You're Probably Getting Screwed by School Voucher Bills
As a taxpayer, do you like it when your tax dollar goes to a corporation that has no transparency obligations, no required public audits, no public records, no public meetings… basically no reporting obligations whatsoever?
Oh yeah, that corporation gets a blank check. How about when your government, like a state house, creates a special committee for one bill and makes a special rule that anything passed out of that committee gets to bypass the Appropriations Committee and the Ways and Means Committee, which means 1) less public input 2) less scrutiny on how much it will cost taxpayers?
That’s what happened this week in the Iowa House with a School Vouchers bill.
It’s not just happening in Iowa. We are seeing School Voucher bills brought in other state legislatures like Oklahoma, Idaho, Kansas, Utah, South Carolina, Texas, and more.
What’s driving these School Voucher bills? You guessed it… MONEY!
Last July, there was a Data for Progress poll that showed 71% of Iowans opposed the bill.
So what do you do when you’re about to pass something that unpopular? You run a television ad to try to persuade the general public.
A look behind the curtain and you’ll see what the Vouchers Bill is all about. The ad buy was by a PAC called “Iowa for Prosperity.” According to OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan nonprofit who tracks money in U.S. politics, in 2020 the largest donation to the PAC came from a billionaire hedge fund manager from Florida. And in the 2022 election cycle the largest donation came from the managing partner of a New York private equity firm.
Do you think a billionaire hedge fund manager from Florida or a private equity manager from New York are looking out for the best interest of Iowa students?
Or do you think that they’ll invest in a corporation that the state will pump hundreds of millions of dollars and eventually billions of dollars through with little to no accountability?
Back in 2016, the National Education Policy Center warned about private equity interest in profiting off of education.
Listen, money towards vouchers is money not spent on public education. Our Founding Fathers made our schools public for a reason.
YOU’RE PROBABLY (ALSO) GETTING SCREWED BY:
BILLIONAIRES
We need to do something about campaign finance reform because 465 billionaires from both parties dumping about $881 million into federal elections in the 2022 election cycle isn’t healthy for our democracy!
NATIONAL RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION
The New York Times has a good article about the revelation that much of the funds for the NRA’s anti-worker lobbying is coming from mandatory classes for restaurant workers themselves!
TAX BREAKS FOR HUGE CORPORATIONS
You know how the Republicans in 2017 passed a temporary tax break for the middle class and permanent tax breaks for the super wealthy and corporations? Well, the middle class tax breaks will retire in 3 years while the effective tax rate for large, profitable companies fell to 9%. But how are we going to pay for it…
CORPORATE GREED
REPUBLICANS HATE POOR PEOPLE…
Despite Iowa leading the nation in things like pork production, Iowa House Republicans introduced a bill that would place restrictions on the state's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. 40 Republicans House members co-signed a bill that would ban people on SNAP from receiving items like fresh meat, white bread, or sliced cheese.
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Standing Tall for All,
J.D. Scholten
