How to Avoid Solving a Problem, and Signs of the Times BLOG

The Federal Scholarship Tax Credit (FSTC) for donations to scholarship granting organizations is simple and readily understandable. According to the IRS, “Beginning January 1, 2027, individual taxpayers may be able to claim a Federal Scholarship Tax Credit (FSTC) for certain cash contributions up to $1700 to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs). A state or the District of Columbia (state) must choose to participate in the FSTC and provide a list of SGOs in that state to the IRS before an individual taxpayer can donate to an SGO within that state and claim the FSTC.”

As of April 26, 2026, the following states have signed onto the program: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Connecticut, not known in the past for allowing federal dollars to slip through its clutches, is not at the moment a participating state.

The Republican Nominating Convention’s choice for governor, Ryan Fazio, finds the opposition to the FSTC program somewhat odd. Why would the governing power in Connecticut – Governor Ned Lamont and the state’s left leaning General Assembly turn up its nose at what he has called, somewhat sardonically, “Literally free money?” Fazio, a Republican whose conservative bona fides few question, fully understands “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” Milton Friedman’s memorable locution.

Governor Lamont at first embraced the idea, but later had second thoughts. Political commentators afflicted by gnawing curiosity are now wondering what or who changed Lamont’s mind. During election periods, we all know, even the soundest of economic principles embraced by presumptive moderates tend to realign with the preferences of powerful political interests.

“States still have to opt in [to the program], CTMirror tells us, “… and those that have are mostly Republican-led. Colorado was an early exception, and New York signaled in early May that it also plans to join. Connecticut has not, and Gov. Ned Lamont has indicated he’d rather wait for the federal government to release more guidance on how the program works. He expects that to be available by January.”

And by January 2027, the off-year presidential elections in Connecticut will have concluded. Democrat opponents of FSTC by that time will have ushered into office both Lamont and a left-leaning Democrat Party dominated General Assembly.

“The program,” we are told by CTMirror, “has received support from advocates for private school choice and religious education, as it eases the cost of tuition.” As suggested by the number of states that have pledged to adopt the program, there is abroad in the United States a vast number of parents who are unhappy with the quality of education their children, rich and poor alike, are receiving. They view the FSTC program as a small window carved into a pedagogical holding cell they hope to escape. Private and religious schools are relatively few in number. It would be absurd to suppose they alone are responsible for the positive reception to the FSTC program in 27 states.

Connecticut Education Association President Kate Dias gave the game away when she said tax credits and state voucher systems were part of the same effort. CTMirror pointed out to Dias that Connecticut “does not have a voucher system, nor have legislators from either party articulated much interest in creating one. And vouchers don’t have a direct bearing on the federal scholarship tax credit, which comes out of the federal budget, not any state’s.”

Sure, sure, Dias responded, but they are alike in the most important respect: “The intention and the motivation of the federal government are to set up a nationwide infrastructure for school vouchers. That, Dias said, forces public schools to compete for attendance — and by extension, funding. States typically base public school funding around enrollment.”

Dias is saddened by the very concept of the proposed federal scholarship tax credit. “It makes me sad,” she confessed, “that we’ve created a competitive environment [emphasis mine] as opposed to one where we are able to equitably look and say, ‘OK, this is where the opportunities are.’”

Behind Dias’ fear of competition lie several supportive battalions, all politically armed to the teeth and determined to eradicate competitive pedagogical disturbances such as Catholic schools, private schools, and charter schools.

As a portent of things to come, public hearings in which parents – the first line of defense against inadequate education – are permitted to protest publically against attempts to politicize homeschooling must at all costs be frustrated by Democrat politicians in hock to powerful state education union heads that support state rather than municipal control of education programs.

Historically, Connecticut’s municipalities determined for decades both the nature of curricula throughout the state and the financing of local education. And need it be pointed out that Abraham Lincoln, among other notable political leaders in the U.S. and Europe, was home schooled. The highly poetic Gettysburg Address that used to be recited every Memorial Day in most major cemeteries in Connecticut is a testament to Lincoln’s poetic prowess. Most postmodern politicians could not hold a candle to Lincoln, whose Second Inaugural Address still rates among the most powerful political utterances of the last two centuries.

Lincoln’s memorable words, inscribed by a woman sculptress on the North interior wall of the Lincoln Memorial, still smolder in the hearts of free men and women everywhere:

The Almighty has his own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

What Connecticut politician aflame with the latest indignity can soar to such rhetorical heights? Who among us remembers the last utterance of any Connecticut politician blessed with an Ivy League education?

Lincoln was forever competing against his last best effort at a time when it was thought that competition raised up men and women, but that time perhaps has passed.