Dec 30, 2015 12:28 PM EST By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

The Democratic Party has long been pushing for some kind of a federally funded program to drive down the cost of college.

2016 Democratic hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton have their own plans, as does President Barack Obama and several Democratic lawmakers. In a recent campaign address in Muscatine, Ia., Sanders went on the offensive by calling the notion of bright students being kept out of college because of money "dumb."

"It is kind of a no-brainer, and yet today in Iowa and in Vermont and all over this country we have hundreds of thousands of bright and qualified young people who cannot afford to go to college because their families lack the money," The Des Moines Register quoted Sanders telling attendees Tuesday. "Now that is absurd. That is unfair to those young people. It is stupid in terms of the future of our economy because we want to be tapping all of the intellectual potential that is out there."

According to FeelTheBern.com, a website supporting Sanders' campaign, the "Robin Hood" tax on Wall Street would entail "a 0.5 percent speculation fee on investment houses, hedge funds, and other stock trades, as well as a 0.1 percent fee on bonds and a 0.005 percent fee charged on derivatives."

This, Sanders projects, will allow for tuition-free public universities and colleges. On his official website, Sanders also criticized the federal government for turning a massive profit on student loans, arguing that money could be used to lower interest rates for borrowers.

Multiple states have already made community colleges free of tuition under certain conditions, a plan Obama has endorsed for the country as a whole. But these programs are highly divisive among other politicians and higher education groups, though even several Republican candidates acknowledge there needs to be some sort of change.

Primarily on several candidate's radar is the Education Department's monitoring of its main student loan servicers. Just in time for Christmas, Obama signed into law a bill that included a section requiring the ED to ensure lending companies are doing what they can to get borrowers into favorable repayment plans.

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