HON. RON PAUL
OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Tuesday, March 2, 1999
1999 Ron Paul 11:1 Mr. PAUL.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce
the Family Education Freedom Act of
1999, a bill to empower millions of
working- and
middle-class Americans to choose a non-public
education for their children, as well as
making it easier for parents to actively participate
in improving public schools. The Family
Education Freedom Act accomplishes its goals
by allowing American parents a tax credit of
up to $3,000 for the expenses incurred in
sending their child to private, public, parochial,
other religious school, or for home schooling
their children.
1999 Ron Paul 11:2 The Family Education Freedom Act returns
the fundamental principal of a truly free economy
to America’s education system: what the
great economist Ludwig von Mises called
“consumer sovereignty.” Consumer sovereignty
simply means consumers decide who
succeeds or fails in the market. Businesses
that best satisfy consumer demand will be the
most successful. Consumer sovereignty is the
means by which the free market maximizes
human happiness.
1999 Ron Paul 11:3 Currently, consumers are less than sovereign
in the education “market.” Funding decisions
are increasingly controlled by the federal
government. Because “he who pays the
piper calls the tune,” public, and even private
schools, are paying greater attention to the
dictates of federal “educrats” while ignoring
the wishes of the parents to an ever-greater
degree. As such, the lack of consumer sovereignty
in education is destroying parental
control of education and replacing it with state
control.
1999 Ron Paul 11:4 Loss of control is a key reason why so
many of America’s parents express dissatisfaction
with the educational system. According
to a recent study by The Polling Company,
over 70% of all Americans support education
tax credits! This is just one of numerous
studies and public opinion polls showing that
Americans want Congress to get the federal
bureaucracy out of the schoolroom and give
parents more control over their children’s education.
1999 Ron Paul 11:5 Today, Congress can fulfill the wishes of the
American people for greater control over their
children’s education by simply allowing parents
to keep more of their hard-earned money
to spend on education rather than force them
to send it to Washington to support education
programs reflective only of the values and priorities
of Congress and the federal bureaucracy.
1999 Ron Paul 11:6 The $3,000 tax credit will make a better
education affordable for millions of parents.
Mr. Speaker, many parents who would choose
to send their children to private, religious, or
parochial schools are unable to afford the tuition,
in large part because of the enormous
tax burden imposed on the American family by
Washington.
1999 Ron Paul 11:7 The Family Education Freedom Act also
benefits parents who choose to send their children
to public schools. Although public
schools are traditionally financed through local
taxes, increasingly, parents who wish their
children to receive a quality education may
wish to use their credit to improve their
schools by helping financing the purchase of
educational tools such as computers or extra-curricular
activities such as music programs.
Parents of public school students may also
wish to use the credit to pay for special services
for their children.
1999 Ron Paul 11:8 Greater parental support and involvement is
surely a better way to improve public schools
than funneling more federal tax dollars, followed
by greater federal control, into the public
schools. Furthermore, a greater reliance on
parental expenditures rather than government
tax dollars will help make the public schools
into true community schools that reflect the
wishes of parents and the interests of the students.
1999 Ron Paul 11:9 The Family Education Freedom Act will also
aid those parents who choose to educate their
children at home. Home schooling has become
an increasingly popular, and successful
method, of educating children. According to
recent studies, home schooled children out-perform
their public school peers by 30 to 37
percentile points across all subjects on nationally
standardized achievement exams. Home
schooling parents spend thousands of dollars
annually, in addition to the wages forgone by
the spouse who forgoes outside employment,
in order to educate their children in the loving
environment of the home.
1999 Ron Paul 11:10 Ultimately, Mr. Speaker, this bill is about
freedom. Parental control of child rearing, especially
education, is one of the bulwarks of
liberty. No nation can remain free when the
state has greater influence over the knowledge
and values transmitted to children than
the family.
1999 Ron Paul 11:11 By moving to restore the primacy of parents
to education, the Family Education Freedom
Act will not only improve America’s education,
it will restore a parent’s right to choose how
best to educate one’s own child, a fundamental
freedom that has been eroded by the increase
in federal education expenditures and
the corresponding decrease in the ability of
parents to provide for their children’s education
out of their own pockets. I call on all my
colleagues to join me in allowing parents to
devote more of their resources to their children’s
education and less to feed the wasteful
Washington bureaucracy by supporting the
Family Education Freedom Act.
