Bernie Sanders endorsed his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, and a big reason was because the former first lady adopted several of the Vermont Senator’s policy proposals including free college education for working class families.
Despite the pair’s kumbaya moment, the former secretary of state was slamming Sanders’s education plan just days before endorsing it.
Recommended Stories
In a June 22 interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein, Clinton was asked about why she didn’t agree with Sanders’s position on free college tuition.
“I had several concerns about Sen. Sanders’s program,” Clinton said. “I thought it was hard to justify claiming it was free when it was going to have to be paid for by state governments, by a lot of state governments — up to a third of the cost — that were not particularly well-known for supporting higher education. They’ve in fact been disinvesting. And I think it’s more important that we incentivize reinvestment in public higher education.”
“So rather than holding out the promise of free college, which wasn’t really free, it was going to be paid for by state and federal dollars,” she continued. “I think it’s important that we say: We’re going to subsidize as far as we can responsibly go. But we’re going to expect states to reinvest in higher education. And I know the arguments that have been made, and [Sanders] was an eloquent advocate for the argument that it should be like Social Security. It never has been; it’s not how we view it; and it would be incredibly expensive to do that as he had proposed. And even he relied on states which had been disinvesting, and we need to reverse that so they start investing.”
Yet, a little more than a week later, Clinton reversed course, stating she supported free college education for any family earning less than $125,000 annually — a core position of Sanders that she discredited.
The great thing about Hillary Clinton is if you don’t like her position today, there’s a good chance she’ll change it by tomorrow.
Watch the clip below:
