Today’s Washington Post editorial page draws attention to the plight of the embattled D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which is now in critical condition due to language contained in the omnibus bill. The 2010 spending bill effectively kills the successful program by prohibiting any new students from receiving scholarships. The Post writes that contrary to being a compromise as some lawmakers claim, the OSP language tucked away in the omnibus bill is in fact a death sentence:
IT IS DISTRESSINGLY clear that congressional leaders never really meant it when they said there would be a fair hearing to determine the future of the District’s federally funded school voucher program. How else to explain language tucked away in the mammoth omnibus spending bill that would effectively kill the Washington Opportunity Scholarship Program?
Contrary to claims of this being a compromise, the measure is really slow death for a program that provides $7,500 annually to low-income students to attend private schools. The number of students participating in the program has already shrunk from more than 1,700 to 1,319, and the nonprofit that administers the scholarships has said that it may have to pull out because the conditions would be untenable. It’s also possible that some schools that now enroll voucher students could be forced to shut down.
Despite strong support locally for the scholarships, many in Congress have continued to turn a deaf ear to the pleas of District families. The Post continues:
Key lawmakers in the appropriation process have been, at best, disingenuous about their intentions, thus placing the program’s advocates in their current no-win situation. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) made encouraging comments about allowing new students but, despite his clout as majority whip, did nothing to make that happen. Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-N.Y.) said that he didn’t want to usurp local control, even as the mayor, the schools chancellor and a majority of the D.C. Council lobbied for the acceptance of new students.
In a letter to members of Congress, Joe Robert, and longtime advocate for children and chairman of the board at the Washington Scholarship Fund, calls Representative Serrano to task. Responding to a letter Serrano had written in November in opposition to the OSP, Robert writes:
…you claim that the DC school voucher program was ‘imposed by Congress’. This is patently false and you know it. The DC voucher legislation was conceived, supported and aggressively fought for by a Democratic mayor, a Democratic school board president, and a Democratic chair of the DC City Council’s Education Committee, as well as a larger population sick to death of seeing African-American and low-income kids utterly defeated year after year by a broken education system.
…Shame on you. Shame on all public officials who would rather relegate low-income children to continued cycles of poverty and illiteracy than take on the forces that benefit from the status quo of a broken education system. All you need to do is listen to the local education community and continue a successful program that is already in place.
While families will continue to fight for school choice in the Nation’s Capital, the omnibus language sends a distressing signal about the future of the Opportunity Scholarships. More than 3,000 low-income children have had their lives changed thanks to the OSP, and are now experiencing the benefits of an effective education. Juan Williams, a political analyst for Fox News and National Public Radio, talks passionately about the negative impact shutting down school choice in D.C. will have on the lives of children:
…when I see the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program being taken away from kids, I think…if that was me, I could never have become a writer; I could never have become a voice, I could never have exercised the kind of political influence I treasure…it just has so many repercussions. And yet, there are people that would just say… ‘You know what? We’re taking that away from these kids… and it’s only a few kids.’ But those are real people that you’re hurting, those are real lives that could be changed by education. And somehow you are so cold-hearted that you think, ‘You know what, those kids don’t matter.’ And I think that puts you on the wrong side of history.
Juan Williams hits the nail on the head. These are real lives. These are real children who are being adversely affected by the decisions of members of Congress. Decisions that are in many cases, hypocritical. More than 40 percent of members of Congress have a one point sent a child to private school. The President sends his children to private school. The Secretary of Education bought a home in Virginia so his children would not have to attend D.C. public schools. Those in Washington who have the power to save the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program clearly value school choice for their own families. It’s time they afford the same opportunity to receive a safe and effective education to all families.
According to CBS and other media reports, “Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) said Tuesday that he would support a Republican filibuster of a health care bill that includes a public option.” This is a serious blow to the passage of any Obamacare bill including a public option, yet the blow may not be fatal.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) yesterday announced a deal and it is notable that he was not accompanied by any member of the secret team negotiating a deal on Obamacare including Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag and Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.
The fact that none of the other negotiators were there for the big rollout of Obamacare is evidence that there was not strong agreement on the details of the bill Reid allegedly sent to the Congressional Budget Office for a cost estimate. This deal is on life support and does not yet have broad based support. If Senator Reid insists on retaining the public option in the Obamacare bill to placate the far left, he may doom passage of the bill.
The procedure being used to pass Obamacare does provide Senator Reid with some wiggle room to pass the bill, even with a public option. First of all, because the details of the deal are still secret, Reid retains the discretion to remove any provision from the bill before he decides to roll it out on the Senate Floor as early as next week. Reid’s announced deal is a version of the public option with states being allowed to “opt out.” As discussed on The Foundry today, “whether it is first implemented through a co-op, or a trigger, or an opt out, the end goal is the same: government-run health care for all Americans.” It will be very hard to opt out for states and this may become de facto public plan for most states and this permutation of the public option seems to be objectionable to Senator Lieberman.
Next, it is important to remember that once Senator Reid rolls an Obamacare bill on the Senate floor, there will be amendments offered to tweak the bill to get support at 60 votes for a package. Reid needs 60 votes to shut off debate or opponents of Obamacare could use a filibuster to defeat and debate the bill to failure. If Senator Lieberman or another moderate is pledging opposition to the bill, Senator Reid could try to use the amendment process to buy votes for a final plan. Also, Reid could use the amendment process to remove objectionable aspects of a public plan, or the public plan as a whole, to garner the support of just enough Senators to shut off debate.
CBS quotes Lieberman with some wiggle room for support for the bill with a public option even thought he clearly stated that “if the bill remains what it is now, I will not be able to support a cloture motion before final passage.” Lieberman said, “I haven’t decided and can’t decide [on cloture] until I’ve actually seen the physical bill, and I’m not going to be able to see that until it comes back from CBO having been scored. I’m looking for what the costing is on certain areas, and I’ll make up my mind on the basis of that, I’m not establishing a line in the sand or a number.” It seems that if Senator Reid either removes the public option from the bill or modifies it so as to remove the costly aspects of the plan, he may secure enough votes to pass Obamacare with out a full blown public option.
The cost aspect of other aspects of an Obamacare bill might be objectionable to Lieberman or one of the other 12 Senators that caucus with the Democrats who opposed debating the $247 billion Doc Fix bill including Democrat Senators Evan Bayh of Indiana, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Bill Nelson of Florida, Jon Tester of Montana, Mark Warner and Jim Webb of Virgina and Ron Wyden of Oregon. That bill failed on a filibuster and Obamacare may be doomed to die on a filibuster if Senator Ried submits a bill with a public option. Senator Harry Reid will attempt over the next week to find a cure for Obamacare and the removal of the public option may be the only medicine that will work.