthly federal unemployment benefit from $600 to $200 through October, though -t does include another $1,200 stimulus check for Americans. However, the bill may be doomed from the start as some Republicans are not supporting the bill.

Sens. Mike Brown (R-IN), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Rick Scott (R-Fl) have all commented against the HEALS Act. Cruz said last week “I’m not a no, I’m a hell no.”

Harris also spoke on The ReidOut about helping renters and homeowners with the Rent Emergencies Leave Impacts on Evicted Families (RELIEF) Act that would ban evictions and foreclosures for a year.