As I type, the House is marking up a budget bill that has nestled somewhere in its entrails the Education Choice for Children Act, a bill that has little to do with actual school choice and a lot to do with handouts to the wealthy. 

Going in, it was not in any substantial way different from the 2024 edition, which means it included these special features. (Some of this may change quickly this week).

Who qualifies? Pretty much everyone. Proponents will argue that it is aimed at relief to low-income folks, but it very much is not. Here's the trick. The usual "rescue the poors" voucher bill will tie eligibility to some percentage of the federal poverty level (for example, the current voucher proposal in PA sets eligibility at 250% of federal poverty level). But ECCA sets eligibility to a household income under 300% of area median gross income. 

So if you live in Scarsdale, where the median household income is $238,478 per year, then you can earn up to $715,434 a year and still be eligible for a voucher for your kid.

Deluxe tax dodge. These vouchers will use the tax credit scholarship model, which means they will be funded by contributions from donors. Those donors (individual or corporate) get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit; they can contribute up to 5% of their adjusted gross income (or $5,000--whichever is greater). 

That results in a $10 billion dollar revenue hit to the federal government in the original bill (reports say it's now a $5 billion tag). Unless 90% of that cap is used up for a "high use calendar year" in which case the cap goes up another 5%. That all represents money that the federal government doesn't get, leading to either cut services or more deficit.

The bill also lets the GOP dodge voters. Vouchers continue to have a problem-- voters don't vote for them. Ever. Last fall we saw, once again, that even when voters vote for Trump, they vote against vouchers. ECCA-- like every other piece of voucher legislation ever-- gets around the problem of voters by simply leaving them out of the deal. What do the voters in your state want? House Republicans don't care. 

ECCA telegraphs its focus by saying very little about the vouchers themselves. What can they be used for? Buncha stuff. How much will the vouchers be? Will they be enough to let a poor child go to a high cost school? Doesn't say-- let the scholarship granting organization figure it out. Any mechanisms for making sure that education vendors are not fraudsters? None. Any oversight mechanisms to determine where the money went, how it was spent, whether it actually did any good? Nope. The only time oversight comes up is in the usual Hands Off clause declaring that the government can have no say in how the money is spent, nor can it tell private edu-vendors how to do their thing, even and especially if they are a private religious school with a whole batch of discriminatory policies. It's a federal subsidy for discrimination-- discrimination against persons because of LGBTQ status, religious beliefs, behavioral or academic issues, or just any old unnamed reason (though it now includes some weak protections for students with special needs). 

There is not a speck of this bill aimed at the issue of making sure that young humans get a decent education. That is at the heart of much of the voucher movement, which is less about getting every child in this country a decent education and more about turning education into a commodity that is strictly the responsibility of parents, while the government just washes its hands of that whole promise of a decent education for every child. Not our problem, parents. You're on your own. 

The genius of ECCA is that it combines the end of the American promise of public education with a bunch of goodies for the wealthy. We already know that school vouchers are used primarily by folks who already have their kids in private schools, and this certainly includes that feature, but ECCA adds a tasty tax shelter on top. 

It remains to be seen how the bill will look when folks are done marking up and fending off various Democratic amendments. But there's no version that isn't an assault on the very idea of public education, no version that doesn't foster discrimination, no version that isn't mostly about one more gift to the wealthy. Call your rep and say no.