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Clinton Questions Plausibility Of Sanders’s Free Tuition Proposal

Saying it would depend on states’ help, Clinton said she doubted Wisconsin governor Scott Walker would ever provide billions for education.

Clinton Questions Plausibility Of Sanders’s Free Tuition Proposal
Presidential candidates Senator Bernie Sanders and Secretary Hillary Clinton during the PBS Democratic Debate on Feb. 11, 2016

Bernie Sanders wants college to be free for everyone, but Hillary Clinton doesn’t think that would be possible.

During tonight’s Democratic presidential debate in Milwaukee, Senator Sanders said that since the American people bailed out Wall Street, the financial sector should pay a “speculation tax” in order to “make public colleges and universities tuition-free.”

But Clinton, the former Secretary of State, said that while she also supports a goal of making college affordable, Sanders’s plan is wishful thinking, in large part because it would seem to depend on help from states.

“If you don’t have some agreement within the system from states and from families and from students, it’s hard to get to where we need to go,” Clinton said. “And Senator Sanders’s plan really rests on making sure that governors like [Wisconsin’s] Scott Walker contribute $23 billion on the first day to make college free.”

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Playing on Walker’s penchant for opposing support for public education, Clinton then added, to much applause from the hall full of people familiar with the Republican governor’s agenda, “I am a little skeptical about your governor actually caring enough about higher education to make any kind of commitment like that.”

About the author

Daniel Terdiman is a San Francisco-based technology journalist with nearly 20 years of experience. A veteran of CNET and VentureBeat, Daniel has also written for Wired, The New York Times, Time, and many other publications

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