Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has proposed legislation for tuition-free college in a bill that disproportionately supports wealthier families.
The bill dubbed the “College for All Act” intends to render community colleges and trade schools tuition free for students from families earning less than $125,000 a year. But there is more. “Trade schools and community colleges would be free for all students,” according to a CBS News report.
On the legislation introduced with radical Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Sanders wrote in an Op-Ed Wednesday saying there is “no question” the proposal is “expensive,” but paying to fix this problem “should not fall on the shoulders of working Americans who already pay the bulk of this nation’s taxes.”
“The good news is that we are living in the wealthiest country in the history of the world,” the wealthy socialist penned.
However, the Brookings Institute, a left-leaning think tank, has reported Sanders’ free university scheme would benefit families like Sanders’ own. Sanders admitted to Fox News he is, indeed, a “millionaire.”
“If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too,” Sanders said, defending his capitalistic success.
In a study entitled “Who would benefit most from free college?” Brookings writes, “students from higher income families would receive a disproportionate share of the benefits of free college, largely because they tend to attend more expensive institutions.” The study also concludes, “Benefits under the Sanders plan does not appear to be very progressive.”
The study explains:
Under the Sanders free college proposal, families from the top half of the income distribution would receive 24 percent more in dollar value from eliminating tuition than students from the lower half of the income distribution.
The non-tuition costs of attending college, including living expenses, are larger than the costs of tuition and fees for most students.
Free college, which does not address these expenses, leaves families from the bottom half of the income distribution with nearly $18 billion in annual out-of-pocket college costs that would not be covered by existing federal, state, and institutional grant programs.
Devoting new spending to eliminating tuition for all students involves a tradeoff with investing the same funds in targeted grant aid that would cover more of the total costs of attendance for students from less well-off families.
But Sanders contends, “bright young Americans… deserve” a free college education to provide them with a “standard of living” to shore up their parents’ inability to provide them free tuition.
“It is absolutely unacceptable that hundreds of thousands of bright young Americans do not get a higher education each year, not because they are unqualified, but because their family does not have enough money,” Sanders said.
To pay for the complimentary assistance, Sanders proposed the following: “End offshore tax havens, Raise taxes on inherited wealth, Establish a tax on financial transactions, End fossil fuel subsidies.”