(CNSNews.com) - South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg said Thursday that he doesn’t believe in free college for all, because it doesn’t make sense for the middle class to pay for the children of wealth Americans to go to school for free.
During the second Democratic presidential debate, Buttigieg was asked, “Many of your colleagues on stage support free college. You do not. Why not?”
“Sure, so college affordability is personal for us. Chasten and I have six-figure student debt. I believe in reducing student debt. It’s logical to me that if you can refinance your house, you ought to be able to refinance your student debt,” Buttigieg said.
“I also believe in free college for low- and middle-income students for whom cost could be a barrier. I just don’t believe it makes sense to ask working class families to subsidize even the children of billionaires. I think the children of the wealthiest Americans can pay at least a little bit of tuition, and while I want tuition costs to go down, I don’t think we can buy down every last penny for them,” he said.
Buttigieg said not only should college be more affordable, but it must be affordable for people to choose not to go to college, and he laid out the case for raising the minimum wage.
“Now there’s something else that doesn’t get talked about in the college affordability debate. Yes, it needs to be more affordable in this country to go to college. It also needs to be more affordable in this country to not go to college,” he said.
“You should be able to live well, afford rent, be generous to your church and little league whether you went to college or not. That’s one of many reasons we need to raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour,” Buttigieg added.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) interjected, saying the next generation will be the ones who solve the problem of college affordability.
“I’ve got $100,000 in student loan debt myself. I’ll tell you, we can’t count on the people who’ve been in government for the last 30 years, who were around when this problem was created to be the ones to solve it,” he said.
“It’s going to be the next generation, the 40 million of us who can’t start a family, can’t take a good idea and start a business, and can’t buy our first home. This is the generation that’s going to be able to solve student loan debt. This generation is ready to lead,” Swalwell added.
