Federal Educational Funding Tyranny

"Opinion"

02/07/2006

Paul Munnis

Do we support Mr. Bush’s plan to cut the U.S. Deficit in half? “Yes, we do.”

Should one fourth of the cuts in spending come from education? “No, they shouldn’t.”

Will we be hurt by such spending cuts? “You bet that we will be hurt.”

Rather than get into a shouting match with the Feds we Minnesotans need to stand back for a moment from all of the shouting and finger-pointing and ask ourselves what is it we really need from the Feds where our state education system is concerned.

We need to ask whether we can find a way to get out from under the Federal mantel of school subsidy and become self-sufficient and independent in our public education effort.  Is there a way to end the Federal dependence and to take back control of our schools thus freeing our State from threats and crisis such as are being posed to us right now?

We are going to have some pain anyhow over these cuts and the Feds are going to assure that it is so. Thus if we will be hurting anyway then why not take control of our pain and twist the State / Federal relationship to a point where we reject Federal dependence altogether? We could accept ‘no strings attached’ Federal help as a pure largesse that we will then bank to minimize future tax increases.

That would free us from the politics of Federal Education Funding and leave us with mainly the politics of State Education to contend with.

This means creating a buffer fund out of Federal Tax payments.

It also means creating a funding source for State public schools that rises and falls with inflation and devaluation and that needs little legislative attention once it is installed.

Immediately people will point to unfunded Federal mandates as a pressure point. They are right and we need to catalog them, decide which of them we need to fund ourselves (because we already are paying for them), and then dump the ones that are pure nuisance. Yes, that includes the Federal ‘No Child Left Behind’ mandate if we feel it is too onerous for us.

Next, critics will point at a need to add taxes to the Minnesota mix. Yet if the Feds are going to cut our income then we are likely going to have to tax ourselves to make up the difference anyhow. Why not just cut to the chase and choose the tax source right now?

We have options for new revenue and among them are the following:

- Highway and Bridge tolls whose revenue goes strictly to an Education Fund.

- Mississippi River Tolls on boat traffic, including recreational and commercial traffic.

- An increase in the State Sales Tax with a percentage marked for Education.

- Provision for a wider use for pull-tabs or other Lottery formats with the revenue dedicated just to MN Education.

- Telephone and Cell phone tax increases with dedication of the revenue to education.

This is not meant to be a menu for you to select from but rather just an illustration that we have options and that we need to pick some and then vote on them. I wouldn’t mind seeing us agree upon the objective and then debate the means to obtain our freedom during this legislative year and then hang the top choices for funding sources onto a State referendum for the coming 2006 election.

I sense that we have to do something to obtain freedom for ourselves once again. We sure aren’t getting any freedom by allowing the Fed’s to be involved. They are paying a low percentage for assistance yet they are having a large impact. It’s time to tell them: “No Thanks—we’ll just run our own school system.”

I also believe that we Minnesotans know how to make lemonade out of lemons and I sense that this is an opportune time to regain control of our State and to reassert our state rights.

We ought to at least study the possibility.

It’s sort of like wrestling. If you want to get free you have to first slip from under your opponent’s hold. We need to slip out from under the hold that the Feds have on our State education programs then we will be once again free to create the best educated students in the world.