Bob Schaffer: “Just as the gentleman says in the chart, the taxpayer usually knows the children. They know the children in the school.…”

“Just as the gentleman says in the chart, the taxpayer usually knows the children. They know the children in the school. They know the teachers, the administrators; they know the programs that seem to work and which ones fail. I wish I could map this out like a map of the country so we could see where their dollar goes. Let us use my State, for example. This dollar might go from Fort Collins, Colorado, my hometown, to Washington, D.C. From Washington, D.C. we will send it just a few blocks down here to the Department of Education buildings. They are massive. They are just a few blocks away. Those dollars would be shipped to Denver, Colorado. From Denver, Colorado, to another building in Denver, Colorado. From Denver, Colorado to Fort Collins, Colorado, to the office building on La Porte Avenue, and from there to my kid's school and ultimately to my child. If these dollars got frequent flyer miles, it would be a great thing. But what the tax credit proposal allows to occur is it allows this taxpayer to give directly to the child, and it turns the leaders of the school from beggars of the government and bureaucracy into beggars of the community, people who can relate to taxpayers and speak the language that parents understand, that taxpayers understand, that communities understand, and ultimately the language the Nation needs to maintain its sovereignty as a free Republic.”