The House of Representatives just passed the $26 billion education “jobs” bill by a vote of 247-161. The money will be split up with $10 billion going towards state and local workers in public education. The other $16 billion will go to state Medicaid payments. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had called members back from the August recess in order to pass the “emergency” piece of legislation.
The public sector has been thriving at the expense of the private sector. Over at Jay Greene’s blog, Matthew Ladner displays the chart (click on it to enlarge) put together by the Rockefeller Institute comparing the two sectors. So how much longer can the private sector continue to bail out the public sector?
Speaker Pelosi said in a press conference following the vote that the three most important issues facing the Congress are “our children, our children, and our children.” If that were truly the case, she would have questioned the wisdom of propping up the public education sector by placing even more debt on future generations.
Michael Wille is a member of the Young Leaders Program at the Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm
