Hill’s math doesn’t add up for Walker
KEENE, N.H. — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker accused Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton of hypocrisy yesterday for lamenting the high cost of college tuition, even as she charges six-figure fees to deliver speeches at universities.
“I’ve frozen in-state tuition rates for four years, while you charged colleges $225K+ just to show up,” Walker, a GOP presidential contender, tweeted at Clinton yesterday.
Clinton charged a $225,000 speaking fee at a University of Nevada Las Vegas fundraiser last fall — and used her pricy podium to decry the soaring cost of college tuition and mounting student debt.
The Walker put-down came just hours after Clinton singled out Walker during a town hall in Claremont, N.H., on her second day of promoting her new college affordability plan.
“You take someone like Gov. Walker from Wisconsin, who seems to be delighted in slashing the investment in higher education in his state, in making it more difficult for students to get scholarships or to pay off their debt,” Clinton said. “I don’t know why we he wants to raise taxes on students, but that’s the result when you don’t look for ways for people … who are working hard every day to get ahead.”
Walker fired back that her plan amounts to a “massive new tax hike.”
Clinton wrapped up her two-day New Hampshire swing at a middle school in Keene with a forum on the heroin epidemic.
Earlier in the day, she denounced vitriolic Internet commenters, calling for “more positive speech to drown out … the effects of the negative speech” and noting she’s been the target of online hate herself.
“As president, I would do my very best to model the kind of behavior that I would hope all our citizens would have. I’m not asking people to like everybody,” Clinton said, responding to a town hall question. “I’m asking people to be respectful to each other. I’m asking people to be kinder to each other. It exercises good, old-fashioned politeness.
“The feelings that come out over the Internet, you would never say that to someone standing in front of you,” said Clinton. “Then why would you say it on the Internet? Why would you engage in homophobia or racism or sexism?”
Clinton called for the town hall’s participants to scold anyone who makes hateful comments in a group setting.
“Say, ‘Hey, you know what? We don’t do that anymore. We’re beyond that,’ ” said Clinton.
She added: “I just say this because occasionally I’m the subject of it. I know no one is immune from it and part of what we have to do is literally make it unacceptable as best we can in every kind of gathering we’re a part of from the real world to the virtual online world.”