Campaign for Liberty is supporting efforts to add education scholarship tax credits to the Senate tax reform bill. As the name suggests, these credits go to people who make donations to organizations that give K-12 scholarships to children whose parents could not otherwise afford to send their children to a school where they would receive a quality education.
Campaign for Liberty Chairman Ron Paul championed education scholarship tax credits throughout his time in Congress. He introduced legislation, the Education Improvement Act, providing a $5,000 tax credit for contributions to an education scholarship fund.
Campaign for Liberty members whose Senator is on the Senate Finance Committee should call them and tell them to support adding education scholarship tax credits to the tax reform bill.
Here is Dr. Paul’s official statement on the Education Scholarship Improvement Act:
HON. RON PAUL
of Texas
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the Education Improvement
Tax Cut Act. This act, a companion to my Family Education Freedom Act,
takes a further step toward returning control over education resources
to private citizens by providing a $5,000 tax credit for donations to
scholarship funds to enable low-income children to attend private
schools. It also encourages private citizens to devote more of their
resources to helping public schools, by providing a $5,000 tax credit
for cash or in-kind donations to public schools to support academic or
extra curricular programs.
I need not remind my colleagues that education is one of the top
priorities of the American people. After all, many members of Congress
have proposed education reforms and a great deal of time is spent
debating these proposals. However, most of these proposals expand
federal control over education. Many proposals that claim to increase
local control over education actually extend federal power by holding
schools ``accountable'' to federal bureaucrats and politicians. Of
course, schools should be held accountable for their results, but they
should be held accountable to parents and school boards not to federal
officials. Therefore, I propose we move in a different direction and
embrace true federalism by returning control over the education dollar
to the American people.
One of the major problems with centralized control over education
funding is that spending priorities set by Washington-based
Representatives, staffers, and bureaucrats do not necessarily match the
needs of individual communities. In fact, it would be a miracle if
spending priorities determined by the wishes of certain politically
powerful representatives or the theories of Education Department
functionaries match the priorities of every community in a country as
large and diverse as America. Block grants do not solve this problem as
they simply allow states and localities to choose the means to reach
federally-determined ends.
Returning control over the education dollar for tax credits for
parents and for other concerned citizens returns control over both the
means and ends of education policy to local communities. People in one
community may use this credit to purchase computers, while children in
another community may, at last, have access to a quality music program
because of community leaders who took advantage of the tax credit
contained in this bill.
Children in some communities may benefit most from the opportunity to
attend private, parochial, or other religious schools. One of the most
encouraging trends in education has been the establishment of private
scholarship programs. These scholarship funds use voluntary
contributions to open the doors of quality private schools to low-
income children. By providing a tax credit for donations to these
programs, Congress can widen the educational opportunities and increase
the quality of education for all children. Furthermore, privately-
funded scholarships raise none of the concerns of state entanglement
raised by publicly-funded vouchers.
There is no doubt that Americans will always spend generously on
education, the question is, ``who should control the education dollar--
politicians and bureaucrats or the American people?'' Mr. Speaker, I
urge my colleagues to join me in placing control of education back in
the hands of citizens and local communities by sponsoring the Education
Improvement Tax Cut Act.
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PDFTags: tax credits