Not linked on Ron Paul’s Congressional Website.
HON. RON PAUL
OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, April 2, 2009
2009 Ron Paul 43:1
Mr. PAUL. Madam Speaker, I rise today to
introduce the Family Education Freedom Act,
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 it goals by
allowing American parents a tax credit of up to
$5,000 for the expenses incurred in sending
their child to private, public, parochial, other
religious school, or for home schooling their
children.
2009 Ron Paul 43:2
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.
2009 Ron Paul 43:3
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. Loss of control is a key reason why so
many of America’s parents express dissatisfaction
with the educational system.
2009 Ron Paul 43:4
According to a survey conducted by Education
Next/Harvard PEPG, the majority of
Americans support education tax credits. This
poll also found strong support for education
tax credits among liberals, moderates, conservatives,
low-income individuals, African-
Americans, and public-school employees. 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.
2009 Ron Paul 43:5
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.
2009 Ron Paul 43:6
The $5,000 tax credit will make a better
education affordable for millions of parents.
Madame 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.
2009 Ron Paul 43:7
The Family Education Freedom Act also
benefits parents who choose to send their children
to public schools. Parents of children in
public schools may use this credit to help improve
their local schools by helping finance
the purchase of educational tools such as
computers or to ensure their local schools can
offer enriching extracurricular activities such
as music programs. Parents of public school
students may also wish to use the credit to
pay for special services, such as tutoring, for
their children.
2009 Ron Paul 43:8
Increasing parental control of education is
superior to funneling more federal tax dollars,
followed by greater federal control, into the
schools. A recent review of the relevant research
conducted by Andrew J. Coulson of
the CATO Institute shows that increasing parental
controls increases academic achievement,
efficiency, the orderliness of the classrooms,
and the quality of school facilities. Not
surprisingly, graduates of education system
controlled by parents tend to achieve higher
levels of education and earn more than their
counterparts in bureaucratically controlled education
systems.
2009 Ron Paul 43:9
Clearly, enactment of the Family Education
Freedom Act is the best thing this Congress
could do to improve public education. 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.
2009 Ron Paul 43:10
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. 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.
2009 Ron Paul 43:11
Ultimately, Madam 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.
2009 Ron Paul 43:12
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.
