Obama's education plan emphasizes reform and accountability by government, educators, and parents, a fund to encourage innovative schools, support for charter schools that are working, well and investments in technology, teacher training and college preparedness, early education funding, and a $4,000 college tuition tax credit in exchange for public service among numerous other programs.
What it does not explain is specifically where the money is going to come from to do all these things as local and state revenues continue to fall as a result of the deepening recession and the largest federal deficit since 1940.
Obama's Education Proposal
Obama expects to pay for this increase in government spending for education by one-third from the current $59 billion to $78 billion by ending the war in Iraq, comprehensive efforts to cut government spending, reforming government contracts, reducing the number of federal earmarks, improve federal procurement processes and ending wasteful unnecessary federal programs. There are no specifics available as to how this will be done. However, many of these will be denied by members of Congress whose districts will be effected by these cutbacks and none of this can be done without their cooperation.
Obama and the Federal Deficit
Obama's spending on educational programs has not taken into account the enormous federal deficit being faced in 2009. According to the Christian Science Monitor (10/16/08), the United States is looking at a $1 trillion deficit, the highest level of federal red ink as a share of the overall economy since 1940. For each household, the cost of deficit would be $8,620.
Ron Scherer, of the Monitor, writes that future presidents will have to rein in spending and raise taxes to pay down that debt. If they don't, foreign lenders at some point could scale back their purchases of U.S.bills and bonds, sending interest rates soaring. The rising estimates of the deficit are based in part on the calculations that tax revenues will shrink as the economy contracts and unemployment rises during the recession. In addition, as yet the actual final cost of the $700 billion financial Bailout are unknown.
Obama, Democrat Congress and Spending
Obama,if elected, and the Democrat Congress will be dealing with unfunded promises such as social security and Medicare, which have no future tax revenue to cover them, according to David Walker, head of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and former U. S. comptroller general. In an interview with the Monitor, he said, "We may well have passed the point where the federal government's total financial hole exceeds the net worth of most Americans."
The only alternative that Congress may see is to increase taxes on those still earning money in order to pay for Obama's education program and other promises. As evidence of the members reluctance to follow his plan to cut back on waste in order to fund the program are all the earmarks that were put into the $700 billion dollar Bailout at a time when the deficit was already deepening.
