Free Public Universities and Technical Colleges

Dear Friends,

While the reasons for the increasing requirement for a college degree to get a job are debated, the fact that a college degree now is the equivalent of what a high school degree was a generation ago is not in doubt.  As a candidate for the Presidency, Bernie Sanders proposed that public universities and technical colleges should be free of tuition and fees.  He later agreed to change that proposal so that public universities would be tuition and fee free for families whose income was less than $125,000.  Senator Sanders has introduced a bill to accomplish this result and provides that the Federal government will pay 2/3rds of the cost and a tax on Wall Street speculation to pay for it.

I think that the current legislation does not go far enough.  We should provide public universities and technical colleges free from tuition and fees to all students qualified to attend.  The estimated cost of such a proposal is around $70 billion a year.  In calculating that cost, there is no offset for revenue generated by the additional jobs or the additional productivity of the workforce.  Nor is there any offset for the reduced demand for Federal government educational loans and grants.  Just as a point of comparison, the Senate just passed a bill increasing the military budget by more than $80 billion without batting an eye.  If that budget is ultimately approved, the United States military budget will be equal to the military budgets of the next ten countries with the largest military budgets.  We would have much stronger country with our current military budget and a workforce that is more college educated with much less debt.

Senator Sanders has proposed to pay for his bill with a tax on Wall Street speculation.  Depending on who is doing the estimating, the proposed Wall Street speculation tax would result in an increase of $60 billion to $300 billion of revenue.  Much of the rest of the industrialized world has or is adopting such a tax, and the United States has had such a tax in the past.  There is no evidence to support the claims by Wall Street that the tax would stifle productive investment.

When the Republicans and establishment Democrats say that providing tuition free public university education would bankrupt the United States, they are lying.  They have been bought by Wall Street.  I will not support any candidate who does not publicly and passionately support tuition and fee free public university and technical college education for all.

Thanks for reading any please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal