Patrick Kennedy: “This proposal just violates the common sense test. It would be one thing for the majority party to offer scholarships…”

“This proposal just violates the common sense test. It would be one thing for the majority party to offer scholarships, once the public education system was fully funded, once we fully funded Head Start, once we reduced the teacher/pupil ratio, once we went about getting the $100 billion that the GAO says is needed to fix our public school education system. But in the absence, in the absence of investing those needed dollars in our public education system, vouchers represent a Band-Aid approach. Just think of it. Let us sprinkle a few vouchers out there, capture this kind of choice thing, make it sound all attractive, but what we are really doing is leaving a very unattractive system still in place. We know it needs work, but we are not doing anything to invest the dollars that are needed to make it work. We are saying, we will make it work for those who can get a voucher. All I would ask is, what does that leave the people who cannot get a voucher? Where is the guarantee for every child?”