Spending limits in the wrong places
Congressional Democrats usually like to back government programs intended to care for people, and especially to give relief to the disadvantaged. That’s a moral issue.
But one limit they hold on federal funding is morally-informed education, or at least when it’s faith-based morality. And not what passes for morality in the public school system. The WSJ has this piece about a funding program the Democrats don’t like.
We’re speaking of the four-year-old Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program that provides vouchers to about 2,000 low-income children so they can attend religious or other private schools. The budget for the experimental program is $18 million, or about what the U.S. Department of Education spends every hour and a half.
This fight has nothing to do with saving money. But it has a lot to do with election-year politics. Kevin Chavis, the former D.C. City Council member who sits on the oversight board of the scholarship program, says, “If we were going to do what was best for the kids, then continuing it is a no-brainer.
Which should theoretically work well in a Congress that is showing little evidence of engaging brains.
Here’s a good question about the vaunted merit of ‘choice’, and why it’s so…selectively provided.
Many of the parents we interviewed describe the vouchers as a “Godsend” or a “lifeline” for their sons and daughters. “Most of the politicians have choices on where to send their kids to school,” says William Rush, Jr., who has two boys in the program. “Why do they want to take our choices away?”
Because the teachers unions and their political sympathizers want to have a monopoly.
The reason unions want to shut the program down immediately isn’t because they’re afraid it will fail. They’re afraid it will succeed, and show that there is a genuine alternative to the national scandal that are most inner-city public schools. That’s why former D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams and current Mayor Adrian Fenty, both Democrats, support the program.
They need to have a serious talk with their party leaders, and their presidential candidate. As the Journal notes, talk about audacity of hope…