Ted Cruz and Federal Vouchers, Again

Rafael Edward Cruz, noted Canadian-born legislator, has some educational ideas to pitch, and the Washington Post, increasingly shorthanded in the opinion department, gave him the space to do it. 

He's actually got two ideas to pitch as "bold, transformational policies" that "we’ll still be talking about 10, 20, even 30 years from now."

One is a Senate version of the voucher language tucked away in the House's Big Beautiful Bill. Cruz wants to offer $10 billion in tax credits (aka $10 billion if revenue cut from federal budget). And he offers the same old baloney.

School choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. Every child in America deserves access to a quality education, regardless of their Zip code, their race or their parents’ income. Parents should be empowered to decide what education is best for their child.

Bullshit. How do we know this isn't a serious argument? Because it does not address the true obstacles to school choice. Spoiler alert: the obstacles are not the teachers union, the deep state, or bureaucratic red tape.

The obstacles to school choice are--

1) Expense. It costs a lot to send your kid to a real private school--far more than almost any school voucher in existence. So far, none of the federal voucher proposals have even put a dollar amount on the vouchers to be offered, and certainly nobody has pledged that the voucher should match private school tuition do that choice is truly, completely available to each and every family. 

2) Discrimination. Voucher laws now routinely make special efforts to keep sacrosanct the right of private schools to reject any students they want to reject. The ability of the school to operate according to whatever rules it wishes to follow is valued above the student's ability to choose. If "every child in America" deserve access the school of their dreams, then propose some laws that value the child's right to choose the school above the school's right to reject that child.

3) Accountability. Cruz says every child deserves access to "quality education," but no federal voucher proposal includes any sort of mechanism for insuring that a voucher school will actually provide quality education and not turn out to be some sad grifter with a 6 month lease in a strip mall. If you want everyone to have a choice of quality options, some sort of regulations must be created and enforced to guarantee families that their choice will be a good one. And no-- saying that the market will regulate this by letting the invisible hand drive bad schools out of business is no real answer. Even if the invisible hand actually works, it works far too slow for students whose years in school are irreplaceable.

There are plenty of other aspects of school vouchers to debate, but if your proposal for choice doesn't address those three factors, I'm going to suspect that you are not serious about the whole "civil rights of our era" shtick. 

Cruz also proposes the "Invest in America Act," which we might also call the "Get Babies Hooked On Capitalism Act"

The Invest America Act will trigger fundamental and transformative changes for the financial security and personal freedoms of American citizens for generations. Every child in America will have private investment accounts that will compound over their lives, enhancing the prosperity and economic participation of the vast majority of Americans.

Every newborn gets a private investment account of $1,000. After that, "family, friends or employers" could pitch in up to $5,000. It can sit there churning away until the young human turns 18, at which point capital gains taxes will apply. 

What's the point here? It would certainly get a whole lot of people interested in eliminating capital gains taxes. And the windfall for companies that manage private investment accounts would be massively massive. But Cruz thinks it would create a cultural shift, because every American would have "skin in the game":

Every child would also now be a shareholder in America’s major businesses. All of us have seen the sad statistics about how many young people distrust capitalism or support socialism. This policy would create a whole generation of capitalists. When a teenager opens her app and sees her investment account, she would see that she owns, say, $50 in Apple, $75 in Boeing and $35 in McDonald’s. Those wouldn’t simply be big, scary corporations — she’d be one of their owners.

I have met teenagers, and this scenario seems unlikely. But how very Cruzian to assume that people would change their mind about the system strictly because they themselves benefited from it personally. "I used to be upset about how capitalistic systems oppressed the poor in other countries, but now that I see my $35 in McDonalds growing, I don't feel so bad about clearcutting the rain forest in order to factory farm more fast food beef." 

And when Cruz starts saying this like this--

First, children across America would experience the miracle of compounded growth.

I get flashbacks to the least-beloved song in Disney's Mary Poppins, when the aged Mr. Dawes tries to convince Michael to hand over his tuppence. 

If you invest your tuppence
Wisely in the bank
Safe and sound
Soon that tuppence, safely
Invested in the bank
Will compound

And you'll achieve that sense of conquest
As your affluence expands
In the hands of the directors
Who invest as propriety demands

Giving money to every child in America? Not the worst thing. Expecting that the feds can somehow bribe children into loving capitalism? That shows the same keen understanding of the thoughts and feelings of carbon based life forms that Cruz has displayed throughout his career.