Brandon Bell takes apart Kaine’s pre-K fiasco

My sometime cyberfoil on tax and transportation issues has a terrific takedown of Governor Kaine’s universal pre-K nonsense.  Among the choicest cuts:

The current Pre-K program is plagued with problems. According to the Roanoke Times, schools are having difficulty filling the spots currently available–up to 1/3 are unfilled. Many school districts can’t afford to pay the local match required by the State. Others don’t have enough space for the kids.

Why on earth do we need to expand a program that is clearly not working very well as it is? Why do wealthy parents need a government subsidy to send their kids to pre-school?

. . .

The push to expand this program highlights the single biggest problem with government: once you create a program, it’s almost impossible to get rid of it. Back in the 90’s someone had an idea that at risk 4 year olds needed subsidized pre-school. So we eventually decided to study it. I am sure legislators were told how small this program would be and how it would cost very little to implement. And then we created the program and a new bureaucracy. Now that little idea that we studied 15 years ago is on the verge of becoming a program that will cost the State hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now, Kaine has a few more of these little seeds that will grow into huge programs sprinkled in his budget; so Brandon’s piece is not just a diagnosis of the pre-K fiasco, it’s an important warning about what’s to come in other areas if this General Assembly allows those seeds to take root.  So read the whole thing.