{"id":46594,"date":"2023-08-08T12:37:29","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T19:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/?p=46594"},"modified":"2023-08-10T12:41:21","modified_gmt":"2023-08-10T19:41:21","slug":"put-up-or-shut-up-time-for-dems-over-opportunity-scholarships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/put-up-or-shut-up-time-for-dems-over-opportunity-scholarships\/","title":{"rendered":"Put-Up-or-Shut-Up Time for Dems over Opportunity Scholarships"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

(Chuck Muth)<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 Tomorrow, the Legislature\u2019s \u201cInterim Finance Committee\u201d (IFC) \u2013 controlled by Democrats \u2013 will meet to approve or reject Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo\u2019s proposal to use $3.2 million in unspent COVID relief funds to restore money Democrats cut from the Opportunity Scholarship program in this year\u2019s session.
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Democrats have lost the moral high ground on the issue.\u00a0
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Their cuts, if not restored, mean\u00a0hundreds of kids who got the scholarships last school year will lose them this school year and be forced out of the school of their choice and back into a public school failure factory.
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As such, Democrat leaders are doing what they usually do when the facts aren\u2019t on their side: They\u2019re making sh*t up instead of getting sh*t done.
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Fact is, there was around $11.4 million for Opportunity Scholarships for the last school year. For this school year \u2013 unless Lombardo\u2019s proposal is approved \u2013 that funding will be cut to $6.6 million.
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I was never exactly a math wizard in school.\u00a0 But from what I remember, $6.6 million is less than $11.4 million.\u00a0 In other words, the program\u2019s funding was cut.
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And here\u2019s some historical perspective\u2026
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Back in the 2015 legislative session \u2013 when Republicans controlled both the Legislature and the governor\u2019s office \u2013 Opportunity Scholarships were created with initial funding of $5 million.\u00a0
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Not a single Democrat \u2013 controlled by the teachers\u2019 unions \u2013 voted for the bill.
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The bill also provided for an automatic increase in funding of 10 percent per year.\u00a0 Had that provision remained in place, notes reporter Jacob Solis, the cap \u201cwould have hit more than $17.2 million annually by 2029.\u201d
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But the annual cap increase didn\u2019t remain in place.
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In 2017 \u2013 after Republicans lost control of the Legislature thanks to the stupidity of also passing the largest tax hike in state history in 2015 \u2013 Democrats agreed to a one-time boost in Opportunity Scholarship funding of $20 million as a compromise for killing the much broader Education Savings Account (ESA) program.
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\u201cEver since,\u201d Solis reports, \u201cDemocrats have sought to starve the program.\u201d
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In the 2019 session \u2013 again controlled by Democrats, but this time with a Democrat in the governor\u2019s office, as well \u2013 the Legislature froze the funding cap for the program at $6.6 million and killed the automatic 10% increases.
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However, as part of negotiations, an additional one-time appropriation of $9.4 million was approved so that existing scholarship recipients wouldn\u2019t lose their scholarships and be forced back into a public school.
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Then came the 2021 session \u2013 again controlled by Democrats with Democrat Gov. Sisolak sitting in the captain\u2019s chair.\u00a0
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The $6.6 million cap remained in place, but the amount of one-time additional funding, so some kids wouldn\u2019t lose their scholarships, was cut from $9.4 million to $4.7 million.
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Slowly starving the program, indeed.
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In 2022, Nevadans kicked Sisolak out of office and replaced him with Lombardo \u2013 though the Legislature, thanks in large part to gerrymandering districts after the census, remained in Democrat hands.
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Lombardo campaigned on expanding school choice and won on a platform of expanding school choice.\u00a0
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\u201cJoe believes that a student\u2019s zip code shouldn\u2019t determine the quality of their education,\u201d his campaign declared on his website.\u00a0 And that included \u201cproviding more Opportunity Scholarships.\u201d
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In his State of the State Address back in January, Lombardo called for increasing the funding cap on Opportunity Scholarships to $25 million per year.\u00a0 The Democrats told him to pound sand and wouldn\u2019t even hold hearings on the governor\u2019s proposal.
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With Democrat heels dug in on expanding the program, Lombardo\u2019s team sought to at least keep funding this year at last year\u2019s level so hundreds of low-income, mostly minority children wouldn\u2019t lose their scholarships and be forced back into a public school.
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But Democrats, hellbent on starving the program to death, again told the Republican governor to kiss their arse; thereby telling those hundreds of kids at risk of losing their scholarships to drop dead.
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Those same Democrats \u2013 now suffering political backlash for screwing over these kids \u2013 are now claiming nobody ever raised the issue of kids losing their scholarships.
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\u201cIt was never our intent that anybody in the program would lose their place due to lack of funding,\u201d Democrat Assembly Speaker Steve \u201cDonut Boy\u201d Yeager said over the weekend. \u201cIt was not an issue that anybody raised during the legislative session.\u201d
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And if you believe that, the Tooth Fairy will be paying you a visit tonight and leaving a pot of gold he stole from the leprechauns under your pillow.
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What kind of idiot would you have to be to cut funding from $11.4 million to $6.6 million and not know that some kids would lose their scholarships?\u00a0 Yeager\u2019s claim doesn\u2019t pass the smell test.\u00a0 It stinks like yesterday\u2019s diapers.
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As Mr. Solis reported, it has always been the Democrats’ intent to \u201cstarve the program.\u201d
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But let\u2019s assume for a minute that Donut Boy is being honest.\u00a0 I know it\u2019s a helluva stretch, but bear with me.
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If it\u2019s true that Democrats never intended for any existing scholarship recipients to lose their scholarships \u2013 and they just didn\u2019t realize the consequences of their actions during the session – there\u2019s a simple way to fix it.
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Pass Gov. Lombardo\u2019s funding proposal at the IFC meeting tomorrow.\u00a0
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The money wouldn\u2019t come out of the general fund or education budgets.\u00a0 It\u2019s from unspent COVID relief funds that have already been used by Sisolak and the Democrats for all manner of spending on non-COVID related programs and services.
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Indeed, helping kids get a good education after Sisolak and the Democrats shut schools down for WAY too long during COVID is a far better use of such COVID funds than a lot of the other crap they\u2019ve spent money on.
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The public schools \u2013 which got a windfall budget boost of over $2\u00a0BILLION<\/u>\u00a0this year \u2013 won\u2019t lose a dime.\u00a0 And kids who are currently in the school of their choice thanks to the scholarships won\u2019t be forced into a failure factory.
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A win-win for everybody\u2026except the hostage-taking public school teachers\u2019 unions.\u00a0 I can live with that. But can Democrats?
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Doubtful.\u00a0 They care more about the teachers\u2019 unions\u2019 cash than kids.\u00a0 Remember in November.
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Politics on the Rocks<\/strong>
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Tickets for Citizen Outreach\u2019s new \u201cPolitics on the Rocks\u201d event will go on sale to the general public early tomorrow morning.\u00a0
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This is going to be a much smaller, more intimate event than we\u2019ve held in the past to give folks more of an opportunity to mix-and-mingle with our VIP guests of honor.\u00a0
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Only 100 tickets are available.
\u00a0
Inner Circle<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0members got first crack at the tickets yesterday and today – and half of the seats are already gone. So don\u2019t wait to purchase tomorrow morning or you\u2019re likely to be left out of what\u2019s going to be one heckuva fun evening!
\u00a0
DETAILS<\/u>
\u00a0
Politics on the Rocks
Monday, August 21, 2023
6:00 \u2013 8:00 pm
\u00a0
VIP Guests of Honor:
Congressman Mark Amodei and Gov. Joe Lombardo
\u00a0
Vic\u2019s Las Vegas Restaurant
355 Promenade Place
Las Vegas, NV 89106
\u00a0
Tickets: $25 \/ person
\u00a0
Early Bird special for Inner Circle Members: $1 \/ person
(Limit 4 per member. Expires midnight, August 11th<\/sup>, or when tickets sell out)<\/em>
\u00a0
FAMOUS LAST WORDS<\/strong>
\u00a0
\u201cThe government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.\u201d \u2013\u00a0H.L. Menken<\/em><\/strong>
\u00a0
Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, publisher of Nevada News & Views, and founder of CampaignDoctor.com.\u00a0 You can sign up for his conservative, Nevada-focused e-newsletter at MuthsTruths.com.\u00a0 His views are his own.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Chuck Muth)\u00a0\u2013 Tomorrow, the Legislature\u2019s \u201cInterim Finance Committee\u201d (IFC) \u2013 controlled by Democrats \u2013 will meet to approve or reject Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo\u2019s proposal to use $3.2 million in unspent COVID relief funds to restore money Democrats cut from the Opportunity Scholarship program in this year\u2019s session.\u00a0Democrats have lost the moral high ground on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42053,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[748],"tags":[3466],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46594"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46596,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46594\/revisions\/46596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}