<prompt> Human: I am working with a state legislator to tackle the problem of student loan debt and we are trying to come up with ideas outside of simple forgiveness that would be possible to make a difference.We are throwing around ideas such as allowing Payments to be deducted from state taxes as well as more outside the box ideas like Oregons Debt Free InitiativeGetting more ideas is always better so do you have any ideas of how to help the indebted I understand that this is not a personal finance question per say but this is a frequent topic so I hope people will contribute.EDIT:I am working with a STATE Legislator we cannot change a federal system and have no control over the guarantees or to whom they loan money. I understand that many of this issues with this are federal issues but we are trying to deal with the problem at a state level as much as we can.  <response>: The only solution to solving the student debt crisis is to overhaul the federal student loan system. Congress created an unsustainable program and we are all going to be footing the costs for the next 100 years irrespective of what you do at the state level. allowing Payments to be deducted from state taxesThis assumes people in the student debt crisis have jobs where they pay substantial amounts of state income tax. They dont. The ones that have good jobs arent in a crisis. more outside the box ideas like Oregons Debt Free Initiative.A few people did the math behind this idea on another forum and concluded that the entire program is mathematically unsound and foolish. The program is not worthwhile compared to the existing loan program for anyone going into a high-paying industry medicine, engineering, etc, which means only people who cant get good jobs would enroll in the program, ultimately causing Oregon to go deep negative because they would be losing money. Basically, a form of moral hazard would defeat the entire purpose. 