As part of the negotiations for passing the increasingly embarrassingly delayed omnibus bill, the Senate is considering a number of Republican amendments, one of which would strip the omnibus bill of language that would kill the Washington Opportunity Scholarship program. The program, which allows 1,700 low-income Washington students to attend private schools with a $7,500 voucher, would lose its funding at the end of next school year if the Senate doesn't pass Sen. John Ensign's amendment.
Sen. Dick Durbin, who attended private school and sent his children to private school, like any good Democrat, insists that those who don't have the means to do so be loyal to the failing public school systems he spurned. Usually, this is the hypocrisy that dare not speak its name, but on the floor this week, Durbin treated the Senate to a justification:
My wife and I sent our three children to Catholic schools. That was our choice. We continued to pay our property taxes to support public schools. I have openly supported public school referenda in my community. I have done everything in my State to make sure there was adequate funding for public schools, but we made a personal family decision, based on a number of circumstances, to send our children to the local Catholic schools.
That was our decision at our expense. I have no prejudice against private education. If I entrusted my children to it, I certainly believe in it. But the question always came up in my mind: Who should pay for it. We were prepared as a family to pay for it. It was an extra sacrifice we were prepared to bear.
Well, then, as long as he was voting to support public-school referenda. I'd like to see one other time in his career when the "question came up in his mind, 'Who should pay for it?'" and the answer was not the taxpayer. Odd that the fiscal and personal responsibility bug bites Durbin only when he's voting on a $14 million dollar program that allows inner-city kids to escape the teachers' unions grip on education and the Mags, guns, and apathy of their public schools.
A $25-billion auto industry bailout for the guys who fly on private jets to beg for money? Fine with him. A $787 billion stimulus with loads of long-term spending and pork? A-okay. A pilot scholarship program that educates D.C. students at the high levels Durbin requires for his kids for approximately half the price perstudent as a public-school education? Durbin suddenly becomes a taxpayer hero.
Despite the fact that the Congress is actually Constitutionally authorized to make such investments in the District of Columbia, 1,700 kids from families making an average of $23,000 a year may lose their chance at a great education today thanks to a senator who advises that they "make sacrifices." Judging by the inability of the 111th Congress to make hardly any spending compromises in any bill, the kids of D.C. will be the only ones making any sacrifices.
Despite Sec. of Education Arne Duncan's statement that the kids in the program ought to stay in the schools they're in, the amendment is likely to fail, throwing the families of these students into a year-long fight with both the Congress and the D.C. City Council to reapprove the program in a politically unfriendly climate. On the floor, Durbin and Sen. Chuck Schumer are speaking of such seldom-invoked but suddenly sacred ideals of "local control" and "accountability in schools." It's too bad they rarely demand the same of public schools, or the 1,700 students in question might not have had to flee the system to begin with.
The vote is happening now.
Update: The amendment was defeated, 58-39.
