Bob Schaffer: “We are offering a choice to take a portion of these dollars and contribute them directly to an education organization, a…”

“We are offering a choice to take a portion of these dollars and contribute them directly to an education organization, a student tuition organization or an education investment organization that would exist as they do in many States today. That would look a little more like this. So the choice we are offering is made possible through a manipulation of the Tax Code through tax credits. Every dollar that somebody would contribute within limits in this fashion, would reduce the amount of cash that a taxpayer is forced today by our Tax Code to send through the government, and that is essentially what we are talking about. As I mentioned, we are not inventing the idea here. The States have proceeded on this long before us. Arizona probably has one of the best models which has been studied in great detail. There is an analysis just a few months old produced by Carrie Lipps and Jennifer Jacobi which details how successful Arizona has been in injecting massive amounts of cash into the education system of Arizona, again, based on this voluntary basis and manipulation of the Arizona Tax Code, and not only that, but they have been able to provide dollars in a way where 80 percent of scholarship recipients in that State were selected on the basis of financial need.”