Hillary’s agenda
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=156238&page=3
Preview to DLC in Denver:
Sen. Clinton walked purposefully into a ballroom at the Hyatt Regency
Hotel on Wednesday to unveil the first component of her American
Dream Initiative. Consistent with her strategy of uniting all the non-
Kossack strands of the Democratic Party, Sen. Clinton began by
ticking off the various Democratic think tanks — the Center for
American Progress, the Progressive Policy Institute, the New
Democratic Network, Third Way, and Hope Street — who played a role in
developing her plan to produce one million more college graduates by
2015.
At the core of her college plan is the same “basic bargain” of more
opportunity for all and more responsibility from all that her husband
talked about in 1992. The “American Dream Grant” would award states
$150 billion over 10 years to reduce tuition and increase graduation
rates; it would also consolidate existing education tax credits into
a new $3,000 refundable tax credit. The goal is to make it possible
for “any student willing to work part-time or perform community
service” to go to four years of college tuition free. In the hopes of
spurring universities to improve their graduation rates, the block
grant would be tied to both the number of students that a state has
as well as the number of graduates it produces.
The DLC’s Bruce Reed told ABC News following the event that it would
be up to the states to decide how to structure the work requirement,
how much community service to require, and whether to require
students to maintain a particular grade point average to qualify and
remain eligible. The plan’s benefits would be universal — though its
proponents expect it to have the biggest impact on lower income
families who are more likely to send their kids to lower-priced
schools. As Sen. Clinton, Gov. Vilsack, and Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE)
write in today’s Denver Post, their plan is to pay for it by “getting
rid of wasteful business subsidies.” LINK