Rand Paul, the senator from Kentucky, styles himself as a constitutional conservative. Like his father, he is a trained doctor turned politician. The younger Paul cut his political teeth on an issue that has become near and dear to the Tea Party movement, taxes. Mr. Paul was the founder of Kentucky Taxpayers United that has kept tabs on legislators' records on taxing and spending. I'm sure that the KTU was conscience in their choice of the word "united" over "union". If they had gone by the name Kentucky Taxpayers Union the group would have been disavowed as being some sort of liberal, secular bastion of tax and spenders, even if they had observed their current conservative opinions. Such is the nonsensical emphasis on rhetorical devices of this age.
But, both Pauls are on a whistlestop tour of Iowa at the moment trying to churn up as much support for the elder Paul as possible. So our focus today will be on this and what the younger Paul is hoping to achieve in Iowa. Ron Paul is currently second in the Iowa polls, trailing Mitt Romney. Mr. Romney faces no challenge from Ron in moderate circles and this probably does not bother Rand too much as he sees moderates as being big government types whom conservatives ought to be wary of. So, Rand's focus is not on Mitt whose supporters are unlikely to cozy up to the libertarian candidate anyway. Rand is instead looking to stop the recently surging Rick Santorum. Rand has criticized Santorum's support of the expansion of Medicare, the No Child Left Behind Act and for the Department of Education.
Victor Hugo once said something to the effect of, "nothing can stop an idea whose time has come". The reform of the healthcare system in America is such an idea. It's time has come and reform must take place, one way or the other. However, instead of focusing on the insurmountably large topic of Medicare on a short blog post, we'll focus rather on Rand's criticism of Santorum's education stances.
Rand has decried Mr. Santorum's support of the No Child Left Behind Act, which is common political fodder from both sides of the aisle. However, Rand goes further with his devolution of power in his criticism for Santorum's support for the Department of Education. In criticizing this, Rand claims that he is against the Department of Education because there is no "function on the federal level" for it. This is a bold claim and one worth great amounts of time to deliberate on. Therefore, I offer this next paragraph to form a well-guided opinion.
On the positive side of things, decentralizing education power would give more autonomy to the states and local municipalities that actually educate. Any time the bureaucracy is cut to become more efficient the results should be a positive one. In some sense allowing local governments to provide local services like education makes perfect sense. However, education sometimes must be considered in a costs based way as well. Teachers today work for piddling salaries in comparison with the work that they do. The Department of Education at the federal level commands a much greater revenue (eek taxes) than any local municipality could garner. This economy of scale type thing makes it necessary to handle at the bigger, and hence, federal level.
Today's assessment of Rand Paul and his ideas has both positives and negatives, as should all honest assessments of politicians from both sides of the aisle. The ideal to make a more nimbler, efficient and local government is laudable. The current trend of throwing more and more money at the Department of Education has proved to be ineffective and unsustainable. Paul's decentralized solution to it (as is his wont on most issues) though would cause too great of a financial strain on education. It would create the best of times and the worst of times dependent upon the affluence of a municipality. This would only further increase a sense of have and have-nots. But, decentralizing should not be thrown out either, it just shouldn't be applied to education
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