Democrats unveil plan for tuition-free college amid student debt crisis

As President Biden weighs executive action to cancel as much as $50,000 in student loans for each borrower, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington are introducing new legislation Wednesday they say would help address the soaring cost of higher education.

If passed, the College for All Act would make community colleges and trade schools tuition-free for all students. It would also make public four-year colleges and universities as well as public nonprofit minority-serving institutions — such as historically Black colleges and universities — tuition-free for all students from families earning less than $125,000 a year. "If we are going to have the kind of standard of living that the American people deserve, we need to have the best educated workforce in the world," said Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, in a statement. "It is absolutely unacceptable that hundreds of thousands of bright young Americans do not get a higher education each year, not because they are unqualified, but because their family does not have enough money."