Jeb Bush proposes the same college affordability plan he bashed when Obama proposed it

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published 27 August 2015

In January's State of the Union address, President Obama proposed two years of free community college for everyone, a plan Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush eagerly decried. "The idea of giving something free — it’s political. It’s poll driven," Bush said at the time. "Someone did a focus group. Free stuff. Free community colleges, it’s a great sound bite, [but it] is the wrong approach."

Now, however, Bush is sounding a different note. "There are great programs around the country," to make college more affordable, he said this week, adding that the one he most admires is "a project called Tennessee Promise, where every student that participates gets their community college education, at least for the first two years, debt free, free of tuition." When Obama was pitching his ideas, the president cited the exact same Tennessee program as an inspirational model.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.