Kevin Rollins talks to Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona about Educational Tax Credits.
Rollins: What is happening regarding education policy on the federal front?
Franks:Were introducing the Childrens Hope Act. Which is essentially modeled on the Arizona tax credit legislation that I wrote back in 1995. Passed in 97. Survived the court in 99. It has survived a litany of obstacles but it is working so well. And sometimes people say that the states are the laboratories of the nation If it works well in the state it will work more broadly in the nation.
Im completely convinced that a lot of things belong at the state level and in a sense thats what were trying to do here. Weve worked on this for quite a while to come up with a new little twist because when we passed this in Arizona, I wrote a bill for Sen. Jon Kyl and when Mr. Jeffords changed his position we didnt get a fair vote. Unfortunately the tax credit idea has kind of been banged around here a little bit.
When we came, we said OK, we know this works and weve got to put a different approach to it. And part of the hesitation on the part of members of congress to pass this scholarship tax credit is number one, they dont want to monkey with the tax code its already twice as big as...
10,000 pages.
Its just a disaster. Secondly, they dont think this is the best place, just as I dont think its the best place to dictate education policy to the states. We came up with an approach that pretty much took both of those considerations. We said we will offer a tax credit only to those states that already have a state tax credit of their own. The idea of course is to provide the states an incentive to do this where it belongs. Of course the states rights people liked that. I liked that.
Secondarily, that means if we can keep it in place for five years, I hope we can overhaul this monstrosity of a tax code, this federal tax credit can go away and with my blessing. In the meantime, this whole tax credit approach is so much better in my judgement than the voucher approach. And believe me, Im on the DC voucher bill.
I was going to ask you about that. Theres a difference between a voucher and a tax credit.
Oh a great deal. Sometimes you have to emphasize the obvious to get something clear in your mind. But the big difference is that the source of the money. The source of the money for a tax credit comes from the individual donors on a voluntary basis. The source for money for a voucher comes from the public coffers which have been extracted from taxpayers on an involuntary basis. If they dont pay their taxes, they get their house taken away from them. So it is different in that sense and that basis is what makes the differences in court constitutional battles. I dont think it is a correct argument, but I think it is a reasonable argument that somebody can say well, this is my tax money, I paid it in and I dont want it to go to something I dont believe in. For instance, indoctrinating a child in a faith that is contrary to my own. Now the fact is, we, as taxpayers, are called on to do that all the time. In this case, with vouchers, I dont think its unconstitutional at all because if we are paying the money in for education and the parents are the ones making the decision.
The argument evaporates completely when you talk about the tax credit approach. Because all it really says is that if people want to do something that the state is already doing now, in a better way, that they can keep their money and do it. Because right now, about 60 percent of most state budgets go to education on some level. Thats a big piece.
And this approach saves money, because on a K-12 basis, it costs about half as much in the average private school as it does in the average public school. Sometimes we forget, public school is a nice word, but the fact is the government is not only paying for the education, it is also administering the system. I used to run the Governors office for Children which oversaw all the childrens programs in Arizona. One of the things was almost written in granite, if the government both paid for and administered the program it was usually an unmitigated disaster. But if the government made the stupid mistake of paying for it, but also then had the intelligence to let somebody else deliver the service, sometimes at least it met its ostensible goal.
Theres a difference between public education and public schools.
Private schools are public education, because the public is invited to come. But unfortunately, we use different words. A word doesnt change what we do. Ill never forget, a famous Korean airliner was shot down, the Soviets said, Flight Seven was terminated. Thats a nice way of saying it, but a Russian fighter jet blew a passenger plane out of the air. It was a horrible horrible thing and sometimes we sanitize these things but a word doesnt change what we do. Its a pretty strong analogy, but the point Im making is that we in this society, especially in the public policy arena we attach words to things to make it more palatable In all deference to the magnificently heroic teachers who are involved in that system, the system itself is the last credible experiment in socialism left on earth. Thats a pretty strong phrase.
You would think that people would realize that the free market is a superior system than that.
The only lesson we seem to learn from history is that we dont learn from history. And the reason history repeats itself is because we didnt listen the first time. It is amazing to me, we have this magnificently powerful nation, economically, we are so dominant in the world. The free market has given us this magnificent economic engine that absolutely surpasses anything in the history of mankind. Im astonished sometimes, we see that a few market principles applied to a monopolistic telephone system -- we decided to break up the Bell system and let market forces take over, well now e have 3 cents a minute long distance. Actuarially, it would be 3 dollars long distance some places now.
The point is we bring all these forces to bear on the telephone system, mail system, to deliver pizza, but we dont have the good sense, or the straightforward insight to understand that can help our children have a better education as well. The tax credit approach is a close to a free market system as we are going to get in the short term. In the long term, I would love to see parents and the private sector completely take over education. Thats my perspective because I believe it is the right one for the children.
And sometimes whats difficult in this environment is we forget why we are here. If it is not about making a better world, if its not about giving our children a better shot at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then we are wasting our time and we should be doing something else without the base alloy of pretentiousness and nonsense. If we are not going to do it, forget it. But if we are going to say we are going to make a difference then we ought to employ the mechanisms that are proven..
I say this, it is a pretty basic premise, the highway of history is littered with the wreckage of governments who thought they could create, and manage, and manipulate consumption and productivity better than the free markets. I desperately dont want this country to be added to that trash heap.
The terrible thing is that this is such an important part of the economy... it not like VCRs, that might be nonessential, but education is at the core of everything we do.
How do you second something 1000 percent? You are absolutely right. This is not just about having a more clear television to watch this is about saving the future generations coming down the highway of the future. With not only the academic tools for what is to come, but also the spiritual, emotional, and philosophical tools.
I think we understand that children and family is the basis for the strength of the nation. The way we have the capability of defending freedom, but the whole reason to try to defend freedom.
But they always say that how much you care about education is measured by how much money you pour into the public school system, how much you pay teachers.
Its sad, because you know the most expensive education you can get is right here in River City. In Washington DC. It has the most expensive education in the country that I know of. It is about $12,000 per student. Well, Arizona is about $6500. And we blow the doors off of it. And you can say that this is because of this and that, you can paint a lot of pictures on it. But, guess who does real well in Washington DC? The private school kids who are educated at half of that.
Theyre banging on the doors to get in...
Yeah, theres not enough private schools to do that. We should consider the facts and the reality. I know public education has always been a theory. But there is nothing so sad the world as a theory that is so pretty, but is destroyed by an unruly set of facts. That is the case unfortunately.
One of the things that we can see is that the amount of money spent on education is not an indicator. The key indicator is parental involvement. If you look at home schooling, they are the best educated kids in the country. They blow the doors off of all of us. I wasnt home schooled and now I wish I had been.
But the truth is they do extremely well. It was experts that built the Titanic and amateurs that built the Ark.
They say homeschoolers are socially maladjusted. Is that accurate?
Thats the only thing you could possibly say, but its hysterically untrue. Most of the time you see these kids have exemplary citizenship, you dont see them in jails. How many homeschoolers do you see on death row?
What happened to the argument for diversity, I would think a multiplicity of school systems would create more diversity.
You know what the most diversified schools in America are? Our inner city religious private schools. Theres more color among those children, than any other place.
Now I have a theory about that. Thats not just based on the private nature of the schools. Basically, those schools hold to the fact that God created these children and that all of us are created equal. And that is a call to equality that is unmatched in any other area of social rhetoric. When every school administrator believes every child is a miracle, as I do, then all of a sudden, the color doesnt matter.
Unfortunately we live in a little bit of a throwaway society, when children are having a difficult time, whether it be their socio-economic status, or a physical handicap or mental handicap, we have a tendency to kind of throw them aside. But a real American says no, if theyre in trouble, Ill tell you what we do, we put them at the front of the line. We say were going to make a special effort on their behalf.
Theyre not lost in the bureaucracy.
Theyre not lost in the bureaucracy. Sometimes in these bureaucracies theyre just a little bottom in a chair. If they bring their own scholarship, all of a sudden they are royalty in the system. It is about education, but if children believe they are a miracle, if they believe they are put on this earth for a grand purpose that no one else can accomplish, if they believe that their goal in life is to pursue the truth and the betterment of their fellow human beings. They not only learn science, history, philosophy better, but at the end of the day they find their way home.
In Arizona weve had magnificent success with the largest school choice program in the nation. Even though a lot of folks dont talk about it too much. To some degree we are victims of the success of the system because we dont have enough places to put the kids. We dont have to advertise, we dont have to work to make the point that this is working. Were so busy trying to keep up with how well it is working that it is hard sometimes to do a lot of outreach. But that is beginning to change, because sometimes the best teacher is a good example, Arizona is really doing it right.
Are states following the example?
Yes, Pennsylvania and Florida have both passed the same thing. Between the three states we scholarship 52,000 children. The first couple years in Florida when the voucher program was established, they scholarshiped 58 children, not 58,000. Thats moving in a better direction now.
Even in Wisconsin, where they have a voucher program, this is not to disdain the voucher program, I just think this is much better, because it avoids the constitutional argument. The bottom line, this is voluntary money coming from private individuals that they privately donate to private scholarship funds that go to private scholarships for private individuals to go to private schools of their private choice. And that privately drives the ACLU completely nuts.
Is anything happening locally, in DC?
Its not really applicable to DC yet. With the Childrens Hope Act we want to provide a clear incentive, financially and psychologically, to join the battalion of freedom. Its far easier to defend a tax credit than vouchers. Its far easier to defend them in court. We never really lost a single battle in courts because the courts would have to tear down 100 years of tax code.
Weve already agreed as a society, that if you give money to a noble cause and that noble cause is documented, we incentivize that in our tax code. People can even give to religious causes. You can give to your church -- a purely religious effort and you get a tax deduction which is special treatment. And you can make the argument that the rest of the taxpayers are subsidizing that. Thats not a good argument, all you are saying is if you are going to do something real good with your money, the government isnt going to take a piece of it. Thats all youre really saying.
But in this situation, if you are doing something that the government is spending 60 percent of the average state budget on, and you can do it in a way thats better and cheaper, we think thats a pretty good idea. Well create an incentive there too.
In terms of freedom, a lot of folks say, the argument made in Arizona, this is social engineering. I said, Look, what do you think the tax code is but social engineering? What do you think the public education is, but social engineering?.
Dont let the perfect destroy the good?
The bottom line is, this is reducing social engineering. Because it gives people back their own money, youve got greater freedom with your money than you did before.
Because we are still going to have the tax code next week anyway...
Well, we are. We are. The bottom line is people have to pay that money into government and the government decides about education policies. In this case, we say, if you want to create greater options here, the government wont take the money at all. In other words its a step in the opposite direction of social engineering rather than a step towards social engineering.
What are its chances of passing?
Relentlessness is always one of the allies of any member of congress. That is something that some of us think is the greatest substitute for brains there is. The truth is I think it may not happen immediately. But the chances of us passing it, I think well pass it eventually.
Will it be a battle of titanic proportions? Of course it will. It took us three years in Arizona. If we get it passed in three years here, Id be tickled to death.