GOP 'voucher scheme for the wealthy' would hand $5 billion to religious, private schools

Speaker Mike Johnson’s House Republicans want to insert a provision into their massive tax cuts bill that would create a system to hand private and religious schools $5 billion annually and wealthy donors yet another tax break.

Calling it an “unprecedented effort to use public money to pay for private education,” the Associated Press reports that it “would advance President Donald Trump’s agenda of establishing ‘universal school choice’ by providing families nationwide the option to give their children an education different from the one offered in their local public school.”

If enacted, the system would provide a vehicle for donors to donate cash or stocks, then receive full value via a tax credit —”100% of the contribution back in the form of a discount on their tax bills,” according to the AP. “It would allow stock holders to avoid paying taxes that would be levied if they donated or transferred the stock.”

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Samantha Jacoby, Deputy Director of Federal Tax Policy with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities described it as “a new federal tax credit to subsidize private school vouchers — effectively the first nationwide voucher program.” She called it “a costly tax break for the wealthy [with] an egregious capital gains tax loophole.”

Jacoby added, “this is a much more generous tax break than the existing charitable deduction. The max benefit from the deduction is 37 cents per $ donated, but the voucher credit would make taxpayers fully whole; i.e., the federal government pays the full cost of the vouchers.”

Critics are blasting the proposal.

“Voters have never approved vouchers in any state,” noted public education advocate Mike DeGuire, Ph.D. “Now the Republican-led Congress wants to spend billions to gut public education with their voucher scheme for the wealthy.”

“Trump and his cronies want [to] kick 9 million vulnerable people off Medicaid to pay for (1) tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and (2) $5 BILLION to send to religious schools that are unaccountable to taxpayers,” observed constitutional attorney Andrew L. Seidel, a vice president at Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

In 2019, then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos proposed a similar program, Education Freedom Scholarships, which was met with opposition by Democrats.

Then-U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) called it “a shell game to fund private and religious schools and their providers using taxpayers as the middleman.”