The NEA Wants Payroll Deductions

Political conversation on the media is full of chatter about how to cut spending and debt, but it reminds us of the comment attributed to Mark Twain: Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it. There's a lot of talk about how to cut back on entitlements, but why doesn't somebody suggest cutting the extravagant federal dollars spent on education, which is not even an entitlement? The billions spent on education have not achieved any of their designated goals, which were to raise the test scores and to close the gap between kids from upper-income and lower-income families. The handouts of taxpayers' money, however, produced a lot of cheating by teachers and administrators trying to hide their failure to achieve designated goals.

One significant new resolution adopted this year by the largest teachers union, the Natonal Education Association known as the NEA, reads: "The Association also believes that members have the right to have payroll deduction of both Association membership dues and voluntary political contributions." That means the NEA is demanding that the state deduct money from the paycecks of public school employees which the union can use for political purposes, such as electing Democratic candidates and defeating ballot proposals designed to increase parental choice about their kids' education. There is no reason why state goverments should do this enormous, expensive favor for the teachers union. The way to cut the NEA's political power is for state legislatures to pass Paycheck Protection laws that prohibit the racket of state governments deducting political contributions out of the paychecks of teachers and turning the money over to the NEA bosses to elect Democrats.

A Memorandum distributed to the delegates by NEA President Dennis Van Roekel reveals the amount of money expected to be available for the NEA Ballot Measures/Legislative Crises Fund in the current year: $26,939,129. Already this year, the NEA powers-that-be have approved $270,000 to four state affiliates to use in ballot measure campaigns, $7,163,492 in assistance to 17 state affiliates for legislative battles, and $2,500,000 for lobby-campaign efforts related to the congressional reauthorization of federal education appropriations.

Listen to the radio commentary here: