The Senate passed the $410 billion omnibus bill yesterday and sent it to President Obama’s desk. There was no surprise. As I have said before, there are enough spineless, self-serving RINOs in the Senate to pass anything the left wants. This bill had $7.7 billion worth of earmarks in it. From what I have read, 40% of them had Republican names attached to them.
Tough to chastise the left for stealing cookies when you leave chocolate chip fingerprints.
More troubling than the thousands of earmarks worth billions of dollars we simply don’t have was the attack on school choice. This bill ends a scholarship program that has allowed students in the DC area, 1,900 of them, to attend private schools, including the same school Obama’s girls attend.
Known as the "Durbin language" after the Illinois Democrat who came up with it last year, the provision mandates that the scholarship program ends after the next school year unless Congress reauthorizes it and the District of Columbia approves. The beauty of this language is that it allows opponents to kill the program simply by doing nothing. Just the sort of sneaky maneuver that’s so handy when you don’t want inner-city moms and dads to catch on that you are cutting one of their lifelines.
The Senate had a chance to prevent this. The purpose of Ensign Amendment was "To strike the restrictions on the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program." It was defeated down party lines, with a few RINOs defecting. How many billions have they voted to give away to banks, yet they vote against scholarships for poor families?
When given the chance to allow poor parents the opportunity to send their children to good public schools, the Democrats voted against it. Tell me again this is the party of the little guy.
This party is owned by the NEA.
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