The Republicans try to find a way to make Democrats vote for giving school choice to poor kids. The Liberals really ought to ask themselves how they ended up on the wrong side of this issue.
GOP plans to force vote on vouchers
By Ben Feller, Associated Press, 11/18/2003
WASHINGTON -- Republican Senate leaders plan to force a vote this week on the nation's first federally funded school voucher experiment, tucking the program into broader spending legislation that would be politically difficult for Democrats to block.
The Senate proposal would allow a number of poor children in the District of Columbia, perhaps 1,700 or more of the 65,000 in the capitol's school system, to attend private school at public expense. Democrats stopped action on the bill early this year.
With the Senate working this week to finish business for the year, the GOP majority is moving to an expected approach: fold the voucher plan and the capital city budget into an enormous spending bill for education, agriculture, housing and many other areas. The move would be likely to force Democrats to accept vouchers or reject the budgets of entire agencies.
The strategy, confirmed by congressional aides and lobbyists familiar with House and Senate negotiations, is expected to lead to a vote by Friday.
Asked about the plan, a spokesman for Senator Bill Frist would say only that the majority leader is keeping options open in passing the school-choice plan, one of his priorities.
The House already passed its version of the plan, and the private-school-choice idea is backed by President Bush, which means federally backed vouchers appear as likely as ever.
Still, Democrats are looking for ways to defeat the idea, including a challenge of the spending bill on procedural grounds. Other contentious measures beyond vouchers, including overtime pay, could add up to cast doubt over a clumped-together spending bill.
Critics, who include the teachers unions and some school officials, say vouchers strip money from public schools and funnel it to private schools that face little accountability for improving achievement.
"The voucher proponents have been reduced to hiding vouchers into a large, omnibus spending package because they couldn't pass the matter in the Senate," said Joan Wodiska, lobbyist for the National School Boards Association. "This shouldn't be railroaded into law."
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