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John Kasich and His Big Government Education Disconnect

-By Warner Todd Huston

Ohio Governor John Kasich talked about education at the GOP debate in Detroit, but what he said essentially reveals the disconnect between apparent conservative rhetoric and a less conservative love of big government.

Talking about how the schools in Cleveland, one of the largest cities in his home state of Ohio, have been turning around lately due to new policies, the Governor tried to wrench that into federal policy.

Those local policies may be all well and good, but one sentence he unleashed that night revealed a dichotomy between conservative boilerplate and the usual, big government nonsense we see from establishment and Washington Republicans.

“And, frankly, look, if I were president,” Kashich said, “I’d take 104 federal programs, bundle them into four buckets, and send it to the states, because fixing schools rests at the state and the local level, and particularly at the school board level.”

Notice the disconnect? He began talking about those “buckets” of federal money he’d “send to the states” for education. And why would he send all those buckets loaded with tax dollars? Because “fixing schools rests at the state and the local level, and particularly at the school board level.”

So, what is the disconnect?

Well, if “fixing schools rests at the state and local level” then why is the federal government taking money then re-distributing money to the states for taxes in the fist place?

This is the problem with these big government types. They give us all that wonderful conservative rhetoric of “local control” and “states rights” and yet… and yet they still want those buckets of federal dollars at their disposal to show how they care about us all.

The fact is, if “fixing” education truly resides locally there is no need for the federal government to take our taxes for education at all.