ANOTHER entitlement?

Since I've been reading up on state news lately, it stuck me as odd that a Republican state such as Utah would support a universal voucher program.

I thought I was just misunderstanding the issue. I talked to a couple of friends about it, but they hadn't a clue what was going on in Utah. (One guy asked where Utah was, for crying out loud.)

Then one sent me a link today to a column in the Deseret News. In it, the author wonders how creation of an entitlement program such as the universal voucher law would comport with fiscally conservative Republican thinking.

I cut and paste it below, with all credits to the Deseret News and author Bob Bernick, Jr. You also can read it here.

GOP has taken odd stand on vouchers
By Bob Bernick Jr.Deseret Morning News
Published: October 5, 2007
The following column is not an endorsement of private school vouchers; neither is it an opposition statement on vouchers.
Rather, it is an examination of what I see as a very odd political stand taken by leading conservative Republicans in Utah, and why they may be taking that stand.
While others may certainly disagree, I see the private-school voucher movement as a classic government entitlement program. It is also a government redistribution of wealth, one that in reality may well help the more well-to-do among us (who can afford to send their children to private schools) at the cost of the least well-to-do among us (who can't afford, even with a bit of state taxes, to send their children to private schools).
In both areas, one would think that conservative Utah Republicans would be against both a new government entitlement program and against a redistribution of wealth.
Not so. The very base of the pro-voucher movement comes from conservative Republicans. To me, an odd development.
First, two definitions. According to Webster, entitlement means: A right to benefits specified by law. And redistribute means: To spread to other areas.
Well, HB148 — the main voucher bill passed by the 2007 Legislature — certainly meets those definitions.
If you have a child between certain ages (5 to 21) and you send that child to a qualifying private school (including schools run by a religion — like Judge Memorial Catholic High School) you are entitled to a tuition benefit. You get a benefit no matter how small or large your income.
A single mom making $30,000 a year would get $2,750 to send her lone child to a private school, while a millionaire family would get $500 to send its child to a private school. While the lower-income mom gets more money, both families get something.
HB148 would provide private-school vouchers of between $500 and $3,000 per child for 2007-08. And by law, those "scholarships" — in itself a strange use of the word, considering the entitlement payment has little to do with a student's performance in school, only that they attend and not get kicked out for failing grades or behavior — will increase by the same amount each year as the state's basic funding formula for public schools, the weighted pupil unit.
How does HB148 pay for vouchers? It takes money not from the Uniform School Fund — the public-school-leveling fund enriched by law from personal and business income taxes — but from the state's General Fund. Various taxes flow into the General Fund, but by far most of its monies come from the state sales tax.
The GOP backers of vouchers found a funding formula that does not directly take money away from public education, which is funded from the Uniform School Fund.
However, all Utahns pay sales tax — no matter how poor or how rich we are. Worse, from a tax regressivity perspective, Utah still places a small sales tax on unprepared food — our most basic commodity.
So, GOP legislators and Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. (no Democrats voted for HB148) want to create a new government entitlement program that takes money away from all Utah citizens and gives it to a small group of citizens who send their children to private schools.
Thus, vouchers are, in my view, an entitlement program that redistributes wealth.
Smile from your grave, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
When U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, co-sponsored a new federal child health insurance program with Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., at the Utah Republican Convention that year a resolution was passed by the conservative delegates that damned Hatch, saying CHIP was another big government socialist entitlement program. Hatch later addressed the convention shaming delegates with biblical references for opposing a new program that helped sick, poor kids. And I think CHIP was a fine idea — a worthy government entitlement program that redistributed wealth.
But apparently hard-core Utah Republicans can favor a new entitlement program passed by the Utah Legislature but oppose one passed by the federal government.
What's behind GOP lawmakers' support for vouchers? Well, they would say "family choice" is at the heart of their argument. Some children need a private school alternative, and the state should help in that.
But I believe it goes further. I see a deep-seated, almost irrational, hatred of the Utah Education Association — the main public education teacher union that year after year spends tens of thousands of dollars trying to defeat conservative GOP legislators. Pushing vouchers through the divided Legislature is clearly a slap in the eye to the UEA.
In recent years legislative Republicans have tried to harm UEA PAC funding — and succeeded in doing so for a while until overruled in federal court. And now Republicans are looking to change State Board of Education nonpartisan elections to make board candidates go through county or state party conventions, to win party nominations and pass partisan philosophical barriers.
It's an arrogance of power that says oppose us and we will make you pay.
In any case, citizens will decide whether we have private-school vouchers come Nov. 6. I say educate yourself on the advantages and disadvantages of vouchers before you vote — for there really are two sides to this issue.
But also understand that at the ballot box you will vote for or against a new government entitlement program that redistributes wealth.

© 2007 Deseret News Publishing Company All rights reserved