I'm more skeptical of the CC plan than most. Here's the reason: We face, for example, a critical shortage of nurses in the country. There are plenty of young men and women dying to become nurses. Seems like an easy thing to fix, right? Train more nurses. Buuuuuuut, no one can get into nursing school. That's the rate limiting step. Normally, when there's a worker shortage, wages increase, but that's not happened in nursing, because the root cause of the shortage isn't that people aren't attracted to the profession at current wages; it's that you need to get on a goddam wait list for two years just to get your CC associate's degree in nursing.

What's gonna happen when everyone can go for free? The system is going to break under its own weight. The capacity simply isn't there to handle the influx of students, and anyway it isn't debt from CC that is crushing young Americans. It sounds good, but I'm not convinced it's going to solve anyone's problems.

To me, the bigger proposal is raising the capital gains and eliminating the step up tax loophole. This is a small step in the correct direction for taxation that, while not Earth shattering, should at least move the glacial debate toward fairness. If the GOP wants to continue to defend policy that affects only the richest of the rich at the expense of everyone else, then it's up to the 2016 Dem nominee to pound that point into the ground.

The way the Feds and especially the states collect taxes is in desperate need of fixing. This simple fix that the President proposed could be the beginning of that fix.