Ga. school voucher legislation heads to House floor for vote

WRDW ^ | 3/14/24 | ap

[CFW]

ATLANTA, Ga. - Your tax dollars could be used to put some Georgia students through private school.

The House Education Committee passed Senate Bill 233, also known as the “school choice bill,” on Wednesday. Now it heads to the floor of the Georgia House for a final vote.

If the proposal becomes law, students in Georgia’s lowest-performing schools could be eligible for a $6,500 voucher. Families could take that money and put it toward private school tuition.

Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns is leaning into the push to pass the voucher plan.

Burns, a Screven County Republican, made what he said was his first-ever appearance at a House Education Committee meeting Wednesday.

He urged the panel to advance a voucher plan that’s been rolled together with a number of other initiatives, in an apparent attempt to gain support. The committee approved Senate Bill 233 on a party-line vote, setting the stage for a vote on the House floor on Thursday.

[CFW]

It is my understanding that this afternoon, SB 233 the Georgia Promise Scholarship Act has passed the House. Thank you Rep Jon Burns and many others worked tirelessly to get this bill over the finish line. Many thought the issue was dead for this session.

[vikingd00d]

According to https://www.legis.ga.gov/legislation/64762, it only passed out of the Education committee, and now can go to the floor for a vote.

[Da Coyote]

“Your tax dollars could be used to put some Georgia students through private school.”
Note the first grade reasoning of our “media”.
No need to counter the laughable logic, except to state the Captain Obvious fact that our tax dollers should go to eliminating ‘Publik Skoolz’.

[Trailerpark Badass]

Government money will come with government strings attached. Why not give tax credits for those who choose not to use the garbage public schools?

I had to pay 2 private school tuitions, from Pre-K through 12th grade, AND 3/4 of my property taxes for crappy public schools.

[econjack]

This sounds very similar to Milton Friedman’s voucher system. The reason for a voucher system is because school funding relies on property taxes for about 80% of public school budgets. The problem is that property taxes don’t fit either the Ability to Pay or Benefits Received principles of taxation. Your neighbor may pay the same amount of property tax for their house but have 4x the income, which violates the Ability to Pay principle. Likewise, many people do not have children currently in school and a lot of people have never had children at all, which fails the Benefits Received principle.

The voucher system removes some of the objections to the property tax, especially if tax payers with no children are allowed to sell their voucher on the open market. It does not appear that the GA proposal allows this.

[unlearner]

The only time the left-wing media has even a hint of concern about how tax dollars are spent is when they might be spent on something beneficial.

[BobL]

“Your neighbor may pay the same amount of property tax for their house but have 4x the income, which violates the Ability to Pay principle.”

“Ability to Pay principle” - first I’ve heard of that ‘principle’, might you have a link to it?

In the country where I grew up, the capability to access what you wanted was based on how much money you earned.

[econjack]

I just did a DDG search and came up with:

https://www.britannica.com/money/taxation/The-benefit-principle