An Unnecessary Crisis

The following is from Congressman Rush Holt's newsletter:

Earlier this week, I voted for a compromise measure that reopened the federal government through January 15, 2014 and ensures that America will pay its bills through at least February 7, 2014.

This bill ended an unnecessary, self-induced crisis. But it failed to end sequestration’s painful cuts in government services. It failed to invest in creating new jobs. It followed costly weeks of government shutdown and unnerving the financial world. It set up the prospect of additional confrontations over the budget and the debt ceiling early next year.


Ever since this phony crisis began, a majority of the Congress – Democrats and Republicans alike – sought to reopen the government. Yet Republican leaders, out of misguided deference to the reckless ideologues in their ranks, refused to allow a vote on clean legislation to reopen the government.

On Wednesday that finally changed. The Speaker allowed the majority of House members to work their will, and as a result, our government has reopened and the U.S. can continue paying her debts, as we have for centuries. My hope is that, in the months ahead, Speaker Boehner will follow this week’s precedent and allow votes on other pressing issues, such as job creation and immigration reform, that Democrats and Republicans can agree on. The alternative would be to continue to follow the extreme minority who shut down the government for no apparent reason, with no clear idea of what they hoped to win.

The Evidence Is Clear on School Vouchers

School “vouchers” are a longstanding conservative education reform proposal to allow parents to use taxpayer money to subsidize their children’s attendance at private schools. Proponents hope that vouchers will create a “free market” in education that will improve outcomes – but the evidence shows that, to the contrary, vouchers just drain money from public schools.

In a recent study, researchers at Princeton University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found, overall, no statistical difference in achievement between students receiving vouchers and their peers who remained in public school. In a separate study, Milwaukee voucher students did no better than their public school peers in reading, math, and science from 4th through 10th grade. Similar results were found by independent studies in D.C. and Cleveland.

Guided by such evidence, I have always opposed and voted in Congress against school vouchers. We should work to improve our public schools, not pilfer from them.

Working for You

Recently, I was contacted by a Spotswood woman who had discovered an error in her Social Security benefits: due to a mix-up, the Social Security Administration had wrongly cut her monthly benefit, and she was unable to reach anyone who could fix the problem. After I intervened, she was reimbursed more than $800 for the benefits she had missed, and she will receive the correct benefit amount moving forward.

Have you encountered a similar problem with Social Security or any other federal agency? If so, please drop me a line at 1-87-RUSH-HOLT or by sending an e-mail. I’ll be glad to help.

Sincerely,

Rush Holt
Member of Congress

Don't let Gov. Christie sneak school vouchers into the budget

From the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey:

If at first you don't succeed, slip your plan into a budget bill when you think no one's looking. That's exactly what Gov. Chris Christie has done by stuffing a $2 million private school voucher program into the budget.

The only way to remove a proposal slipped into the budget is if our legislators take it out. Email your lawmakers in Trenton: Tell them that shoehorning vouchers into the budget is unconstitutional.

This $2 million plan for private school vouchers violates the New Jersey Constitution in three ways:

• The state Constitution forbids officials from using the budget process to create substantive new policies, but that's exactly what's happening with vouchers. It's one thing to consider legislation through an open process with public input; it's another to sneak an unpopular, controversial, constitutionally questionable program in the state budget.
• NJ's Constitution calls for a "thorough and efficient" education, and it spells out how: through a "system of free public schools." It explicitly states that money for that system of free public schools should be used only for that purpose and nothing else.
• Private school vouchers use government money to support religious organizations. "Private schools" range widely, but the most affordable ones, where the majority of tuition can be covered by the vouchers, tend to be parochial schools. (More than half of private schools nationwide are religiously affiliated.) That means private school vouchers encourage enrollment in religious schools, and when state money goes to a parochial school, it violates the state Constitution's ban on public money supporting religious institutions . What's more troubling is that legislators have said publicly they hope vouchers will support religious schools with financial struggles. That is not why we pay taxes.

When school vouchers are discussed in the public arena, they're not popular – and for good reason. They divert public education funding to private and religious schools where civil rights laws, transparency regulations, and state standards don't always apply.

When a reporter asked the Christie administration about potential legal action challenging the constitutionality of Christie's actions, his spokesman replied: Bring it on.

Well, right now you can bring it on – by bringing your voice to your legislators.

Our hard-earned dollars should be spent on educating our children, not diverting money into unaccountable, secretive schools that have no imperative to respect students' or employees' civil rights.

ACLU of New Jersey
www.aclu-nj.org