Vouchers Quotes

For every show that we do, anyone that rides public transit, bikes, or walk, we offer them a $5 voucher at the merch table. It gets people using the infrastructure in the area. Hopefully, the venues where we play will lobby city council and say, we need bike paths, sidewalk repair. That stuff affects so many people's lives. ~ Ben Sollee

With the loss of Free Choice Vouchers, hundreds of thousands of workers will now be forced to choose between their employers' unaffordable insurance or going without health care. ~ Ron Wyden

While the romanticized ideal of universal public education resonates with the cognoscenti who oppose vouchers, poor urban families just want the best education for their children, who will certainly need it to function in our high-tech and advanced society. ~ Clarence Thomas

Take Washington, D.C., which spends over $10,000 per student for education whose student achievement would be dead last if Mississippi chose to secede from the Union. Suppose Washington gave each parent even a $5,000 voucher - that wouldn't mean less money available per student. To the contrary, holding total education expenditures constant, it'd mean more money per student remaining in public schools. ~ Walter E. Williams

The question that has perhaps divided students of vouchers more than any other is their likely effect on the social and economic class structure. Some have argued that the great value of the public school has been as a melting pot, in which rich and poor, native- and foreign-born, black and white have learned to live together. That image was and is largely true for small communities, but almost entirely false for large cities. There, the public school has fostered residential stratification, by tying the kind and cost of schooling to residential location. It is no accident that most of the country's outstanding public schools are in high-income enclaves. ~ Milton Friedman

Vouchers lead to competition, not re-segregation. ~ Jim DeMint

The privatization of education means that conservatives can set up their own schools in which their children will not have to learn about anything that might be inconsistent with conservative morality and politics. It would also mean a move away from the integration of schools, which means that the children of conservatives would not have to encounter students from different subcultures with different values. School vouchers would make privatization that much easier. In ~ George Lakoff

While Free Choice Vouchers didn't fulfill my vision of a health care system in which every American would be empowered to hire and fire their insurance company, they were a foothold for choice and competition and a safety valve for Americans whose employers are already forcing them to bear more and more of their family's health insurance costs. ~ Ron Wyden

I remember watching an episode of The West Wing about education in America, which the majority of people rightfully believe is the key to opportunity. In it, the fictional president debates whether he should push school vouchers (giving public money to schoolchildren so that they escape failing public schools) or instead focus exclusively on fixing those same failing schools. That debate is important, of course - for a long time, much of my failing school district qualified for vouchers - but it was striking that in an entire discussion about why poor kids struggled in school, the emphasis rested entirely on public institutions. As a teacher at my old high school told me recently, "They want us to be shepherds to these kids. But no one wants to talk about the fact that many of them are raised by wolves. ~ J.D. Vance

Republicans get a lot of money from big business, but they are not tied to the union dollar. As a result they have been aggressive advocates of school reform, charter schools and vouchers for private schools. ~ Juan Williams

Legislatures not driven to desperation by the problems of public education may be able to see the threat in vouchers negotiable in sectarian schools. ~ David Souter

If you're going to have a public subsidy to education, vouchers are clearly a better way of delivering it. They should result in some loosening up and privatization of the government school system. ~ Peter Brimelow

I'm totally opposed to vouchers. I will fight them tooth and nail. ~ Chuck Schumer

And before our current legislature adjourns, we intend to become the first state of full and true choice by saying to every low and middle-income Hoosier family, if you think a non-government school is the right one for your child, you're as entitled to that option as any wealthy family; here's a voucher, go sign up. ~ Mitch Daniels

As a nation we must understand that the future of our country depends on education. It has to be right up front and cannot be an afterthought. It is so important that it has to be available for everyone, not just available to those that can afford it. Our country never fared better than when the GI Bill paid for the education of our veterans. I'm not necessarily advocating a free lunch; however it should be affordable for everyone! For politicians to start handing out vouchers is just a gimmick that shifts funding from Public Schools to Charter Schools. The first thing that should be considered is "Equal Opportunity for All!" I recognize that not everyone is academically gifted or inspired to seek a degree, so a Vocational Technical education may be a viable option for some. ~ Hank Bracker

Many of those who argue for vouchers say that they simply want to use competition to improve public education. I don't think it works that way, and I've been watching this for a longtime. ~ Jonathan Kozol

Cigarettes to be fetched for me from the canteen,' said Rubashov.
'Have you got prison vouchers?'
'My money was taken from me on my arrival,' said Rubashov.
'Then you must wait until it has been changed for vouchers.'
'How long will that take in this model establishment of yours?' asked Rubashov.
'You can write a letter of complaint,' said the old man.
'You know quite well that I have neither paper nor pencil,' said Rubashov.
'To buy writing materials you have to have vouchers,' said the warder. ~ Arthur Koestler

In education, it is said that the state must impose schooling on all children, else the parents and communities will neglect it. Only the state can make sure that no child is left behind. The only question is the means: will we use the union and bureaucracies favored by the left, or the market incentives and vouchers favored by the right. I don't want to get into a debate about which means is better, but only to draw attention to the reality that these are both forms of planning that compromise the freedom of families to manage their own affairs. ~ Llewellyn Rockwell

Hey, great idea: if you have kids, give your partner reading vouchers next Christmas. Each voucher entitles the bearer to two hours' reading time *while the kids are awake*. It might look like a cheapskate present, but parents will appreciate that it costs more in real terms than a Lamborghini. ~ Nick Hornby

When Vice President Al Gore, a progressive supporter of teacher unions and opponent of school vouchers, was asked why he opposed school vouchers for black children while sending his own son to a private school, he said, "If I was the parent of a child who went to an inner-city school that was failing, I might be for vouchers, too."106 ~ John Perazzo

When I was mayor of New York, my views changed. I began as mayor of New York City thinking that I could reform the New York City school system. After two or three years, four years, I became an advocate of choice, of scholarships, and vouchers, and parental choice, because I thought that was the only way to really change the school system. ~ Rudy Giuliani

Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I will never turn Medicare into a voucher. No American should ever have to spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies. They should retire with the care and dignity they have earned. ~ Barack Obama

President Bush and I had asked Congress to appropriate a half-billion dollars to school vouchers. We didn't get it, and we were disappointed. But we did not go out and form a corporation to pay for it. That would have been a problem. ~ Lamar Alexander

I find focusing clearly on the problem is the first step to seeing a solution. The problem is (a) the insane amount of time spent raising money from (b) a freakishly tiny proportion of America. Basically .05% are the "relevant funders" of campaigns, meaning candidates can't help but be overly sensitive to the views of that tiny fraction relative to the rest of us. IF that's the problem, THEN the solution is to spread the funders out: to increase the range of us who are the relevant funders of elections, through schemes like vouchers or coupons given to every voter. ~ Lawrence Lessig

Yeah, my life a bitch, but you know nothing about her
Been to hell and back, I can show you vouchers ~ Lil' Wayne

The reality is that the special interest groups that have lobbied against Free Choice Vouchers object to any measure that would empower employees to have a say in their health benefits because it begins to erode their power in the current health care system. ~ Ron Wyden

I can understand the teachers saying it's a gun at my head, but they've got the same gun at the parents' head at the moment. The parent goes up to the teacher and says, well, I'm not satisfied with what you're doing, and the teacher can say, well tough. You can't take him away, you can't move him, you can't do what you like, so go away and stop bothering me. That can be the attitude of some teachers today, and often is. But now that the positions are being reversed [with vouchers] and the roles are changed, I can only say tough on the teachers. Let them pull their socks up and give us a better deal and let us participate more. ~ Milton Friedman

To me, it looks like an opportunity for school choice. I'd also like to see a pilot program to allow true school choice ? vouchers. ~ David Bradley

The golden age of Luncheon Vouchers ended ten years
ago. For ten years Mickey had been saying, "The golden
age of Luncheon Vouchers is over." And that's what Archie
loved about O'Connell's. Everything was remembered,
nothing was lost. History was never revised or
reinterpreted, adapted or whitewashed. It was as solid and
as simple as the encrusted egg on the clock. ~ Zadie Smith