The Future of America Is Being Written In This Tiny Office

Back in the comparatively innocent days of 2015, before Donald Trump completed his hostile takeover of the Republican Party, before the Bernie Sanders juggernaut really got going, Hillary Clinton’s campaign thought it could get ahead through well-crafted policy proposals. On August 10, Clinton was set to unveil a grand plan to help families pay for college tuition, and for months leading up to her speech, the preparation soaked up hundreds of man-hours in conference calls, meetings and email exchanges. The level of seriousness, according to one participant, rivaled that of a White House staff gearing up for a State of the Union address.

At the outset, Clinton sat down at her kitchen table with Ann O’Leary, the senior policy adviser who was leading the effort, and made it clear she wanted something ambitious. The motivation was obvious enough, with Americans carrying something like $1.3 trillion in outstanding college debt, and even relatively affluent families struggling to cover tuition bills. “The request was that we think big, bring up ideas regardless of whether they were fully fleshed out or might be controversial,” says Robert Shireman, a former Obama and Clinton administration official who was one of several experts who worked on the plan.

Reining in tuition costs is a trickier proposition than you might expect, and not one that money alone can solve. If it became easier for families to pay for college, it would become easier for colleges to hike prices; if Washington put up more funds, states would try to put up less. Plus, Clinton had essentially ruled out increasing deficits or middle-class taxes, limiting the revenue available for any new endeavors. The wonks would have to get freaky.

Ultimately, Clinton settled on a scheme the campaign named the “New College Compact.” The goal, making public college debt-free, was simple. The mechanics were not. Families would pay “realistic” fees based on income, with poorer families paying nothing at all. Students would contribute directly through work-study programs. Washington would provide most of the money, but states would have to kick in some funds and hold the line on tuition increases. The feds would also crack down on for-profit colleges where too many students were getting substandard degrees and defaulting on their loans. All in all, the proposal would require some $350 billion in new spending over 10 years, which Clinton planned to pay for by raising taxes on the rich. James Kvaal, a former Obama administration adviser who consulted on the initiative, described it in an email as “a once-in-a-century change in the relationship between the federal government and colleges, on par with the Morrill Act (which created land grant colleges in the 19th Century) and the G.I. Bill.”

Continued at Huffington Post