He was poor. How did he get the money to go to college?

In fact, schools in California were free until St. Reagan took over.

Is it a misquote? If not, and if it's literally what he said -- in other words, an accurate quote -- are you saying we should interpret it as the opposite of what it sounds like? In the name of "accuracy," since it can only be accurate if it makes him sound good?

not go to people who can afford it. Any other time, Sanders' supporters would be all for wealthy people not getting a tax subsidy, except to bash the Clintons. That's the accurate truth.

As it is, you reading is that he's willing to put poor university students into debt so as not to let a minority of young people from richer households get it for free. That's the excuse, anyway. And this for a public good that many other countries find affordable! Why not here too?

"I've got mine." But granting your point: like a lot of welfare-hate politics -- in which the Clintons have specialized -- this is pandering to manufactured resentment about problems that barely exist.

Rich people's kids generally go to private colleges, but if they were to make use of free public education, so what? Long as the rich are paying their share of the financing! Why should we discriminate against young people based on the class of their parents - who may or may not be supporting them? In any case, a very minor aspect of this issue. It's more important to make the 0.1% pay on the financing end than to charge tuition for their kids.

Here is what matters: Public higher education in the US was once free for all who qualified. It is free or almost free for all in many countries that maintain excellent university systems with rich research wings, and it should be free again in the United States, the supposedly richest country of all that is supposedly richer than ever.

Clinton did not say no one should receive help, just that well off shouldn't.

Look at is as a tax on the wealthy if that makes you feel better.

Nonsense to that. I support direct taxation on the wealthy. I do not support this form of what you call "taxation on the wealthy," which if anything might merely penalize their children. Means tests are invitations to abuse on both sides. Public universities should be a free, public good, as they are in many civilized societies around the world. Tuition in the end punishes the poor more than the rich, obviously, no matter what complicated, fancy, means-tested ways of "help" (usually: debt) are employed. Public universities used to be free in the United States! Address that as an issue: Why the hell is this unaffordable? Why shouldn't the wealthy be taxed to pay for this, rather than "forced" to pay tuition (ha, ha!) for their own children (which is just another way of promoting inequality, of course).

To Zero at a defined income level. Public universities used to be very inexpensive... my how things have changed... since HillBill went to school...

he's taxing Bill's Wall Street friends.

But I'm pretty sure you already knew that.

Is it a misquote? Has there been a clarification? Should we read it other than literally? Should we assume he meant the opposite of what it sounds like? Long as we reinterpret it into whatever you prefer to hear, who cares what he actually said?

Govt help with college. Quite clearly. And I agree. They do not.

to restore free tuition at public universities. For all. Like it used to be. The rich, meanwhile, will continue going to the $50K/year places.

Bernie knows that the children of the people who don't need help will be going to private universities often, anyway.

The Clintons are making a false distinction to make a point against Bern with people who aren't thinking.

Neither are Stanford, Princeton, Columbia, MIT, CIT, or U of Penn. Then you got List, Duke, Cornell along with John Hopkins, Rice, Vanderbilt, Dartmouth, Carnegie, North Western, New York, Notre Dame. That's just a few off the top of my head. None of those are public and there are probably 20 to 30 more which I'm not recalling right now.

Don't worry. The rich will still be able to attend and pay fully for their educations. At the minimum I think everyone, including the rich- should be able to get an Associates degree- tuition free.

I suspect the super-rich Clintons will be very flexible downwards, i.e. finding that well-off middle class/upper-middle class people who nevertheless can't really afford even public college costs (now ranging into 20,000 a year at some places!) for multiple children should be rated as "rich" in this "means test." Bet you even incomes under $100,000 would be "rich" to them, for this purpose.

I doubt it. Why wouldn't he want to move back into that house? Anyway, who cares either way? In this case he's just blabbing what he actually thinks.

This has been part of his stump speech for years - i.e., now that he's wealthy, he can afford to pay more in taxes, tuition, etc. to benefit the greater good.

If you want to argue the actual policies - and I have serious reservations when it comes to means-testing - feel free. But this line of argument is beyond dishonest.

I'm reading what he reportedly said, not "his stump speech for years." (Who would know his stump speech for years? Poor you!)

But not surprising.

How about you read it properly for us. What did he really say, behind what it sounds like?

And until you get the "poor people's" ElHi facilities and staff up to what the rich folks have, neither do I.

and now, in a supposedly much richer country, they are not? How is it that so many countries can afford this public good without laying the burden on poor people? This argument is sophistry, pointing to some supposed exception of freeloading rich people so as to justify the continuation of a system wherein education for most involves crushing tuition payments and debt bondage. Tax the rich as other countries do, pay for free public education as it should be, and it won't matter if rich people's children also get to go to public universities for free.

...for rich people's college.

Proceed.

and, in his view, those people SHOULD pay.

My counter would be: there are far, far more people who CAN'T afford it, Bill, and I'd rather err on the side of helping THEM. If one or two percent of the recipients end up getting free education when they didn't need it, I'll take that as a cost of doing business the right way.

The OP was such a dishonest reading of the quote. I am an HRC supporter, but I disagree with Bill on this argument, for exactly the same reason why we don't means test Medicare or SS.

I'm just glad we can have an honest debate over the issue.

And I never agree with you!

There will still be private colleges still in place, and those students will pay.

That differentiation needs to be made because people who do not approve of this often reference children of wealthy people going for free as well; for example, Trump's kids.

Sam

for children of the wealthy to go to college. Most likely, their parents will send them to private schools, graduation from which will help them get the best of jobs.

Bernie Sanders wants to add trade schools to this program assisting young people who want to further their education above a high school level but cannot afford to do so.

Sam

He said, very clearly, that the government shouldn't provide free tuition for people who can already afford to go to college and that money is better spent on jobs and infrastructure.

What about that don't you agree with? Do you think that Trump's kids should have the government pay their tuition?

but if they do, the school should be tuition free.

If Denmark, Germany, etc. can afford to provide (almost) free and excellent public university education to all admitted students, then certainly the United States could as well - as was the case back when the U.S. was supposedly a far less rich country than it is today.

then need to be gamed.

Also why the fuck is it the parent's responsibility to "pay" for their adult child's education anyway? What 18 year old, other than a trust fund baby really has the scratch to pay for their own college? What is the moral or ethical reason their parents income should be means tested?

People going to college are generally young adults not "kids".

Better to just say an education beyond high school is a fundamental key to the future, guarantee it is available to everyone regardless of who can or cannot pay, and get people educated.

The real "savings" from those who "can pay" i.e. the 1% of 1% would be trivial compared to the overall good of universal college tuition.

Shall we means test high school and means test grade school too?

WTF?

There will still be private schools for rich people to go to. Let them pay for that.

Is that their educational standard? Is this why they don't care for universal health care either? They can afford it.

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Sending their grandchild and the children of people like them to college for free is a drop in the ocean for one thing. For another, I am sure their grand children and other rich people will send their kids to top name Ivy League schools for another.

I hate their typing of campaigning which is just a bunch of fear, uncertainty, doubt, and misleading hogwash.

Fuck them.

There is just so much wrong with their statements it makes me rage.

One of the biggest obstacles that the poor have to getting the assistance that they are eligible for is all the paperwork and hoops that people are required to jump through. I've seen plenty of people who are eligible for healthcare or foodstamps but aren't getting them because their application hit some sort of administrative glitch that they were told they had to figure out themselves, or they submitted all of the documents they were told they were supposed to, told to wait to hear something, didn't after weeks, called again, were told to submit different documents and wait, did again, and eventually gave up. Or a hole slew of other horror stories.

"But why should Donald Trump's children get free college education?" Well, you raise the taxes on the rich, which pays for it.

"But that would be raising taxes/but there isn't enough money for the rich to pay for it all/etc. etc/" Eh, is the logic really that hard to understand? If someone was going to pay $10,000 dollars to the school, they'll instead pay $10,000 to the government (spread out over their lifetime). Everyone is paying the same amount they're supposed to in both plans, but making the schools free means you won't be burying the poor under a mountain of paper work, which often means they end up paying more than they're supposed to (but maybe that's part of the plan?). People who wealth-splain don't seem to get this, and it shows how little they understand about the plight of the poor.

If someone asked me before Bernie even thought of running if I would support free college for all (public colleges). I would have said yes even if the children of the rich would be able to attend for free. The children themselves are not rich. After the age of 18 they are supported by their parents at the whim of their parents. So, no they shouldn't be shut out of free college if they are willing to attend a public college. I know one person who has very rich parents and they are insisting she must work full time and go to school full time. I wouldn't even do that to my kids and I am poor.

To add yet another one: only having free education as a benefit for low income individuals is a bad idea for the same reason why school vouchers and means testing social security are such bad ideas. If you set up a program as just being a benefits program for the poor, then it's much easier politically to cut it later (or restrict it - maybe in a decade someone will "reform" it so that only low-income individuals with part-time jobs are eligible). Having it be free for all people means that everyone in the country has a stake in seeing it succeed.

Really, there's a ton of reasons why free colleges make much, much more sense than any alternative. I can understand someone saying "it's not politically feasible right now" (I'd disagree with it, but I understand the argument), but to say that it's a bad idea because Trump's kids could go to college for free? That's either extremely dishonest or extremely ignorant.

running for president he kind of hinted that he came from a poor background. I wonder if he had help going to college?

What exactly does he mean "people like me"? White?

nt

He is saying that government money should be used for people and infrastructure that NEED it. If you are rich and can afford to pay for your education you should pay for it.

See all my replies above. If "you are rich" you should be made to pay taxes. If you are "forced" to pay tuition all that means is your kids go to college and those who can't afford it either don't or get saddled with debt. It's hardly penalizing the "rich." And what's rich, anyway? Methinks this unspecified means test will be awfully flexible. Will it even allow a household to make a hundred thou before they have to pay 15, 20 for tuition at a "public" university? I doubt it. This is just more "NO WE CAN'T" rhetoric to justify the status quo.

I'd rather pay for crumbling bridges and roads, for expanded social services, for alternative energy development, and a zillion other things that need to be done, than to pay for the education of someone who can afford to pay their tuition.

If wealth is taxed to pay for it, there's no need for making them pay tuition. (And you free their children, too - who says this "wealthy" family will pay voluntarily?)

The limits on financial resources in this country at this time are very much the product of policy and ideology, and not material necessity. Capacity is vastly underutilized. Austerity is holding us back, and not the occasional free rider. Let's not fall for the myths of fiscal conservatism! If Denmark etc. can afford free education, then certainly we can as well!

that it obscene that people anywhere in this country, or any country, go to bed without food, without a roof over their head, without adequate health care, without the education and other means to make their lives better. There is no excuse for any of that, yet it happens in our country because people keep electing officials, often over one issue, that actively work against the public good. And I honestly don't think that isn't going to change until we stop attacking each other and start making our case to the center right. Move them leftward, and things will change for everyone. Until then we have good Dems in office trying to hang on to the progress we've made.

for the poor is under attack by the rich except Social Security and that is because it is for everyone. The rich call everything else welfare and insist that it be cut if not ended altogether.

The idea of including them into the free public college program is to avoid exactly that. If they are included it is less likely to be destroyed by the rich. Plus most of them do not go to public schools so they will not add much to the cost of the program in the first place.

I think once you can destroy everyone on the planet two or three times over, you could probably allocate some of those resources to other worthier purposes. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.

one needless war after another. Hillary is not going to be different and no one will get affordable education as the wealth continues to move upward.

If Sanders is so far above every politician in the history of ever like his supporters claim, why do they need to constantly resort to these sorts of "disingenuous" attacks? It's like they don't think he's capable of standing on his own record or something.

as if they think Bernie isn't more than capable of handling himself. I like Bernie, prefer Hillary, and seem to have more faith in Bernie than some people here do...makes me sad.

Attack mode can be a self perpetuating beast of a problem. It seem to leave rational thought in the dust.

Pathetic. I certainly don't think Sanders is so far above blah blah blah, like you are falsely saying. He just happens to be the bloody best we can do. You are distracting from the reality that the Clintons already have an astonishing, well-established record of fucking over the poor and the middle class, not to mention a lot of foreigners they've bombed, and selling that shit like it's gold. NAFTA, mass incarceration, workfare, deregulation of the banksters leading directly to the housing scams, etc. etc. etc. May Sanders be able to get away with even a quarter of the extremely modest New Deal program that he's aiming for, given the present monstrous realities of a capitalist system that literally understands it is destroying the basis for human life in the world itself and yet cannot stop!

Sad.

Zero points for not bothering to read the thread, but just assuming your predetermined conclusion.

if you get my meaning. . . .

So don't kick it if you don't like it.

The wording was extremely unfortunate.

Even in the best interpretation of the intent, he's saying let's just keep the high-tuition student-debt system going and pretend to fiddle around some more with "aid" and "means tests" to stop the "rich" from exploiting it, etc.

Got it.

Thanks Bill, you a$$hat.

Should they be allowed to opt out of social security?

Certain social programs need to be universal in order to work and maintain their political support.

People shouldn't just be able to buy out of the social contract

Thanks for posting that. Been here since 2002. This place has melted down into online tribal warfare (or authoritarianism as game, same thing) many times. Primaries do that. Questioning Clintons was often the subject that caused it. True already in 2002 (her support for the war of aggression in Iraq) and of course in 2008. But this is also not the first time that it's not just partisans. There are obvious campaign or party personnel trying to police this place for thoughtcrime.