| Known as the Texas Tomorrow Fund, the plan was created by Democrats in the mid-1990s to help ordinary families lock in the future costs of their kids' college tuition, fees, and books at today's prices. The logic was simple. The rich don't have to worry about paying for their children's college, and the poor have a variety of need-based scholarships available to them.
The original bill was passed with overwhelming bi-partisan support, with even Gov. George W. Bush backing it. But the Texas Tomorrow Fund also had vocal opposition from the beginning. Stock brokers and financial managers hated it. They thought Texas families should hire them instead to set up personal investment strategies, including college savings plans. It was wrong for state government to get involved in this area, they argued. Like Social Security, Teachers Retirement, and other public pensions, the Texas Tomorrow Fund was an unwarranted intrusion by government into the free market. Far better, they said, to let the private sector get its hands on these large pots of public money.
One of the biggest critics was Rick Perry. He called the prepaid college tuition plan "another Bill Clinton-style big government program" and attacked its creator, then-Comptroller John Sharp, with whom he was embroiled in a tough political campaign.
Having accumulated more than enough personal wealth while in public office to send his own kids to fine universities, Mr. Perry didn't see why middle-class families shouldn't have to fend for themselves, too.
In 2003, facing a record shortfall caused by Republican mismanagement of the state budget, Mr. Perry pushed through a college tuition deregulation bill, taking control of tuition rates out of the hands of elected lawmakers and giving it to anonymous college bureaucrats. The result? Predictably, college tuition skyrocketed by an average of 60 percent across the state, pricing many middle-class families out of the market.
One of the side effects was that the Texas Tomorrow Fund was mortally wounded. Created at a time when state lawmakers exercised control over tuition rates and enough courage to vote for funding increases for Texas' higher-ed institutions, the Fund was now thrown out of whack by rising rates. Officials temporarily suspended new enrollments in the program and waited for tuition rates to stabilize. They never did.
And now Ms. Combs, acting on the advice of a panel of experts from the financial management industry that opposed the Texas Tomorrow Fund from the very beginning, says we should just shut it down. Not content with having allowed tuition rates to soar while simultaneously reducing Pell Grants and other financial assistance programs for deserving students, the GOP is now going to abolish the one government program designed for middle-class families.
One more Republican privatization scheme. One more middle-class tax hike made permanent. One more opportunity for Democrats to speak up and defend a program that helps the middle-class Texans who pay for state government and expect vital services in return. |
