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House Republicans Propose Deep Cuts to Education, Health, Welfare Programs

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2023 //
39

The following is a press release from Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, reacting to deep cuts in the funding bill proposed by House Republicans for federal programs in education, health, labor, and human services. The Title I funding program, which supports schools serving low-income students, is subject to a draconian cut which could lead to layoffs of 220,000 teachers. Every other program sustains cuts. Though not mentioned here, the federal Charter Schools Program received additional funding, one of the few to escape the Tepunlican axe.,

From: House Appropriations Democrats <DemApprops.Press@mail.house.gov>
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2023 10:04 AM
Subject: House Republican Funding Bill Kicks Teachers Out of Classrooms, Takes Away Job Opportunities, and Harms Women and Children

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 13, 2023

Contact:

Katelynn Thorpe, 202-225-1599

 

House Republican Funding Bill Kicks Teachers Out of Classrooms, Takes Away Job Opportunities, and Harms Women and Children

 

In the midst of a teacher shortage, Republicans are kicking more than 220,000 teachers from classrooms.

WASHINGTON — House Appropriations Committee Republicans today released the draft fiscal year 2024 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies funding bill, which will be considered in subcommittee tomorrow. The legislation is an assault on education and job training, decimates research funding, and abandons ongoing public health crises.

 

For 2024, the bill provides $163.0 billion, a cut of $63.8 billion – 28 percent – below 2023. This year’s Republican allocation was the lowest for the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies bill since 2008. The legislation:

 

  • Decimates support for children in K-12 elementary schools and early childhood education.
  • Abandons college students and low-income workers trying to improve their lives through higher education or job training.
  • Stifles lifesaving biomedical innovation by cutting funding for cancer research, mental health research, and neurological research, and by slashing funding for advanced research projects intended to develop new cures and therapies.
  • Surrenders to ongoing public health crises in mental health, opioid use, HIV/AIDS, and health disparities.
  • Harms women’s health by cutting programs that support maternal and child health, eliminating programs that provide access to health services and contraception, and adding numerous partisan and poison pill riders related to abortion and reproductive health.

 

“When 161 House Republicans voted earlier this year to eliminate all K-12 funding at the Department of Education, I was horrified, but that was just the beginning. Now, in the midst of a teacher shortage, they have introduced a bill that would kick 220,000 teachers from classrooms. We are witnessing a widespread attack on public education that should horrify all of us” Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) said. “Regardless of age or stage in life, this bill means you cannot count on government for any help.  It limits women’s access to abortion while stripping maternal health services and making diapers more expensive. It decimates access to preschool, education, and job training. People can only hope they do not get cancer or need mental health services—you will not find support from House Republicans. These awful cuts will make it very hard for people and should not even be considered by this committee.”

Key provisions included in the draft fiscal year 2024 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies bill are below. The text of the draft bill is here. The subcommittee markup will be webcast live and linked on the House Committee on Appropriationswebsite.

The 2024 funding bill:

Department of Education (ED) – The bill includes a total of $57.1 billion in discretionary appropriations for ED, a cut of $22.5 billion – 28 percent – below the FY 2023 enacted level. Of this amount:

  • The bill includes $3.7 billion for Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies, a cut of $14.7 billion below the FY 2023 enacted level. This cut could force a nationwide reduction of 220,000 teachers from classrooms serving low-income students.
  • The bill eliminates funding for English Language Acquisition, a cut of $890 million that would remove vital academic support for 5 million English learners nationwide.
  • The bill eliminates funding for Title II-A (Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants), a cut of $2.2 billion below the enacted level.
  • The bill eliminates funding for Promise Neighborhoods, a cut of $91 million below the enacted level.
  • The bill eliminates funding for Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) grants within the Education Innovation and Research program, a cut of $87 million below the enacted level.
  • The bill eliminates funding for Magnet Schools, a cut of $139 million below the enacted level.
  • The bill includes $100 million forFull-Service Community Schools, a cut of $50 million below the enacted level.
  • The bill fails to provide an increase for the maximum Pell Grant award for the first time since 2012.
  • The bill eliminates funding for Federal Work Study, a cut of $1.2 billion that would eliminate work-based assistance to 660,000 students nationwide
  • The bill eliminates funding for Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, a cut of $910 million that would eliminate need-based financial aid for 1.7 million students nationwide
  • The bill includes $1.8 billion for Student Aid Administration, a cut of $265 million below the enacted level.
  • The bill eliminates funding for Teacher Quality Partnerships, a cut of $70 million below the enacted level.
  • The bill eliminates funding for Child Care Access Means Parents in School, a cut of $75 million below the enacted level.
  • The bill eliminates funding for Hawkins Centers of Excellence, a cut of $15 million below the enacted level.
  • The bill eliminates funding for HBCU, TCU, and MSI Research and Development Infrastructure Grants, a cut of $50 million below the enacted level.
  • The bill includes $105 million for theOffice for Civil Rights, a cut of $35 million below the enacted level.

 

Department of Labor (DOL) – The bill includes a total of $9.1 billion in discretionary appropriations for DOL, a cut of $4.7 billion – 34 percent – below the FY 2023 enacted level. Of this amount:

  • The bill eliminates funding for WIOA Adult Job Training state grants, a cut of $886 million that would eliminate job training and employment services for 300,000 adults who face barriers to employment.
  • The bill eliminates funding for WIOA Youth Job Training state grants, a cut of $948 million that would eliminate job training and employment services for 128,000 youth who face barriers to employment.
  • The bill eliminates funding for Job Corps, a cut of $1.8 billion that would eliminate job training and employment services for 50,000 youth who face barriers to employment.
  • The bill eliminates funding for the Senior Community Service Employment Program, a cut of $405 million that would eliminate community service positions for more than 40,000 low-wage seniors.
  • The bill includes $1.4 billion for theWorker Protection Agencies at the Department of Labor, a cut of $313 million below the enacted level, including—
    • $153 million for the Employee Benefits Security Administration, a cut of $38 million below the enacted level
    • $185 million for the Wage and Hour Division, a cut of $75 million below the enacted level
    • $537 million for theOccupational Safety and Health Administration, a cut of $95 million below the enacted level
  • The bill includes $98 million for theOffice of the Solicitor, a cut of $33 million below the enacted level.
  • The bill eliminates funding for theBureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), a cut of $116 million below the enacted level.
  • The bill eliminates funding for theWomen’s Bureau, a cut of $23 million below the enacted level (including elimination of the Women in Apprenticeship & Nontraditional Occupations program).

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) – The bill includes a total of $103.7 billion for HHS, a cut of $17.4 billion – 14 percent – below the FY 2023 enacted level. Of this amount:

  • National Institutes of Health (NIH) – The bill includes a total of $44.6 billion for NIH, a cut of $2.8 billion below enacted level, including:
    • $7.1 billion for the National Cancer Institute (NCI), a cut of $216 million below the enacted level
    • $2.7 billion for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a cut of $139 million below the enacted level
    • $2.2 billion for the National Institute of Mental Health(NIMH), a cut of $139 million below the enacted level
    • $5.1 billion for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a cut of $1.5 billion below the enacted level

 

  • Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) – The bill includes $500 million for ARPA-H, a cut of $1 billion below the enacted level.
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – The bill includes a total of $7.6 billion for CDC, a cut of 1.6 billion below the enacted level.
    • The bill eliminates funding for Firearm Injury and Mortality Prevention Research, a cut of $12.5 million below the enacted level
    • The bill eliminates funding for Tobacco Prevention and Control, a cut of $247 million below the enacted level
    • The bill eliminates funding for the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative, a cut of $220 million below the enacted level
    • The bill includes $100 million forPublic Health Infrastructure and Capacity, a cut of $250 million below the enacted level
    • The bill includes $75 million forPublic Health Data Modernization, a cut of $100 million below the enacted level
    • The bill includes $371 million forGlobal Health, a cut of $322 million below the enacted level
    • The bill eliminates funding for the Climate and Health program, a cut of $10 million below the enacted level
    • The bill eliminates funding for the Center for Forecasting and Analytics, a cut of $50 million below the enacted level

 

  • Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) – The bill funds SAMHSA at $7.1 billion, a cut of $234 million below the enacted level. 
     
  • Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) – The bill includes $7.3 billion for HRSA, a cut of more than $700 million below the enacted level. (The comparison does not include Community Project Funding included in the FY 2023 enacted bill.)
    • The bill eliminates funding for Title X Family Planning, a cut of $286 million below the enacted level
    • The bill includes $781 million for the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant, a cut of $35 million below the enacted level
    • The bill eliminates funding for Healthy Start, a cut of $145 million below the enacted level
    • The bill eliminates funding for the Ending HIV Epidemic initiative, a cut of $220 million below the enacted level
    • The bill eliminates funding for multiple programs to support diversity in the healthcare workforce, including—
      • Health Careers Opportunity Program($16 million)
      • Centers of Excellence($28 million)
      • Nursing Workforce Diversity ($24 million)

 

  • Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) – The billeliminates funding for AHRQ, a cut of $374 million below the enacted level.
  • Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) – The bill includes a total of $3.3 billion for CMS administrative expenses, a cut of $798 million below the enacted level.
  • Administration for Children and Families (ACF) – The bill provides $28.3 billion for ACF, a cut of $4.8 billion below the enacted level.
    • The bill includes a total of $11.2 billion for Head Start, a cut of $750 million below the enacted level. This cut would result in more than 50,000 children losing access to Head Start programs.
    • The bill eliminates funding for Preschool Development Grants, a cut of $315 million below the enacted level
    • The bill includes $457 million for refugee programs, includingTransitional and Medical Services and Refugee Support Services, a cut of $414 million below the enacted level
    • The bill includes $2.25 billion for the Unaccompanied Children program, a cut of $3.3 billion below the enacted level.

 

  • Administration for Community Living (ACL) – The bill includes $2.5 billion for ACL, a cut of $22 million below the enacted level.

 

  • Office of the Secretary—General Departmental Management – The bill includes $344 million for GDM, a cut of $258 million below the enacted level.
    • The bill eliminates funding for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, a cut of $108 million below the enacted level
    • The bill includes $26 million for the Office of Minority Health, a cut of $49 million below the enacted level.
    • The bill includes $28 million for the Minority HIV/AIDS Initiative, a cut of $24 million below the enacted level.
    • The bill includes $20 million for the Office on Women’s Health, a cut of $49 million below the enacted level.

 

Related Agencies –

  • The bill eliminates funding for theCorporation for Public Broadcasting, a cut of $595 million below the enacted level.
  • The bill includes $661 million for theCorporation for National and Community Service, a cut of $652 million below the enacted level.

 

  • The bill includes $200 million for theNational Labor Relations Board, a cut of $99 million below the enacted level.
  • The bill includes $13.8 billion for theSocial Security Administration, a cut of $183 million below the enacted level.

Policy Riders –

 

  • The bill includes multiple policy riders to block the Department of Labor from implementing regulatory changes that would improve working conditions for workers in various industries.
  • The bill includes a prohibition on funding to conduct or support research using fetal tissue.
  • The bill includes a prohibition on funding for Planned Parenthood health centers.
  • The bill includes multiple policy riders to block access to abortion services or reproductive healthcare services.
  • The bill includes multiple policy riders to block the Biden Administration’s policies to ensure nondiscrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.
  • The bill includes a rider to amend the Public Health Service Act to create a right to monetary damages in a civil action for a violation of the Weldon amendment (which allows health care providers to discriminate against patients by refusing to provide, pay for, cover, or refer for abortion).
  • The bill includes a rider to block the Department of Education from issuing a final rule to prevent sex discrimination and sex-based harassment at schools or a final rule to clarify how all students can participate in athletics.
  • The bill includes multiple riders to block the Department of Education from implementing regulations related to student loans and income-driven repayment.
  • The bill includes a rider to prevent the NLRB from implementing a rule related to Joint Employer status.
  • The bill includes a rider to block funding related to Critical Race Theory.
  • The bill includes multiple riders to prevent policies or programs intended to promote diversity, equity, or inclusion.
  • The bill includes a rider to block funding to take action against a person who opposes marriage equality.
  • The bill includes a rider to limit which flags can be flown over a federal facility.

 

###

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Democrats, Elections, Extremism, Republicans

Pennsylvania: Governor Shapiro Agrees to Scuttle Vouchers in Budget

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2023 //
48

Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania announced that he would drop his support for vouchers in order to pass a state budget. Republicans who control the State Senate want vouchers. Democrats, with a slim majority in the House, are opposed to vouchers.

HARRISBURG — Gov. Josh Shapiro says he plans to scrap his push for private school vouchers in Pennsylvania’s state budget in order to close a deal with the commonwealth’s divided legislature five days after the deadline.

The Democrat issued a statement Wednesday acknowledging that talks had deadlocked over a $100 million voucher program, which he had supported and which state Senate Republicans passed as part of their budget proposal last week. Pennsylvania House Democratic leaders oppose vouchers and had refused to act on the Senate’s bill.

Shapiro’s solution, he said, was to promise state House Democrats that if they pass the Senate’s budget, he will then line-item veto the vouchers from the $45.5 billion spending plan.

“Our Commonwealth should not be plunged into a painful, protracted budget impasse while our communities wait for the help and resources this commonsense budget will deliver,” Shapiro said in a statement.

Spotlight PA had previously reported the existence of Shapiro’s plan to cut vouchers out of the budget deal.

In his statement, Shapiro said that over the weekend, state House Democrats requested a legal memo from his administration that confirmed that any voucher program passed as part of the budget could not be implemented without separate enabling legislation — legislation that House Democrats might be able to block.

“Knowing that the two chambers will not reach consensus at this time to enact [the voucher program], and unwilling to hold up our entire budget process over this issue, I will line-item veto the full $100 million appropriation and it will not be part of this budget bill,” Shapiro said.

In a letter to state Senate Republicans viewed by Spotlight PA, House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery) wrote Wednesday that his chamber plans to take Shapiro at his word.

“With the Governor’s assurance that he neither has the legal authority nor intention to move forward with [vouchers] at this time, the House will consider [the Senate budget bill] on concurrence later today,” Bradford wrote.

The voucher program would fund private school scholarships for students in low-achieving public school districts.

The deal that included it, which passed the state Senate 29-21 on Friday, included key Democratic priorities like increased education funding, universal free school breakfast, and the commonwealth’s first-ever funding for public legal defense. However, Democrats viewed the vouchers as a poison pill.

When they passed their plan last week, state Senate GOP leaders made it clear that their support was contingent on vouchers being included, with Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland) telling reporters that any plan that didn’t include vouchers would have to have “a different number.”

This new maneuver from Shapiro, assuming continued support from state House Democrats, would not require the proposed plan to go back to the Senate, thus circumventing Republicans there. Republican leaders did not immediately return a request for comment.

While Bradford has said House Democrats are on board with Shapiro’s plan, members of the caucus expressed doubts throughout the day Wednesday about any plan that would require them to approve a budget with vouchers and rely on the governor to then eliminate them.

“There’s not a lot of trust amongst [Democratic] members and the administration,” one House Democrat, who requested anonymity to discuss ongoing budget negotiations, told Spotlight PA.

Categories Democrats, Elections, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Republicans, Vouchers

Steven Singer: Absurd Voucher Proposal Stalls Penn. Budget

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2023 //
1

Steven Singer describes the budget mess in Pennsylvania. The legislature is under court order to change state funding for education to make it equitable. But the Republican-dominated State Senate inserted a voucher proposal, encouraged by the support of Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro. And the State House, with a tiny Democratic majority, opposes vouchers.

Singer writes:

How do you stop the other team from making a goal when you aren’t even sure your own team’s goalie will try to block the shot?

Pennsylvania House Democrats find themselves in that uncomfortable position as they refuse to pass a Republican supported 2023-24 budget on time.

The problem? School vouchers.

Democrats generally oppose them and Republicans love them. But in the commonwealth, new Gov. Josh Shapiro, ostensibly a Democrat, has let it be known that he likes vouchers under certain conditions.

So Republicans designed a bill exactly along those lines hoping that if they can get it through both legislative bodies, the Governor will give it his signature. (Under the previous Democratic administration, Gov. Tom Wolf blocked the worst the GOP could throw at him, stopping all kinds of horrible policies from getting through.)

A budget encrusted with voucher giveaways passed the Republican-controlled Senate on Thursday, but the House – where Democrats now hold a slim majority – refused to go along with it.

So Republicans are holding the entire budget hostage. As usual.

In a time when the state is flush with cash from inflation-juiced tax collections and federal pandemic subsidies, legislators still couldn’t pass a budget on time.

And it all comes down to our schizophrenic education policies.

Fact: the Commonwealth shortchanges public school students.

The state Supreme Court said so after an 8 year legal battle.

Now lawmakers in Harrisburg are rushing to fix the problem by tearing public schools apart and giving the pieces to private and parochial schools.

It’s called the Lifeline Scholarship Program – throw a lifeline of $100 million to failing edu-businesses and religious indoctrination centers on the excuse that that will somehow help kids from impoverished neighborhoods.

You could just increase funding at the poorest public schools – but that would make too much sense.

Better to give taxpayer money to private interests with little to no accountability or track record and just hope it works!

During the election, Shapiro admitted he liked the concept of these kinds of vouchers, but back then the only other choice was Doug Mastriano, a raving MAGA insurrectionist Republican. The Democrat could have said he had developed a taste for human flesh and he would have been the better alternative.

This means only the slim Democratic majority is left to uphold public schools over this wrongheaded policy nightmare.

House Democrats swear the bill is destined to fail.

House Majority Leader Matt Bradford, D-Montgomery, put it this way:

“There are not the votes for it. It’s not coming up, and if it comes up, it will be defeated.”

This seems to be the case. Yesterday, the House Rules Committee voted against sending the tuition voucher bill to the full House for a vote. So it is not scheduled for a vote at all.

However, now that the June 30th deadline has been blown, lawmakers probably will try to use this newest school voucher bid as a bargaining chip to get a spending plan – any spending plan – passed. This could drag on for months – it certainly has in the past.

The current voucher iteration is a taxpayer funded tuition subsidy for students attending private schools.

Under this bill, students in the lowest 15% of schools in the commonwealth (as determined by standardized test scores) would be eligible.

So what’s wrong with school vouchers?

Open the link to learn what’s wrong with vouchers and also to see links that you can use to establish that vouchers are a disastrous policy. Most will be used to subsidize kids from well-off families who never attended public schools.

Categories Bigotry, Democrats, Education Industry, Funding, Pennsylvania, Religion, Vouchers

“Democracy”: The GOP War on the Founding Fathers’ Vision

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2023 //
19

A blog reader who identifies as “Democracy” argues that today’s Republican Party, which prizes individualism over the common good has abandoned the vision of the Founding Fathers.

It appears that Ron DeSantis and the entirety of the Republican Party is in direct opposition to American history and the United States Constitution.

The Founders envisioned a democratic society “in which the common good was the chief end of government.” They agreed with John Locke’s view that the main purpose of government –– the main reason people create government –– is to protect their persons through –– as historian R. Freeman Butts put it –– a social contract that placed “the public good above private desires.” The goal was “a commonwealth, a democratic corporate society in which the common good was the chief end of government.”

The Preamble – the stated purposes – of the Constitution, reads

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

In Article I, Section 8 of that document, the legislative branch is given broad, specific powers (among them taxing, borrowing money, regulating commerce, coining money and regulating its value, etc.). Indeed, Article I, Clause 1 gives Congress the power to tax for “the common defence and general Welfare of the United States.” Clause 18 of Section 8 stipulates that Congress had the power “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers.”

Two Supreme Court decisions early in the republic’s history –– both unanimous –– supported and cemented a broad – liberal – interpretation of the implied powers of Congress.

Republicans call them “socialism.”

In 1819 (McCullough v. Maryland) the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the U.S. government was “a Government of the people. In form and in substance, it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit.”

The Court explicitly reaffirmed that one of the critical purposes of government under the U.S. Constitution is to promote the general welfare “of the people.”

In that case, Chief Justice Marshall wrote this about the necessary and proper clause:

“the clause is placed among the powers of Congress, not among the limitations on those powers.” And he added this: “Its terms purport to enlarge, not to diminish, the powers vested in the Government. It purports to be an additional power, not a restriction.”

In Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) Chief Justice Marshall wrote this about the Congressional commerce power:

“This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution.”

The history of the United States, and the Constitution, over time, reflect progressive changes. The American Revolution was a progressive movement inspired by the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers; conservatives opposed it. The early expansion of voting rights to those who didn’t own land was progressive, and conservatives of the day fought
against it. The purchase of the Louisiana Territory, a purchase that doubled the size of the fledgling United States, rested on a liberal interpretation of constitutional authority. U.S. government funding of roads and canals relied on a liberal perspective of Congressional commerce power. Those roads and canals were instrumental to economic growth and prosperity, not unlike federal funding of interstate highways, the Internet, medical research, and health care.

And yet, the Republican Party is filled with people who basically reject all of this in favor of sedition.

As David Blight, Yale professor of American history put it,

“Changing demographics and 15 million new voters drawn into the electorate by Obama in 2008 have scared Republicans—now largely the white people’s party—into fearing for their existence. With voter ID laws, reduced polling places and days, voter roll purges, restrictions on mail-in voting, an evisceration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a constant rant about ‘voter fraud’ without evidence, Republicans have soiled our electoral system with undemocratic skullduggery…The Republican Party has become a new kind of Confederacy.

Obviously, public education has a central – critical – role to play here. Here’s how Will and Ariel Durant explained it in ‘The Lessons of History’ (1968):

“Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.”

Republicans: The New Confederacy
Categories Democracy, Democrats, DeSantis, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, History, Lies, Republicans, Trump

Paul Bonner: The Democratic Party Should Defend Our Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2023 //
62

Paul Bonner is a retired public school leader.

He has an idea for the Democratic Party that would resonate with the 90% of Americans who went to public schools and whose children attend public schools.

Here’s an ad I would run if I were a PAC supporting the Democratic Party:

Narrator: (As numerous images of schools, students, and teachers engaged in learning are shown across the screen)

“In the early twentieth century the United States of America reinforced a universal commitment to Public Schools. This resulted in an economic powerhouse that generated more wealth than at any time in the history of the world. The alumni of these schools led Democratic governments in the defeat of tyranny in World War II and resulted in the establishment of universities that are the envy of the world. Industry and finance thrived. Yes, the public schools did this.”

(Pan to politicians advocating privatization and attacking teachers)

“Today, there are those who would like to pretend that the public schools have been a failure. That government efforts to educate our children could never produce the work force that would result from subsidies for private efforts. They are wrong!”

(Show closed charter buildings and parents seeking help for their children)

“Any implementation of vouchers has resulted in subsidies for those who already attend private schools, charters have not outperformed public schools academically, and closing public schools with unfulfilled promises of better results has resulted in decimated communities.”


(Pan to schools and parents who are engaged with their public schools in the myriad of ways this happens every day).

The only way to improve educational opportunity in America is to vigorously fund our Public Schools. To support teachers through greater resources, district support, and higher pay. To provide facilities that are equally great in all communities. America has thrived through our support of public schools. We as citizens, need to recommit to Public Schools with our purse and our fervor.”

Categories Democracy, Democrats, Education Reform, Elections, Funding, Supporting public schools

Heather Cox Richardson: The GOP Wants to Turn Back the Clock to 1931

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2023 //
96

Historian Heather Cox Richardson brilliantly contrasts the views of Republicans and Democrats on the role of government. Republicans want it to be as minimal as possible. Democrats want it to use its powers and resources to improve people’s lives. Understanding this difference helps illuminate why Republicans want to get rid of public schools and why billionaires like Charles Koch and Betsy DeVos support vouchers and libertarianism in a society where everyone is on their own.

Yesterday, the Republican Study Committee, a 175-member group of far-right House members, released their 2024 “Blueprint to Save America” budget plan. It calls for slashing the federal budget by raising the age at which retirees can start claiming Social Security benefits from 67 to 69, privatizing Medicare, and enacting dramatic tax cuts that will starve the federal government.

I’m actually not going to rehash the 122-page plan. Let’s take a look at the larger picture.

This budget dismisses the plans of “President Joe Biden and the left” as a “march toward socialism.” It says that “[t]he left’s calls to increase taxes to close the deficit would be…catastrophic for our nation.” Asserting that “the path to prosperity does not come from the Democrats’ approach of expanding government,” it claims that “[o]ver the past year and a half, the American people have seen that experiment fail firsthand.”

Instead, it says, “the key to growth, innovation, and flourishing communities” is “[i]ndividuals, free from the burdens of a burdensome government.” 

It is?

Our history actually tells us how these two contrasting visions of the government play out.

Grover Norquist, one of the key architects of the Republican argument that the solution to societal ills is tax cuts, in 2010 described to Rebecca Elliott of the Harvard Crimson how he sees the role of government. “Government should enforce [the] rule of law,” he said. “It should enforce contracts, it should protect people bodily from being attacked by criminals. And when the government does those things, it is facilitating liberty. When it goes beyond those things, it becomes destructive to both human happiness and human liberty.”

Norquist vehemently opposed taxation, saying that “it’s not any of the government’s business who earns what, as long as they earn it legitimately,” and proposed cutting government spending down to 8% of gross national product, or GDP, the value of the final goods and services produced in the United States. 

The last time the level of government spending was at that 8% of GDP was 1933, before the New Deal. In that year, after years of extraordinary corporate profits, the banking system had collapsed, the unemployment rate was nearly 25%, prices and productivity were plummeting, wages were cratering, factories had shut down, farmers were losing their land to foreclosure. Children worked in the fields and factories, elderly and disabled people ate from garbage cans, unregulated banks gambled away people’s money, business owners treated their workers as they wished. Within a year the Great Plains would be blowing away as extensive deep plowing had damaged the land, making it vulnerable to drought. Republican leaders insisted the primary solution to the crisis was individual enterprise and private charity. 

When he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in July 1932, New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt vowed to steer between the radical extremes of fascism and communism to deliver a “New Deal” to the American people. 

The so-called alphabet soup of the New Deal gave us the regulation of banks and businesses, protections for workers, an end to child labor in factories, repair of the damage to the Great Plains, new municipal buildings and roads and airports, rural electrification, investment in painters and writers, and Social Security for workers who were injured or unemployed. Government outlays as a percentage of GDP began to rise. World War II shot them off the charts, to more than 40% of GDP, as the United States helped the world fight fascism. 

That number dropped again after the war, and in 1975, federal expenditures settled in at about 20% of GDP. Except for short-term spikes after financial crises (spending shot up to 24% after the 2008 crash, for example, and to 31% during the 2020 pandemic, a high from which it is still coming down), the spending-to-GDP ratio has remained at about that set point.

So why is there a growing debt?

Because tax revenues have plummeted. Tax cuts under the George W. Bush and Trump administrations are responsible for 57% of the increase in the ratio of the debt to the economy, 90% if you exclude the emergency expenditures of the pandemic. The United States is nowhere close to the average tax burden of the 38 other nations in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), all of which are market-oriented democracies. And those cuts have gone primarily to the wealthy and corporations. 

Republicans who backed those tax cuts now insist that the only way to deal with the growing debt is to get rid of the government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and eventually promoted civil rights, all elements that stabilized the nation after the older system gave us the Depression. Indeed, the Republican Study Committee calls for making the Trump tax cuts, scheduled to expire in 2025, permanent. 

“There are two ways of viewing the government’s duty in matters affecting economic and social life,” FDR said in his acceptance speech. “The first sees to it that a favored few are helped and hopes that some of their prosperity will leak through, sift through, to labor, to the farmer, to the small businessman.” The other “is based upon the simple moral principle: the welfare and the soundness of a nation depend first upon what the great mass of the people wish and need; and second, whether or not they are getting it.”

When the Republican Study Committee calls Biden’s policies—which have led to record employment, a booming economy, and a narrowing gap between rich and poor— “leftist,” they have lost the thread of our history. The system that restored the nation after 1933 and held the nation stable until 1981 is not socialism or radicalism; it is one of the strongest parts of our American tradition.

—

Notes:

Click to access rsc_2023_budget_final_version.pdf

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/11/18/nbsp-government-percent-fm/
https://www.fdrlibrary.org/great-depression-facts
https://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/academics/research/faculty-research/new-deal/roosevelt-speeches/fr070232.htm
Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio
https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historical-tables/
https://rollcall.com/2023/06/14/conservatives-budget-plan-renews-battle-over-seniors-benefits/
Categories Biden, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Democrats, Deregulation, Economy, Education Industry, Elections, For-Profit, Freedom, Guns, History, Hope, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Koch Brothers, Pensions, Propaganda, Racism, Segregation, U.S. education, Unions, Vouchers

Jeff Bryant: Why Did the Traitor Teacher Switch Parties in North Carolina?

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2023 //
29

Jeff Bryant writes often about education. He lives in North Carolina. In this article, he tries to solve the mystery of why Democratic state legislator Tricia Cotham switched sides and joined the Republican Party, giving them a supermajority in both houses of the General Assembly?

Cotham was a Democrat who had campaigned in promises to oppose school vouchers; to defend LGBT rights; and support abortion rights.

Once she gave the Republicans the decisive vote in the lower house, the Republicans had a veto-proof majority and were in a position to override any veto by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper.

Cotham, the new Republican, reversed her vote on everything she campaigned for or against. She supported Republicans’ efforts to reduce abortion rights; she endorsed school vouchers; and she sided with Republicans in their attack on trans youth.

In other words, she betrayed the people who voted for her and cast her lot with the hard-right Republicans who have aligned themselves with anti-progressive, anti-liberal, anti-Democrat policies.

Why? She said the Democrats were mean to her. She said they ignored her. She said she didn’t get the committee assignments she wanted. Are these good reasons to join forces with a party that has sought to destroy public education, demoralize teachers, and gerrymander the state to protect its advantages?

None of this made sense. A person doesn’t change their fundamental values because of hurt feelings.

Jeff investigated and determined that her decision was transactional. What did she get in exchange for double-crossing her constituents and her colleagues? Read his article to find out.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Democrats, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Gender, Hypocrisy, Inequity, Lies, North Carolina, Privatization, Republicans, Teachers, Vouchers

Harold Meyerson: Two Nations, Red and Blue

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2023 //
21

Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect writes here about the sharp divergence between red states and blue states. Their elected officials have very different ideas about how to build their state and serve the needs of the public. There is one issue that he overlooked: vouchers. Red states are busy handing out tax dollars to families whose children are already enrolled in private and religious schools and tearing down the wall of separation between church and state.

Which side are you on?

He writes:

Two Prospect pieces on red and blue trifecta states make clear we really are two separate nations.

If there’s anyone who’s still mystified about why congressional Democrats and Republicans can’t come to an agreement on anything so basic as honoring the debts they’ve incurred, may I gently suggest they take a look at what Democrats and Republicans are doing in the particular states they each completely control.

Yesterday, we posted a piece by my colleague Ryan Cooper on how Minnesota, where Democrats now control both houses of the legislature and the governor’s office, has just enacted its own (to be sure, scaled-back) version of Scandinavian social democracy—including paid sick leave for all, paid family leave, a minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers, sector-wide collective bargaining in key industries, and the outlawing of “captive audience” meetings, in which management compels employees to attend anti-union rants. A new law also strengthens women’s right to an abortion. Similar laws have been enacted or are under consideration in other Democratic “trifecta” states, though none quite so pro-worker as some of Minnesota’s.

Also yesterday, we posted one of my pieces, this one on everything that Texas’s Republican legislature and governor are enacting to strip power from their large cities, almost all of which are solidly Democratic. One new bill says the state can declare elections to be invalid and compel new ones to be held under state supervision in the state’s largest county, Harris County, which is home to reliably Democratic Houston. And the state Senate has also passed a bill that would strip from cities the ability to pass any regulations on wages, workplace safety, business and financial practices, the environment, and the extent of property rights that exceed the standards set by the state. Which leaves cities with the power to do essentially nothing. No other Republican trifecta states have gone quite as far as Texas, but Tennessee’s legislature did effectively abolish Nashville’s congressional district and expel its assemblymember; Alabama’s legislature revoked Birmingham’s minimum-wage law; and Florida’s governor suspended Tampa’s elected DA because he wouldn’t prosecute women and doctors for violating the state’s new anti-abortion statutes. Beyond their war on cities, Republican trifecta states have long refused to expand Medicaid coverage, have recently also begun to re-legalize child labor and legislate prison terms for librarians whose shelves hold banned books, and in the wake of the Dobbsdecision, criminalized abortions.

Just as cosmic inflation propels the stars away from each other with ever-expanding speed, so Democratic and Republican states are also moving away from each other at an accelerating pace—the Democrats toward a more humane future; the Republicans borne back ceaselessly into a nightmare version of the past. Any dispassionate view of America today has to conclude that the differences between these two Americas are almost as large and intractable as those that split the nation in 1860 and ’61. (The South’s opposition to fairly paid and nondiscriminatory labor was the central issue then and remains a central issue now.)

That said, when confronted with the choice between those two Americas, voters in those red states have frequently backed the blue-state versions of economic rights and personal freedoms, as is clear from their many initiative and referendum votes to raise the minimum wage, expand Medicaid, and preserve the right to an abortion. Likewise, the polling on unions shows their national favorability rating now exceeds 70 percent of the public, including roughly half of self-declared Republicans. Only by their relentless demagoguery on culture-war issues and immigration, their adept gerrymandering, and the disproportionate power that the composition of the Senate vests in barely inhabited states can the Republicans enforce their biases against a rising public tide—but enforce them they do wherever they have the power.

All right, as John Dos Passos wrote in his USA Trilogy, we are two nations—and becoming more so with each passing day.

Postscript: In his Washington Post column…, Perry Bacon noted that while a number of news publications have gone under recently, a few, in his words, “are reimagining political journalism in smart ways.” He cited seven such publications, and his list was headed by—ahem—The American Prospect.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Democrats, Disruption, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Funding, Health, Houston, Unions, Vouchers

Gavin Newsom: GOP in South Carolina Ignore What Matters Most

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2023 //
40

Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, regularly sends out emails pointing out the errors and hypocrisies of Republicans in other states. I enjoy them.

South Carolina, Diane…

Where the Republican governor just signed a six-week abortion ban, which he says will “begin saving lives.” All while that very same governor refuses to do anything about the fact South Carolina has one of the highest homicide rates in the country — more than 2x the rate of California.

Tweet from Gavin Newsom: 'The Republican party is showing us exactly who they are. They want to tell you what you can read. What you can say. Who you can love. Or when you get to start a family. They want to make your decisions for you. That's not freedom.'

You can’t make this up.

Today’s Republican party refuses to regulate assault weapons while gun violence is the leading cause of death of kids in America, but will champion the regulation of women’s bodies and take away reproductive freedom.

This is what Republicans want to do nationally.

And worse.

Be outraged.

– Gavin

Categories California, Corruption, Cruelty, Democrats, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Freedom, Guns, Health, Hypocrisy, South Carolina

Michael Hiltzik: The Debt Ceiling Deal: GOP Protects the Rich, Punishes the Poor

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2023 //
3

Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times explains how Republicans agreed to the increase in the debt ceiling: by cutting aid to the neediest. He wrote: The cruelty is the point.

No one should be surprised that the resolution of our most moronic fiscal policy, the federal debt ceiling, involved our stupidest social policy, work requirements for assistance programs.

But that appears to be the case. In negotiations between the Biden White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s Republican caucus, one of the last sticking points was whether, and by how much, to tighten work requirements for food stamps and welfare.

In coming days, as Congress moves toward votes on the deal, political commentators will thoroughly masticate the question of whether Biden or McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) prevailed in this dealmaking and which of them will be hurt or harmed politically by the outcome.

Democrats right now are willing to default on the debt so they can continue making welfare payments for people that are refusing to work.

— Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) tells a giant lie about the debt ceiling negotiations

That’s not a very interesting parlor game. (Personally, I’d go with the judgment of Timothy Noah of the New Republic, who thinks Biden emerges as the political victor and McCarthy’s days as speaker are numbered, thanks to the choler of his far right wing.)

More important is what the deal says about the principles of both camps. The granular details of the agreement were still murky Sunday, and it could still collapse because of objections from congressional Republicans or Democrats.

The deal, as reported, freezes discretionary federal spending — that is, most of the programs for which Americans depend on the federal government — at current levels for the next two years, with increases lower than inflation. That means an effective budget cut, relative to inflation. In return, the debt ceiling is suspended for two years.

But Biden managed to preserve the accomplishments of his presidency thus far from the GOP’s knives. He fended off their efforts to torpedo the support for renewable energy in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, their harshest proposed budget cuts, the rollback of student debt relief, and repeal of his budget increase for the Internal Revenue Service.

(Reports say that $10 billion will be shaved off the $80-billion 10-year IRS budget increase, but the money can be redirected to other programs.)

Biden rejected Republican demands to impose work requirements on Medicaid, but allowed some tightening of the rules for food stamps — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, which is what’s left of traditional welfare.

Make no mistake: No rich American will be harmed even a bit by this deal. Some may even be advantaged, if the carve-out from the IRS budget comes from the agency’s enforcement efforts; that would help the rich, who are the nation’s worst tax cheats.

The most vulnerable Americans, however, will bear the brunt of the deal points. Let’s take a look.

Start with work requirements. As I’ve reported ad infinitum over the years, work requirements on safety net programs accomplish nothing in terms of pushing their beneficiaries into the job market.

They are, however, very effective at throwing people off those programs; that’s what happened in Arkansas , where 17,000 people lost Medicaid benefits in 2019 after only six months of a limited rollout of work rules. A federal judge then blocked the changes.

The debt ceiling deal will tighten work requirements for SNAP by requiring able-bodied, childless low-income adults younger than 55 to work 20 hours a week or be engaged in job training or job searches. If they don’t meet that standard, their SNAP benefits end after three months. Current law applies to those adults only up to the age of 49. The change will expire in 2030.

This rule will do virtually nothing to reduce federal spending, which Republicans say has been the whole point of holding the debt ceiling hostage. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in April that the change would reduce federal spending by $11 billion over 10 years, or $1.1 billion a year.

By my calculation, that comes to 17 thousandths of a percent of the federal budget, which this year is $6.4 trillion.

If it’s scarcely a rounding error in federal accounts, however, it’s critically important to the recipients of food aid. The CBO estimated that about 275,000 people would lose benefits each month because they failed to meet the requirement.

Biden’s negotiators did get the Republicans to waive SNAP rules for veterans and the homeless, which will probably lower that figure and limit the reduction of federal spending.

Work requirements for safety net programs have been a Republican hobby horse for decades. It’s based on the Republican image of low-income Americans as layabouts and grifters — the “undeserving poor.”

Sure enough, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), one of McCarthy’s debt-ceiling negotiators, couldn’t resist slandering this vulnerable population during the talks. “Democrats right now are willing to default on the debt so they can continue making welfare payments for people that are refusing to work,” he said during a break.

Of course, it was Republicans who showed willingness to default on the federal debt. Nor is there a smidgen of evidence that any sizable percentage of this target population is “refusing to work.”

The vast majority of SNAP recipients already work, but they’re in low-paying jobs that are so unstable that they often drift in and out of employment. According to the Census Bureau, 79% of all SNAP families include at least one worker, as do nearly 84% of married couples on SNAP.

In other words, the GOP insistence on work requirements is nothing but the party’s typical performative malevolence toward the poor. If they really cared about getting SNAP recipients into the job market, they’d fund job training programs and infrastructure projects. They never do.

In any case, the only cohort of beneficiaries that tends to move into the job market at all are younger recipients — not those in their 50s. All that work requirements accomplish is to erect bureaucratic barriers to enrollment in the safety net. But that’s the point, isn’t it?

The work rules for TANF are managed somewhat differently — they’re directed at the states administering the program, which have been required to ensure that a certain percentage of beneficiaries are working or looking for work. How the debt ceiling deal applies to that program is unclear.

In the next week or so, before June 5 — the putative date at which the Treasury Department says the government runs out of money to pay its bills without a debt ceiling increase and thus flirts with an unprecedented default — Biden and McCarthy will hit the hustings to claim victory.

But there’s really only one way to think about the exercise we’ve just gone through. It was a supreme waste of time.

Republicans showed they were willing to crash the U.S. economy to make some bog-standard complaints about the federal deficit, most of which they created themselves through the 2017 tax cuts they enacted for the wealthy. Their initial negotiating stance was so extreme that they must have known it could never gain Democratic votes in the House or pass the Democratic Senate.

The Democrats held reasonably firm. They agreed to some modest budget constraints for two years, moved the next debt ceiling cabaret off to beyond the next election, and saved millions of Americans from serious economic pain.

As I’ve written before, if Republicans were really serious about restraining federal spending, they wouldn’t have voted for the tax cuts and budget increases that that contribute to the deficit.

Instead, they said the only way to control spending is to refuse to pay the bills they ran up, by refusing to increase the debt ceiling. They lied, and every thinking American knows they lied. So tell me, why did we go through this again?

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Democracy, Democrats, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Health, Lies, Poverty, Republicans
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