SOTU - nonsense redux :: Political News and commentaries

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January 25, 2011

SOTU - nonsense redux

In tonight's State Of The Union address, President Obama is expected to once again call for increased government education spending on the theory that this will improve outcomes, raise productivity, and make us more internationally competitive. But is it really the case that by once again increasing government education spending we'll see improve outcomes, raise productivity, and make us more internationally competitive ... none of which has resulted from such spending the first time?

Hardly, says Andrew J. Coulson:

... I already offered a thorough debunking of the notion that increased federal (or total) education spending has improved U.S. student achievement on the eve of last year's SOTU, and thanks to the miracle of the intarwebs, there's no need to repeat it here.

But the president is not simply advocating a strategy that is a proven failure, he is plunging a dagger into the heart of the one federal education program that is a proven success. There is already a program that is producing better educational outcomes at a quarter of the cost of the status quo: the Washington, DC Opportunity Scholarships Program. It pays private school tuition for poor DC kids, at an average cost of about $7,000. Participating parents are happy with their chosen private schools, test scores are as good or better than those in the public schools, graduation rates are significantly better than in the public schools, and, here's the clincher: DC is spending four times as much per pupil on its district public schools ... over $28,000 a year. ...

And the education spending boondoggle is only one of a wide array of promises for new spending programs and tax cuts despite a record $1.35 trillion deficit projected for the current fiscal year. And if you're thinking that more spending on roads, infrastructure, green energy and education sounds an awfully lot like the failed "Stimulus" bill ... you're right.

As Thomas R. Eddlem suggests over at NewAmerican ... President Obama's "State of the Union" agenda could be summed up by Harry Hopkins, the principal architect of FDR's New Deal, as: "Tax-cut and tax-cut, spend and spend, bigger deficits and bigger deficits, the people are just too damned dumb to understand."