2016 Postmortem
Showing Original Post only (View all)Does Sanders' college plan really rely on governors to release funds? [View all]
This was the snippet of the debate they played on NPR this morning (I didn't watch/listen to the debate). Hillary was sarcastically noting that Scott Walker could not be relied on to release millions of dollars for public colleges; the plan, if it relies on such triggers from individual state governors, would be dead in the water.
Is any of this true? Is there a mechanism in Sanders' plan that requires governors to sign on, and gives them an option not to? Clearly, Scott Walker was a great example of how such a plan would be doomed - he is notorious for cutting public university budgets in Wisconsin, including devastating cuts to the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.
Look at somebody like Rauner, too: he's currently refusing any budget deal at all until the Democratic state legislature agrees to his insane, Walkeresque union busting proposals for public employees. Concretely, this means even Illinois MAP Grants, which help low income students pay for college, are being withheld - even those MAP Grants that have already been approved and promised to be disbursed! If Rauner doesn't care about 130,000 Illinois students' MAP Grants, why would he sign off on a free college plan, even if it seems already paid for at a federal level?
And those are two BLUE states! What's going to happen in Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina?
Are governors a disbursement mechanism in Sanders' college plan? Can they refuse? I'm honestly asking here. I don't know.