WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama wants publicly funded community college available to all Americans, a sweeping proposal he argues would strengthen the U.S. workforce. The initiative’s price tag has yet to be revealed, and it faces a spending-averse Republican Congress.

The a White House official said Obama wants to make higher education as free and universal as high school by covering enough tuition to get students who keep their grades up an associate degree or halfway to a bachelor’s.

“Put simply, what I’d like to do is to see the first two years of community college free for everybody who is willing to work for it,” Obama said a video posted Thursday evening on Facebook. He spoke seated on the front of his desk from his office aboard Air Force One, in the midst of a three-day tour to preview the agenda he’ll be outlining Jan. 20 in the State of the Union address.

Administration officials on a conference call with reporters Thursday evening said the funding details would come out later with the president’s budget. They estimated 9 million students could participate and save an average of $3,800 in tuition per year. That suggests an annual cost in the tens of billions of dollars.

The a White House official said the federal government would pick up 75 percent of the cost and the final quarter would come from states that opt into the program.