Bernie Sanders: “over the last several months, I have had three town meetings in Vermont with young people on this issue. It is an issue…”

“over the last several months, I have had three town meetings in Vermont with young people on this issue. It is an issue of huge concern to them and their parents. As Senator Booker just mentioned, we are competing with countries all over the world that say to their young people: If you have the ability and you have the desire, you can go to college regardless of your income. In Germany, tuition for college is now zero. In many Scandinavian countries, it is now zero. What they are saying to the young people is, we need you to get the best education to help us create the strongest economy, to create the jobs we need. How insane is it for us to literally discourage bright young people from attending college or to tell others that if they graduate college or graduate school, they are going to be $70,000, $80,000, $100,000 in debt? What sense does this make for the well-being of the middle class of this country or for our economic competitiveness? In the next month, I will be personally introducing legislation that will cut and do away with tuition in public colleges and universities, but today what we are focusing on is legislation that is so sensible, so obvious, it is hard for me to imagine that anybody can vote against it. I have in my office at least two attorneys who are struggling with huge student debts. This is true all over this country. They graduated from college 15 years ago. They are still paying off that debt, and it impacts what they can do.…”