POLITICS MARCH 14, 2020 / 4:59 PM / UPDATED 2 HOURS AGO

Democrat Biden tacks left, backs Warren bankruptcy plan with student loan relief

Trevor Hunnicutt, Sharon Bernstein
3 MIN READ

(Reuters) - Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden has endorsed former rival Elizabeth Warren’s plan to reform consumer bankruptcy laws including allowing relief of student loan debt, incorporating proposals by the party’s progressive wing into the moderate frontrunner’s campaign.

“I’ve endorsed Elizabeth Warren’s bankruptcy proposal, which ... allows for student debt to be relieved in bankruptcy and provides for a whole range of other issues,” Biden said in a digital town hall in Illinois on Friday.

Warren, a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, suspended her campaign March 5 after a poor showing in primaries that week. That left the more centrist Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, in the contest for the Democratic nomination to run against Republican President Donald Trump in November.

Biden’s decision to endorse Warren’s bankruptcy plan is significant, showing she and Sanders have moved the party’s policy discussions to the left. It also would reverse portions of a strict bankruptcy law that Biden himself championed when he was a senator.

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