We’ve heard lots of platitudes about free college in recent months but the amount of student debt already owed is staggering and this didn’t happen overnight.

The Hill reports.

Democrats MIA on student loans

The nation now owes close to $1.4 Trillion in student loan debt, up nearly $1 Trillion from 2008 when the current president took office. Judging from the rhetoric coming from both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, one would think that both candidates have this problem square in their sights. However, they do not.

Anyone who knows anything about this issue knows that student loans have been uniquely stripped of nearly every standard consumer protection there is. Bankruptcy rights, to statutes of limitations, and other core protections that exist for every other type of loan no longer exist for student loans. This has created a hyper-inflationary higher education market, and a predatory lending system the likes of which has never before been seen in this country.

When Clinton was in the Senate in 2006, she introduced a Student Borrower Bill of Rights Act that paved the way for the return of bankruptcy protections to federal student loans. Clinton, however, has not so much as uttered “bankruptcy” and “student loans” in the same sentence since she announced her candidacy for the 2016 election.

She appears to have chosen to ignore returning this constitutionally mandated consumer protection in lockstep with the Center for American Progress, whose higher education policy is now led by a good-ole-boy from the Department of Education, the federal agency that profits tens of billions per year of the program, and even makes a profit on defaulted loans. The Department of Education fights tooth and nail behind the scenes to keep bankruptcy gone from federal student loans.