"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom."
John Adams
“Too big to fail” and “government bailouts” are all we have heard about for close to two years. The latest request is by Education Secretary Arne Duncan to ask lawmakers to put aside “politics and ideology” as they consider a request for $23 billion in “emergency” funding for public schools. As a taxpayer this is very disturbing to me and I’m sure to the largest percentage of Americans. When is all this “bailout”, “rob Peter to pay Paul” economics nonsense going to be checked? What a great subject to deal with head on. Everyone would agree that our children’s education is something we need to support. Keeping that in mind, we need to have the right information in order to understand how to support that great goal.
I’m sure you are asking “what is he talking about?” First, let me tell you that I’m close to this subject because my daughter is a public school teacher and the major bread winner for her family. Like most Americans I’m proud that we have a system supported by the government (notice I say supported – important to keep in mind) that helps guarantee each person can have a quality education maintained by all taxpayers’ money. Our teachers need to know that we stand behind everyone of them who performs to goals of our expectations as a whole.
The current system has failed in the sense that we seem unable to support it finically. Why is that? There have been suggestions. Education analyst Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., said this.
“More federal funding is not going to solve states' fiscal problems and could in fact exacerbate those problems, by really preventing states from making the difficult budgetary decisions necessary to reduce costs and effect long-term systemic education reform. The real problem within the public education sector has been more and more non-teaching staff positions. These positions continue to grow and really put a strain on state budgets. Roughly half of those people employed by the public education sector are in non-teaching positions.”
This makes a lot of sense to me and I believe we can help direct monies to government supported programs like education if we apply something every American family has either learned to do or should do. Most successful American families have learned to budget based on their family income. That includes borrowing and using credit wisely to achieve intended realistic goals for our needs then wants: in that order. One great tool we have today to assist the decision making on our budgeting is to learn how to use credit reports. These have much information on them that direct us on when we should and should not use credit, how much we could handle and when we should make a change to keep us financially viable.
I’m sure you have caught on to what I suggest. Why not have credit reports for each of our government agencies and recipient of said agency (aka, each school district) that our representatives could use to gauge fiscal responsibilities. For that matter, with today’s technology, it could be made available for all the people to check and inform our representative of our thoughts and wishes. These could help understand status before criticality and make adjustment long before it is serious (too late at this point, but many families learned the hard also). We want our government and all its representatives (politicians) to operate just as we need to. I know there are others much more capable than me to suggest how this might work and it may be too simple for those who serve the people to comprehend but many a family has succeeded by applying principals around this concept. It’s time the government listened to the people and acted more like us.
"Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands."
Thomas Jefferson
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