For all my conservative friends, this perfectly illustrates the hypocrisy of conservative politics. It's always fiscally irresponsible until it affects them directly. Conservatives tell me that tuition free college isn't "realistic", that raising taxes on the 1% would destroy the economy, that reenacting the Glass-Steagall Act to prevent risky banking practices that lead to the 2008 finical collapse is 'over-regulation' and unreasonable.
Have you ever seen the movie The Big Short that came out last year? It's about the 2008 financial crisis and how the deregulation of Wall Street caused the greatest financial disaster since The Great Depression. Before the credits roll at the end of the movie they say that no one learned from 2008, and that the same risks are being taken again.
The banks didn't want the federal government to get involved until they needed to be bailed out. Conservatives are believers in the so called 'free market' until they're not. People argue conservatism as if it's philosophically valid but in the real world they're just protecting their own interests. What do they have to gain by making college free? They graduated 20 years ago or they own a business or were, like Donald Trump, born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple. Where all the conservatives who make $12 and hour. You won't find any.
The federal government should act in the best interests of the American people, not just the people rich enough to influence our political system. In philosophy there is an ethical concept introduced by Immanuel Kant called the Categorical imperative. It's basically a way of evaluating whether or not an action is ethical. The Categorical imperative says that whenever we consider completing an act, we should also consider what kind of things may occur if what we choose to do were applied across the board to everybody.