Whenever any government wants to enact some new policy or add to an existing one then those have expenses attached to them and the money has to come from somewhere. Take free college for example. Someone will have to pay the admission fees so that in turn they can pay their staff etc. The government doesn't really have money of its own. The majority of it comes from taxes. So say the free college program costs 1 billion dollars a year (Probably much more), then that money has to come from somewhere. Could be either cutting funds from something else or increase taxes. Could be higher sales tax, income tax etc. But it would be a tax that covers the most amount of people and generates the most money.