Consider This...

August 20, 2004

Cut, cut, cut. Whether it’s taxes or services, the conservative mantra covers it all and has the great advantage of being extremely easy to memorize.

Lately, though, there’s disharmony among the faithful.

Republican gubernatorial nominee Patrick Ballantine has been making consistent use of the “cut” mantra all year, but this week that has gotten him into a public spat with a fellow Republican.

Ballantine is on the record as criticizing the N.C. Department of Public Instruction for “housing thousands of bureaucrats,” claiming that the department is so wasteful that it could be drastically cut to save public money.

This kind of rhetoric is not only damaging because it threatens education funding—it’s also dangerous because it isn’t true. The N.C. Department of Public Instruction has fewer than 500 employees (compared to nearly 170,000 in the state education system). The department has already lost more than half its staff over the last twenty years.

As for the other employees whom conservatives have lumped together as “overhead,” these include teacher’s assistants, principals, and even janitors.

Fortunately, even other Republicans recognize the misleading rhetoric inherent when politicians aim deep cuts at DPI. Bill Fletcher, who last month won the GOP nomination for state superintendent, says of Ballantine, “The gubernatorial candidate is not properly informed.” According to Fletcher, the cut mantra, when pointed at schools, is “political claptrap.”

Whether it’s vouchers or charter-school expansions, conservatives get way too much traction from cheap, ill-informed attacks on public education. That’s why it’s news when a prominent Republican with knowledge of education stands up and says, “Enough.”