… (and Help Businesses Reward their Employees).

There is no family responsibility more important than educating the next generation. You may be wealthy or poor. You may be healthy or sick. No matter your conditions, you can be sure: If your children are not educated well, they will end up poor and sick.

As Libertarians, we believe that competitive private and market solutions will generally provide superior answers to challenging questions. Private and home schooling should offer children a richness of individually-designed education programs that other arrangements will find difficult to match. However, sensible Libertarians also recognize that public schools enjoy two huge advantages, namely large tax subsidies and a huge market and production base already in place.

How can Libertarians change America from where we are, to where we want to go, on a path each of whose steps is positive? Any proposed change must add to what is already there, not take away options from parents anxious for their children.

Federal intervention is not the answer. If your Congressman proposes that the Federal government should run your child’s school, ask him about Washington, D.C. That’s the school district for which Congress is responsible. It’s one of the most expensive in the country. It’s one of the worst, too. Congress didn’t bring quality to D.C. schools. Congress will do no better when it tries to ‘bring quality’ to your child’s education.

I propose a much more direct approach to expanding educational opportunity, so that the market can choose between private, public, and home schooling. We should give each child a tax credit. As a reasonable round number, $5000 per year is about appropriate. When someone pays for part of your child’s education, that payment comes dollar-for-dollar off the payer’s income tax. For children in private schools, that’s money for tuition. For home-schooled children, that’s money for educational materials. Most important, for children in public schools, that’s enrichment: computers, books around the house, a subscription to a daily newspaper, all the modest factors that make an enormous difference in how well children do at school.

What about poor children whose parents pay no taxes? I remembered them. They are the children most at risk. They are the reason I said ‘when someone pays’ not ‘when their parents pay’. We have about 50 million children in this country, and about 50 million parents. We have another two hundred million Americans who don’t have children, or who already have grandchildren, and who love their country and their fellow Americans. My tax credit plan lets every American support the education of someone’s child, and to take their support as a tax credit.

I said ‘tax credit’ not ‘tax deduction’. Tax credits come dollar for dollar from your tax bill. Every time you earn a dollar tax credit, you will pay one dollar less in Federal tax. That means you can give money to support a child’s education, yet end up no poorer as a result.

I would give businesses the same opportunity to support education. If you are a small businessman, you can reward your employees by picking up education costs for their children. If you employ high-schoolers or college students, under my plan you can contribute to their education, too.

A fiscally prudent Congress may well insist that the program be phased in over a period of time, perhaps a decade, but might also insist that the program should effectively include pre-schoolers and students in the first few years of college. Education is a huge industry, and we cannot improve it through private choice overnight (though repealing No Child Left Behind would help).

My proposal for education moves us in a direction that most Libertarians would like to go, namely enriching the education of every child, while at the same time strengthening private market solutions so that they will be more effective in the future.

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George Phillies is a candidate for the Libertarian Party’s 2008 presidential nomination. His campaign web site is located at www.phillies2008.org. As a matter of course, Rational Review will publish, unedited, the submissions of libertarian presidential candidates. For more information, or for assistance, contact us at info@rationalreview.com.