Butler meets the Grumpies

On July 11, the Grumpies met with Keith Butler, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate. The following is a letter I sent to him regarding our meeting:

Reverend Butler,

Thank you for taking the time to meet with the Grumpies. I appreciate the opportunity to learn about you and your policy positions as I try to determine who will best represent the citizens of Michigan in a manner most consistent with the U.S. Constitution.

Unfortunately, I have deep concerns over your position on two major policy topics: health care and education. Your proposed solution for both is more federal involvement.

Perhaps I misunderstood your plans, but I hear you calling for more federal mandates and regulations in health care to rein in costs. This is a prescription for higher costs and less availability. Health care costs keep rising dramatically because the costs are so far removed from the consumers. Your proposal to fund a MSA for every citizen still keeps them out of the equation. Requiring health care providers to computerize does nothing about the basic structure of health care. Federal mandates and tax policy prevent a free health care market from flourishing. Only reforms in these areas will start the process of bringing costs under control.

How to best achieve this? I’m not a health care expert, but I do know that if the federal government got out of the health care business there are some incredibly innovative ideas that will spring up around the country. Free markets do that.

As far as education, I believe you make the same mistake as you do with health care – more federal control. In addition, I think your demand for “equal funding” misses the real problem.

You claim there is a problem when Birmingham spends $12,000 per student while Detroit spends much less. This past week, the Michigan legislature set the per-pupil funding at $7,085 for next year. Every public school will receive $7,085 for every student enrolled. The additional money that Birmingham spends comes from Birmingham property owners.

Based on your comments, you believe all students should get $12,000 (you did say you didn’t want to bring everyone down, but rather boost everyone up). But once we grant all students that funding, in order to maintain this equality in per-pupil spending, you would need to deny local property owners from approving more spending on education. This denies people a chance for improving their child’s education. Is this really the side of the issue you want to be on?

Now, I don’t know how much your school spends per student but I’m going to guess that it isn’t much more than $7,085. If you can successfully educate children for that amount or less, why do you believe that we need to increase the amount to $12,000 for everyone? We need to ask why the current schools aren’t getting it done for the money they already receive. In the past 25 years, Michigan has doubled per pupil spending on education (and this is after inflation is accounted for) without a corresponding improvement in results. How much more should be spent? What does an education cost?

Also, I think you are forgetting an important point. Let’s say today we fund every student to the tune of $12,000 per year. One school may decide it needs a new gym. Another school installs a new science lab. Yet another hires a consultant to tell them the best way to spend the additional money. These schools would receive equal funding but they will always have different spending priorities. Funding is not the problem. Spending is the problem.

Just like health care, you promote centralized, federal control. When the topic of gun control came up, you quickly (and properly) wrapped yourself in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. However when it comes to health care and education, neither of which appear in our federal government’s instruction manual, you just as quickly abandon it.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m trying to determine who will best represent the citizens of Michigan in a manner most consistent with the U.S. Constitution. On two of the biggest issues facing America, you ignore the Constitution and promote more federal involvement. Whatever happened to the days when Republicans were small government conservatives?

[Letter to Keith Butler. Sent 07/17/2006.]