Decision 2016

[Dad_Scaper]

Originally Posted by Raider30

Using your argument the government 'funds' a variety of things I am not pleased with. Such is life in the wide and varied society to which most of us belong. Given that, what is the point here again?

Is the government prohibited from funding any of those things you're not pleased with, by the Constitution? Without the separation of Church and State, this conversation doesn't happen, after all.

[dok]

Originally Posted by Raider30

Using your argument the government 'funds' a variety of things I am not pleased with. Such is life in the wide and varied society to which most of us belong. Given that, what is the point here again?

That some people here are denying that it's government funding of a religious institution at all, which is just silly.

Originally Posted by Raider30

Unless I misunderstood you and you are really arguing that 'funding' is the same as 'endorsing'.

That's a separate argument that I haven't gotten into except a bit on the edges, although as you can see, D_S has.

[dok]

Originally Posted by Aldin

@dok I think we see this in a fundamentally different way. I see the vouchers as funding the education and you see them as funding the schools.

You are creating a distinction without a difference. Nobody gets into the weeds about whether food stamps pay for food or whether they are giving money to supermarkets which then provide food.

Schools are entities that provide a service, and we call that service education.

Originally Posted by Aldin

Meh. I see your point. I just don't agree with you. Schools, in and of themselves, don't satisfy the "basic good" requirement of providing an education whereas a satisfactory education, however derived, automatically does. Therefore, the funding must be to provide the education and not to pay for a delivery platform since one satisfies the requirement and one does not.

Nevertheless, they are a religious institution, and they do mix religion into their product.

Again, everything you are saying here is very clearly true. But none of it runs counter to the obvious fact that such a voucher system means that a religious institution is being funded by the government.

[Raider30]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

Is the government prohibited from funding any of those things you're not pleased with, by the Constitution? Without the separation of Church and State, this conversation doesn't happen, after all.

Which is why I added the rest of my post...

"Unless I misunderstood you and you are really arguing that 'funding' is the same as 'endorsing'."

- Raider30

[Dad_Scaper]

Ok. In that case I don't understand. I don't need to understand, though. That's fine.

[Swamper]

Originally Posted by Dysole

Asked this last night while everyone was asleep. Anyone want to enlighten me?

~Dysole, looking for answers

I got a Pell Grant and I'm at a private religious college, so I reckon so.

[Aldin]

Originally Posted by dok

You are creating a distinction without a difference.

If it were a distinction without a difference we wouldn't be having this conversation

~Aldin, agreeing to disagree

[dok]

I guess I don't even understand what you're disagreeing about. You've said a whole lot but you've never flatly disagreed with my point, as far as I can tell. You still haven't said that you don't think a voucher system that can be used towards religious schools doesn't amount to government funding religious institutions.

-dok, agreeing to agree

[kevindola]

How did the 'stimulus' package work for distributing government funds to the public? If someone received money in that manner and donated it all to a church would this be the same correlation as the current discussion?

Or is there a major difference between these government funded vouchers and whatever the stimulus package from some odd years ago were?

[dok]

The primary methods the stimulus used to put money in pockets was an increase in unemployment insurance and a reduction in payroll taxes. Neither of those required the granted (or retained) funds to be directed to any purpose. Funds which are not earmarked for anything are indeed different than a voucher, as I touched on at the end of my initial response to Aldin:

Originally Posted by dok

If the government gave all parents of school-aged children cash back, charged tuition for public schools, and said "you don't have to educate your kids - you can pay for public school, pay for private school, home school, or put your kids to work, your choice"... then that would be different. But that's not what they do. Childhood education is still a public good that you are guaranteed access to and cannot opt out of paying your share of, in the form of general taxation.

I believe the stimulus also extended SNAP benefits, but I think we've covered that analogy plenty.

[Aldin]

Originally Posted by dok

You still haven't said that you don't think a voucher system that can be used towards religious schools doesn't amount to government funding religious institutions.

And I'm not going to because I'm struggling to parse the phrasing. To be clear, I do not think a voucher system which allowed religious schools to accept the voucher amounts to the government funding religious institutions.

If it is the "voucher" part of it that is troubling you, however, I would instead be fine with a pre-paid annual tax credit being assigned to the taxpayer which could only be redeemed for qualified educational expenses. Does that solve the problem?

Surely if I can take a charitable deduction on my tax return for gifts to my church without it constituting state-sponsored religion, and I can get an education credit on my tax return for attending a religiously affiliated university without it constituting state-sponsored religion, and I can get a child and dependant care credit on my tax return for sending my kid to a religiously affiliated daycare without it constituting state-sponsored religion, then it MUST be possible to figure out some system whereby the government allows me to choose where my kid goes to school while they pay for it without it constituting state-sponsored religion.

If the only thing bothering you is the word "voucher" then let's lose the word and talk about the goal we are trying to accomplish and whether or not it can be accomplished without violating the constituion by establishing religion.

~Aldin, runonsentanceishly

[dok]

Maybe the difficulty you're having is that you believe that if you admit it amounts to the government funding a religious institution, that automatically makes it unconstitutional? Because the Supreme Court found that it was the former, but granted that in some cases it's not unconstitutional. (Not saying you have to accept the court's logic, just that it's entirely possible to accept the first but not the second part of that statement.)

Relax, Aldin. It's OK to admit the obvious.