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Biden Adopts Free Public College Plan In Response to Sanders

Joe Biden is adopting a version of tuition-free college in an effort to reach out to Bernie Sanders’s young supporters.

Biden Adopts Free Public College Plan In Response to Sanders
Former Vice President Joe Biden, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, speaks during a campaign event in Columbus, Ohio, U.S. (Photographer: Matthew Hatcher/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden is adopting a version of tuition-free college in an effort to reach out to Bernie Sanders’s young supporters as the former vice president attempts to unite the two wings of the Democratic Party around him, his campaign said.

Biden now supports making public college and university tuition free for all students whose families earn less than $125,000 a year, his campaign said Sunday. Biden plans to discuss the new position during Sunday night’s one-on-one debate against Sanders.

Biden Adopts Free Public College Plan In Response to Sanders


It’s the second policy concession his campaign has made to progressive opponents this week, following his backing of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s plan to fix the bankruptcy system. Biden and Warren battled over bankruptcy legislation more than a decade ago. But Biden’s campaign said he now supports her plan, which would make it easier for individuals to get relief through bankruptcy and would eliminate rules that make it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy.

Biden’s plan doesn’t go far enough for Sanders. He issued a statement Sunday saying, “It’s great that Joe Biden is now supporting a position that was in the Democratic platform four years ago. Now we have to go much farther.”

Sanders’s statement said he wanted all public universities, colleges and trade schools tuition free and all student debt canceled.

The Biden and Warren teams had been discussing her bankruptcy plan and were told ahead of time that Biden would be endorsing it, a Biden campaign official said. But Biden’s team did not discuss his new position on free college with Sanders’s team in advance, the official said.

Biden already supported free community college, but his new plan mirrors the concession that Hillary Clinton made to Sanders at the end of the 2016 Democratic primary. Sanders applauded it at the time as a “very bold initiative” and said it combined “some of the strongest ideas she fought for during the campaign with some of the principles that I fought for. The final product is a result of the work of both campaigns.”

In 2017, Sanders and Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal proposed a bill with similar provisions, which would eliminate tuition and fees at public colleges and universities for about 80% of the U.S. population while making community colleges free for all. A proposal unveiled by Sanders last year would go even further, making public and tribal institutions tuition-free and debt-free for all students.

The Biden official promised that an explanation of how Biden would pay for free college would be “forthcoming.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Epstein in Washington at jepstein32@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Magan Crane

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