Just How Bad Is the ‘Educational Choice’ Bill in Congress that Trump Is Expected to Support?
From The Progressive
or years, a powerful faction of political conservatives has pushed for creating a federal school voucher program alongside the many state-level voucher programs that have recently passed. During her tenure as U.S. Secretary of Education during Donald Trump’s first presidential administration, Betsy DeVos advocated for creating a federal voucher program, but she was not able to successfully launch it.
Now, a federal voucher bill called the Educational Choice for Children Act of 2024 (ECCA) is making its way through Congress, and is expected to receive the support of Trump and his Education Secretary pick, Linda McMahon.
If passed, the ECCA will fund vouchers through a tax credit system. Contributors (which the bill refers to as “any taxpayer”) will donate money to a 501(3)(c) scholarship granting organization (SGO), which in turn awards the money as vouchers to families. The families may then use the money for a variety of education-related expenses, including private school tuition. Contributors then receive a dollar-for-dollar credit on their federal tax bill of up to $5,000 or 10 percent of their gross income—whichever is greater.
This bill has already passed out of the Ways and Means Committee, picking up twenty-four GOP co-sponsors. There is an expectation among some Congress watchers that the bill will go through the reconciliation process, with smoother filibuster-free sailing through a process that buries it in a bundle of other budgetary items.
Existing vouchers on the state level are used primarily for private religious school tuition payments. Fans of this structure argue that it doesn’t involve any government expenditure or violation of the rapidly-eroding wall between church and state because the tax dollars are never in the government’s hands.
But imagine that your brother owes you fifty dollars, and as you go to collect it, your partner warns you that you’d better not spend any of that money on beer. So you instead tell your brother to just give you a few cases of beer rather than the originally owed money and you’ll call it even. Will saying that you “didn’t spend the money on beer” convince your partner that you are not fifty dollars short?In a tax credit scholarship system, the government allows individuals to finance vouchers as a substitute for paying their taxes, leaving the government short that amount.
Per this rationale, the Kentucky Supreme Court was unconvinced when the state’s tax credit voucher program was challenged in court. “The money at issue cannot be characterized as simply private funds,” the judges concluded. “Rather it represents the tax liability that the taxpayer would otherwise owe.” The fact that these tax dollars are spent before they’re collected does not make them anything other than tax dollars.
Tax credit voucher schemes usually include a volume cap, which limits how large a hole the program will be allowed to blow in the government’s budget. ECCA sets a volume cap of $5 billion. That is $5 billion fewer dollars collected by the federal government—hardly a help with Trump’s promised belt-tightening.
Such an upsetting bill.