There is plenty that’s wrong today: We could speak about Libya, Japan’s nuclear meltdown or, that Eric Kantor has shorted US Treasury notes, but the Wrongologist wants to report on the House passing funding for school vouchers in the DC schools last month. The House passed two bills; one funds the DC school voucher system for the next 5 years at $20M/year. The second allocates $7500 per student for private or parochial school tuition. They became law because House Speaker John Boehner put his weight behind them. These D.C. Opportunity Scholarships seek to give poor kids the wherewithal to attend private school.
What happened to separation of church and state?
Thomas Jefferson first articulated the notion that we should keep distance between organized religion and the government. In a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802, he wrote that he contemplates “with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
The Constitution does not explicitly prohibit the government from providing funds to religious schools, but the Founding Fathers made it clear that the government should stay on one side of the “wall of separation,” and organized religious activities should remain on the other.
So what’s wrong?
Federally funded scholarships should not be used for parochial school tuition, but that is exactly where they are going:
According to the Catholic Standard, in 2008, 879 of 1,700 (52%) of the D.C. students enrolled in the voucher program went to Catholic schools. The U.S. Department of Education reported that 80 percent of the voucher students attended religious schools in 2009
Boehner’s a good Catholic, he attended Catholic schools in Cincinnati, and has raised funds for D.C.’s Catholic schools. These bills are religious subsidies, plain and simple.
(Full disclosure: the Wrongologist graduated from a Catholic university)
Catholic schools may provide a strong education and give poor kids a way out. The truth is that D.C.’s Catholic Church has limited financial resources; it can only finance a few schools.
So the DC Archdiocese turned seven into charter schools and now turns to Boehner for financial help.
Follow the money….When John Boehner attended Archbishop Moeller High in Cincinnati; his parents split the cost with the local parish. When his brothers attended, Boehner helped fund them. That’s the American way, where congregations and families helped their own get a religious education.
Now he is using your money to help fund Catholic students and that’s wrong. Also, Republicans say that our budget deficit requires that we cut funds for public education at a time when municipalities are struggling to meet the needs of their public schools. So, he’s not just going against the Constitution, he’s funding the wrong schools.
