“What makes for a great campaign slogan,” says John R. Republicans currently hold 31 of 50 governorships in 30 states, they control both the governor’s office and the state legislature.
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Partisan gridlock in Washington has held up all but the most anodyne bills, and even if the proposal made it through Congress, statehouses are hardly friendly terrain. The federal government has historically shown deference to state and institutional autonomy when it comes to higher education. To the extent that the idea of a federal-state partnership has gotten attention, it’s largely been skeptical. What makes for a great campaign slogan can be a governance nightmare. States would have to kick in some of their own money to cover the costs and agree to hold down tuition increases. Instead it would send federal dollars - $450 billion over 10 years - to the states to subsidize tuition for low- and middle-income students. The Clinton blueprint, one of several plans circulating to make tuition or all college costs “free” or “debt free,” breaks with more than four decades of financial-aid policy, in which assistance flows directly from the federal government to students and their families. And that’s a new way that states and the federal government would have to work together.
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Less remarked upon is the plan’s most radical feature, which also happens to be the bedrock on which the entire proposal rests.
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Plenty of ink has been spilled on the Democratic presidential nominee’s proposal to cover in-state tuition at public colleges for families making up to $125,000: Is it too generous or not generous enough? What might it mean for private institutions? Is it DOA with Republicans in Congress? You might have heard - Hillary Clinton has a free-college plan.