In final days, Boehner pushes school choice, trashes unions
House Speaker John Boehner isn't leaving Capitol Hill without one last fight on an issue he's clashed with Democrats repeatedly over the years: school choice.
More specifically, Boehner is raising hell over a bill that extends the controversial D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, which provides low-income families with vouchers to attend private schools.
"It is the only program in America where the federal government allows low-income families to choose the schools that are best for their kids," Boehner said in a video released Saturday. "The program has truly made a difference."
The retiring House speaker is a longtime proponent of the program, first started in 2003, which grants federal funds to Washington, D.C. residents for tuition at private and parochial schools. His latest bill extending the scholarship program, which the House voted to reauthorize earlier this week, allocates $60 million to the vouchers over the next five years.
In his last weekly GOP address before leaving Congress, Boehner touted the program's record of elevated graduation rates. Nine in 10 high school seniors in the program graduate, according to the Ohio Republican -- higher than the city's average.
"These are the kind of results parents dream of for their kids," Boehner said.
But according to a 2010 Department of Education study, though children did graduate from high school at higher rates under the program, they did not necessarily perform better in standardized tests.
The Obama administration has a record of opposing the vouchers, arguing that the program has not yielded satisfactory results and that the funding should go to public schools rather than to the top few students.
"Instead of using federal resources to support a handful of students in private schools, the federal government should focus its attention and available resources on improving the quality of public schools for all students," the White House said early this week.
Local Democratic leaders have also raised concerns that the bill infringes on the self-governance of the District.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the city's non-voting House representative, said Wednesday that the program, for Boehner, was only ever "a capstone to his own political career. The D.C. voucher program is his pet project, not D.C.'s."
Boehner fired back at his opponents, saying that "the unions and the education establishment in our country see school choice as a threat."
"To me, that's just fundamentally unfair," he continued. "Your zip code shouldn't decide your fate. Education can and should be the great equalizer -- lifting up kids who would otherwise slip through the cracks."
The District of Columbia is the only city in the country that receives federal funds allowing students to attend private or parochial schools.
In a separate address, President Obama slammed Congressional Republicans for expiring the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which uses royalties from gas and oil projects for conservation initiatives.
"For more than half a century, this fund has protected more than 5 million acres of land - from playgrounds to parks to priceless landscapes - all without costing taxpayers a dime," Mr. Obama said in a video out Saturday. "Nearly every single county in America has benefited from this program."
The president added that, especially with the its bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate, "Republicans in Congress should reauthorize and fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund without delay."
He invoked Pope Francis, who visited Capitol Hill last month, adding that "this planet is a gift from God -- and our common home. We should leave it to our kids in better shape than we found it."
Congressional Republicans sunset the funds at the beginning of October.