Tag Archives: education

The 529 Plan Expansion

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Recall that the tax reform enacted last December expanded the usability of 529 Plans to include expenses for K-12 education.  Now some are worried that this will harm State tax collections.  It’s a bogus beef on a number of fronts.

In December, as part of a broad tax overhaul, Congress expanded the accounts to cover up to $10,000 a year in expenses for kindergarten through 12th grade.

State budget officials are now concerned that a large number of parents will use 529 accounts to pay private-school tuition, giving them a new write-off for their state taxes.

School choice—the horror.  How terrible it is that parents have a way to help their children escape failing public schools or simply to transfer them to schools of their choice rather than be faced with the often poor choice of public school or home school.

There’s this bit of disingenuosity, too:

That could result in potentially millions of dollars in lost tax revenue at a time when most states are struggling to close budget deficits.

“I’m worried that families could use these accounts to avoid paying state taxes,” said Illinois state treasurer Mike Frerichs, a Democrat. “This is only going to put a deeper hole in the budget.”

This is especially rich coming from nearly bankrupt Illinois and that State’s Treasurer.  What’s actually blowing a hole in Illinois’ budget is its profligate spending, in Illinois’ case wastrel spending on public union pensions and teachers union pensions in Chicago.  Beyond that, using 529s to defray the costs of educating a child in Illinois isn’t tax avoidance, it’s parents seeing to the welfare of their children.

Then there’s this bit.

The Cruz provision [the amendment that inserted the 529 expansion into the tax reform bill] is projected to cost the federal government $500 million over nearly a decade, but it could cost the states much more, research suggests.

This is nonsense. Aside from the fact that it doesn’t cost the Federal government anything to not get what doesn’t belong to it, it’s also not costing the States anything for the same reason: the money isn’t the States’; the money belongs to the citizens of the States.

Furthermore, instead of worrying about deficits caused by not getting revenue that isn’t theirs, the States should worry about deficits caused by their profligate spending—and that’s not just Illinois.

This misunderstanding by American Enterprise Institute‘s Deputy Director of Education Policy, Nat Malkus, is surprising.

It’s not federalist at all.  I don’t think that the federal government should be cavalierly making problems for states by messing with state taxes.

Federalism isn’t touched by the 529 expansion.  That expansion doesn’t impact State taxes in the slightest; those remain the sole decision of the State governments.  All that’s “messed with” is tax collections, collections of OPM.

A Presidential Library

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Ex-President Barack Obama (D) plans to build a Presidential library in Chicago, and he’s looking at a non-standard concept for his library.  The folks on the Left don’t like it, as exemplified by the Chicago Tribune‘s Ron Grossman.

It seems the proposed library has a test kitchen in it, in which FLOTUS’ views of proper nutrition can be explored.  There’s also supposedly room for a yoga center; although, that’s not defined in the architectural plans.  The horror.  How unpresidential.  How unlibraryish.  Grossman bleated

President Obama, is that how you want to be remembered? As the healthy-eating and meditation-advocating president?

Then Grossman spent the bulk of his missive laying out his Better Idea for the library.  As though it were Grossman’s library and not Obama’s.  Never mind that all of us will remember Obama for his legacy, however we characterize it (and none of those characterizations see Obama as a lotus-eating spinach and broccoli lover), or that Obama gets to set up his library as he sees fit—and kudos to him for not going with tradition for tradition’s sake.  Or taking seriously the morsels of a pressman’s fetid imagination.

Readers of this blog—all half-dozen of you—know that I’m not a real big fan of the Progressive-Democrat ex-President.  But, jeez—this just shows that the Left are a bunch of crybabies who’ll whine about anything.

There’s More To It

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As part of the (actually quite minor) snafu wherein the House and Senate passed trivially different versions of the tax reform bill, the Senate’s Parliamentarian ruled that 529 Savings Plans—modified by the tax bill to be usable for K-12 as well as secondary education expenses—cannot be used, on a straight majority vote, for K-12 homeschooling, even though formally schooled K-12 children and their parents can use the Plans.  Two icons of Progressive Democracy, Senators Bernie Sanders (I, VT) and Ron Wyden (D, OR), had objected and raised the matter to the Parliamentarian.

The Senate passed its version of the tax reform bill minus the protection for homeschooled children, since there weren’t going to be eight (or even one) Progressive-Democratic Party Senators who would vote for tax reform or lower taxes in any form and sent it back to the House where the bill was passed again and then sent to the White House for the President’s signature.

Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX, and whose 529 amendment was cut back by this maneuver) expressed his dismay.

What the Democrats did is they carved out one group, they carved out just homeschoolers, and they cut homeschoolers out. It really was shameful.
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The Democrats view is they want control. They want control over everything, whether it is control over regulating an industry, control over the internet or, in this instance, control in how you educate your students.  The reason the Democrats don’t like homeschoolers is if you’re spending the time, investing the time at home teaching your kids, they can’t mandate what you’re teaching them.

Cruz is right, but that’s not all of it.  The Progressive-Democratic Party also is in the tank for the teachers unions, and homeschoolers are beyond the reach of those unions.  The Sanders-Wyden move also was in service to their unions.

In either case, or both of them, the Progressive-Democrats used children as political weapons.  That’s despicable.

Job Cut Worries

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The Left has them in the Department of Education.  It seems that the DoEd is sharply cutting back staff in its Office for Civil Rights.

[C]ritics say the move will blunt the office’s response to issues like sexual assault on college campuses and racial discrimination in public schools.

And

Some civil rights advocates are…saying the buyouts [to encourage departure] are determined by department chiefs who they say are targeting the civil rights office.

I certainly hope so.

Law enforcement and crime, including sexual assault, are matters for the police and the DoJ.  DoJ also has its own civil rights section. DoEd has—or should have—nothing to say on these matters.

The duplication needs to be eliminated altogether, and not just with a few job cuts.  All of the should be jobs cut, and DoEd’s Office of Civil Rights should be completely eliminated.

Safe Spaces and Timidity

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Antonia Okofor is an advocate for empowering women, and she argues that the 2nd Amendment is a valuable tool in the empowerment.

She was scheduled to speak at two Liberal (note: not Liberal Arts—they’ve long ago lost that breadth) colleges, Hampshire College and Mount Holyoke.

Hampshire College canceled Okofor’s engagement on short notice—two hours’ notice—claiming that her speech was “too controversial.”  Then the place thought better of its excuse and claimed the trivial technicality of a student application not being complete as the premise for canceling.  This is nonsense: if that had been the reason, school management would have said so in the first place.  On the other hand, the lack of dotted i’s and crossed t’s would have been just as indefensible as an excuse.  This is fear, instead, fear of a better argument.

Mount Holyoke “allowed” Okofor’s speech to proceed, but here the pupils displayed their own timidity.  Their “angst” was centered on the horror of “the idea that women’s rights and safety is being linked with their right to bear arms.”  Empower women, sure, but only in terms of the power of others to protect them.  The Holyoke pupils’ solution was to set up a separate “safe space” where their own Precious Ones could go to hide from such uncomfortable subjects.

We feel that creating a deliberately separate space for conversation rather than holding a direct act of protest will be a more productive action for us without fueling the messaging of the Right.

Because actual participation would require determination and positive action.  Because actual participation would require the effort of rational thought and debate instead of the comfort of inchoate feelings and ducking away.

This is the pseudo-education that our children are getting at Liberal not-Arts places like these two.