"Today’s Washington Post reports that roughly a thousand predominately black residents of Washington, D.C., held a rally on Capitol Hill yesterday. Were they cheering Barack Obama? Did they turn out for a hip-hop concert? No, they were listening to former Bush Administration officials and House Republican Leader John Boehner among others. They were rallying for a conservative cause – school vouchers.
Barack Obama champions competition as the solution to the healthcare crisis. Conservatives agree, and that’s one reason why they want to allow individuals and businesses to buy insurance across state lines. But Obama’s idea of competition is a sham. He wants the “public option” or the government to compete against private industry, and President Obama cites the Post Office as his example of what he wants your healthcare to be like.
But conservatives also believe in competition against the public school monopoly through the use of vouchers. Conservatives have long favored giving low-income parents the ability to get their kids out of failing public schools and providing them with the resources to send their kids to top-notch private schools, just like the Obamas do. Sasha and Malia Obama attend the elite Sidwell Friends School, which costs $30,000 a year.
In 2003, President Bush and the Republican Congress created a school voucher test program in the District of Columbia. But Democrats in Congress, with the backing of the Obama Administration, have vowed to kill the program, which currently enables 1,700 students to escape D.C.’s failing schools. And in case you are wondering, D.C.’s public schools are not failing for lack of public resources."
Gary Bauer
Campaign for Working Families
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