Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 312 | Trump vs. Biden 2020: Education

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

First we break down misconceptions surrounding what it really means to be "pro-all life," explaining why being anti-death penalty, pro-gun control, pro-social justice, and pro-open borders doesn't make a person pro-life. Then we examine the differences between Joe Biden's and Donald Trump's education platforms. Joe Biden and the Democrats are explicitly anti-school choice — a position that disproportionately negatively affects poor and special-needs children. Donald Trump's administration has invested millions into ensuring families have the ability to choose the education that's best for their kids.  Today's Sponsor Express VPN keeps all of your information secure by encrypting 100% of your data with the most powerful encryption available. Get an extra 3 months FREE ==> https://ExpressVPN.com/ALLIE Today's Links Confronting America’s Three Crises​ https://www.aft.org/press/speeches/confronting-americas-three-crises  COVID-19 Transmission and Children: The Child Is Not to Blame https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/146/2/e2020004879  Back to School: What Doctors Say About Children and COVID-19 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/back-school-what-doctors-say-about-children-covid-19-n1233550  Teachers Are Wary of Returning to Class, and Online Instruction Too https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/us/teacher-union-school-reopening-coronavirus.html  Issues 2020: Public School Spending Is at an All-Time High https://www.manhattan-institute.org/issues-2020-us-public-school-spending-teachers-pay  Defund the Police? How About Defund Teachers Unions. https://news.yahoo.com/defund-police-defund-teachers-unions-120000238.html  Teachers’ Unions May Have to Put Students First, Rethink Opposition to Education Reforms https://reason.org/commentary/teachers-unions-may-have-to-put-students-first/  Defund the Police? How About Defund Teachers Unions. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/defund-police-how-about-defund-teachers-unions-163188 Obama Administration Spent Billions to Fix Failing Schools, and It Didn’t Work https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/obama-administration-spent-billions-to-fix-failing-schools-and-it-didnt-work/2017/01/19/6d24ac1a-de6d-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html  Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force Recommendations https://joebiden.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/UNITY-TASK-FORCE-RECOMMENDATIONS.pdf  Trump Administration Announces $85 Million to Support Disadvantaged Students in Nation’s Capital Attending K-12 Private Schools of Their Choice https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/trump-administration-announces-85-million-support-disadvantaged-students-nations-capital-attending-k-12-private-schools-their-choice  Student Loan Borrowers Would See a Big Chunk of Debt Disappear Under Biden Plan https://www.wsj.com/articles/student-loan-borrowers-would-see-a-big-chunk-of-debt-disappear-under-biden-plan-11598007601 ------ Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed.

You can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a great weekend. We are continuing our election series today. Today we are going to focus on education. Such an important issue.

If you care about justice, if you care about equity, if you care about the least of these, the most vulnerable in our population. if you care about children, then you should care about the issue of education and specifically school choice. And so that's what we're going to talk about in the last half of this episode and the first half of this episode. I have a little bit of a rant because I've been spending some time on Christian women Instagram. Honestly, not a place where I spend a whole lot of time. It actually has served as the inspiration in a lot of ways of my book. You're not enough. And that's okay. because there are some statements being made there in relation to the election about the possibility of being pro-life and voting for Joe Biden.

And not only that, the necessity of voting for Joe Biden if you are pro-life. First of all, I would like a lot of these women who are making those statements to go back and listen to Last Wednesday's podcast. The number of women that I am seeing say, look at this chart that says abortions decrease more under Democratic. presidents and they do under Republican presidents, like not taking the next step to think, okay, correlation doesn't prove causation. And I've actually got to point to specific policies that prove that Democratic presidents actually lower abortions. We totally busted that myth last Wednesday. It is not true. You've got to look at who controlled Congress, who controlled the state legislatures. The fact is Republicans dominated those legislative bodies mostly during Clinton, but especially

during Barack Obama when abortion decreased the most. I won't even say that that's what caused the abortion decrease because again, correlation does it prove causation really hard to prove that causal relationship? But that is much more likely than any policy that a president put forward. You understand that legislative bodies are the ones that create laws and policies. Presidents very rarely do that. And very rarely do they actually have an effect on the abortion rate. And of course, the pro-life efforts, which have undoubtedly made a difference in the decision-making of women who are considering abortion. So we can't also discount the possible potential and I think very probable impact that pro-life efforts have made.

Instead, you have these women who are saying, no, no, no, look at this chart. Correlation does prove causation, even though I'm not pointing to any policies whatsoever. this decreases abortion, not to mention the fact, by the way, that that's a terrible argument. Like if something is a moral atrocity, which killing a baby and sucking him or her out of the womb is a moral atrocity, then you don't just try to decrease it. Like any other moral atrocity, rape, murder assault, you make it illegal. Yes, of course, you want to make it less likely because you want to save more people, you want to have fewer victims, but you also make it illegal.

You don't just say, okay, let me create some policies to make it less likely for someone to go out and rape. But if they do rape, oh, well, sorry, victim. That's just not what we say to any other victim. Why do we change our standards for legality and morality for babies inside the womb? For those most defenseless victims, it just doesn't make sense, especially from a Christian ethic. And so the people who are saying, oh, you know, I'm pro all life because I believe in all of these liberal social welfare programs that supposedly have the intention to help people. That makes me pro all life.

I say the minimum qualification, the minimum qualification for being considered pro life is being against the legalization of baby murder. And I don't care whether or not you want to call the baby a fetus. It is just as accurate to call a fetus a baby in the same way. It's just as accurate to call an infant a child. Being a fetus is a stage of being a baby. Being a zygote is a stage of being a baby. baby in the same way being an infant is a stage of being a child. And so an abortion. And we talked about

what exactly abortion entails without hyperbole on Wednesday. You can go back and listen to that. We've done that many times on this podcast. It is baby murder. So the minimum qualification for considering yourself pro all life is to be against the legalization of baby murder. So no, all these people, especially liberals. Like I'm not just talking about the Christians who are voting. voting for a Democrat for the first time, although I am addressing them as well, but especially for the people who have been pro the legalization of baby murder for a long time saying, well, no, this is what it means to be pro life. You have to fund all my pet social programs to really be pro life. Look, people who are for the legalization of baby murder do not have the moral

authority to say what is pro life and what is not pro life. And when we are talking about misnomer's here in the abortion debate. When we are talking about, oh, what does pro-life really mean? We should really be talking about what pro-choice really means. So if pro-choicers think that they have the moral authority to tell a pro-lifer what it really means to be pro-life, while they are advocating for the murder of unborn children, I, a pro-lifer, will tell you what it should really mean to be pro-choice. If you are really pro-choice, then you are pro-educated choice. You want a woman to have all the resources, all the options laid in front of her and all the education in the world about what her choices are and what abortion is and what the baby inside of

her looks like and sounds like before she makes such a monumental decision. Do you not? But that's not what happens at Planned Parenthood. First of all, you can't get an ultrasound at Planned Parenthood unless you are planning, unless you are planning to have an abortion. You have a They don't treat you with prenatal services at Planned Parenthood. That is a very big myth. They want you to abort your baby because that is how they make money. And so they're really not interested in showing you your options. And they're certainly not interested in you seeing your baby on the ultrasound and then deciding not to have an abortion.

So they either don't show you the baby at all or if they do. I've heard several stories like this of women who went to Planned Parenthood because they thought that was the only way they could get free care. They were showed a picture of their child because they requested it on the ultrasound and it just looked like a blob. And then they went over to the pro-life pregnancy center and they got an ultrasound and the image was sharp and they were actually able to see arms and legs. And it actually looked like a baby. Of course, we know that no matter what the baby looks like, it's just as much of a life as any other stage in pregnancy. But Planned Parenthood is built on manipulation. It is built on deceit.

It is built on lies. They don't want the woman to know what exactly their baby looks like. They don't want to know them to know about fetal development. They don't want them to know about gestation. They don't want them to hear the heartbeat. They don't want them to know their other options. They don't want them to know exactly what abortion entails and how a baby actually dies in an abortion because they believe this kind of emotional

manipulation encourages women to get an abortion. If you are really pro-choice, if you really believe, leave in choices, you should be pro-educated choice. You, pro-choice person, should be fighting for women to be shown in ultrasound before she gets in an abortion, to get all the information that she needs on fetal development and what an abortion actually entails, on adoption, on keeping their baby. Planned Parenthood, if they're really pro-choice, they should be giving you all the resources in the world to show you the possibilities in keeping your baby and all the resources that can help you. I mean, there are pro-life pregnancy centers that have tried to build relationships with Planned

parenthoods in the neighborhood saying, hey, if you have a client who wants to keep their baby, please send them our way because look, we've got parenting classes. We've got education courses. We can help them get an apartment if they need an apartment. If they're an immigrant, we can help them go through the immigration process. If they need Medicaid, we can help them get that. We can try to get them into a refuge or a shelter. If they're in an abuse situation, we can get them baby supplies.

And that's what pro-life pregnancy centers do. Planned Parenthoods do not do those things. And Planned Parenthoods refuse to refer their clients, even the ones who want to keep their baby, to these pro-life pregnancy centers. That's not pro-choice. That's pro-abortion. So if we're going to talk about misnomer's here and the abortion debate, it's not pro-life. That's the misnomer.

It's pro-choice. If you're pro-choice, be pro-educated choice. Be pro-options. But unfortunately, that is not what. the majority of the pro-life movement is. And yet there are these Christian women who I'm seeing saying, oh, no, no, no, I'm going to be a part of the party that is funded, that is powered by this deceitful pro-abortion movement, pro-abortion lobby, baby murder mill,

plan parenthood because they are pro all life. And it's just not true. It's not true. And I'm just afraid that they're making this decision based on Trump's personality, his personal failures and the 90% of coverage in the media that is negative towards Trump, even though not everything that he has done is bad and he's done a lot of good things and said a lot of good things. You don't see that covered.

People are being manipulated by the deceitful media. They are caught up in Trump's very real flaws, which he does have very real flaws. I agree with you on that. I don't think that he is Christ-like. I certainly don't see him as my savior. I'm not looking to him as my godly example or my pastor or my Valentine, someone that I have to be in love with. I'm looking at policies. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. on the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles,

faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch the Steve Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. I am looking at the policies that I know are going to shape the future for my kids and my grandkids and for the country.

I don't care about Trump's personality. And yet I think these people who are saying, no, I'm voting Democrat because I'm pro all life. They're really voting Democrat because they think Trump is a meany and that Joe Biden is a nice guy. And that's not a good enough reason. It's not a good enough reason. If you agree with Joe Biden's policies, if you are for overturning, the high. Amendment so that abortions are funded with our federal tax dollars and codifying row so that states can no longer restrict abortion. And if you are for more funding for Planned Parenthood, which is responsible for

at least 300,000 murders of unborn babies every year, then sure, you should vote for Joe Biden. If you agree with those policies, if you are for repealing Donald Trump's tax cuts, which Joe Biden has promised to do, which will raise taxes for the middle class, no matter what he says, you should vote for Joe Biden. If you are for legislation like the Equality Act, which strips conscience rights for doctors who don't want to perform abortions or gender reassignment surgery, which means they will be forced to do so, which will require religious schools to allow biological boys to identify as girls into girls' locker rooms and on girls' athletic teams, then you should vote for Joe Biden. I will link that article. I will link that legislation in the description so you can read it for yourself. If you are for the $2 trillion

Green New Deal, if you are for a mandatory gun buybacks and making it more difficult to buy a gun, if you are for eliminating single family housing zones, if you are for a universal mask mandate and mandatory contact tracing and more lockdowns, if you are for expanding the Supreme Court to 13 seats

and filling in the extra four with liberal justices so the Constitution does not matter anymore, if you are for decriminalizing illegal border crossings, if you are for the party supported by Black Lives Matter, the violent communist organization who explicitly wants to abolish police and prisons and disrupt the nuclear family according to their website, if you are against school choice in charter schools,

then you should vote Joe Biden, absolutely. If those are policies that you agree with, then vote Joe Biden. If you are for his proposals, if you are for his policies, if you are for the Democratic platform, then you should absolutely vote for them. If you have thought through the implications of the policies and what they mean for you, your family, and your community as well as for vulnerable populations if you have looked at the results, not just the intentions, but the results of democratic policies and have deemed them good and beneficial and helpful, then yes, please vote for Joe Biden. Please, I think that you should be honest, of course, about what you believe in and what you think is good and what you want to

vote for. But if you haven't, if you are voting for Joe Biden because he seems nice and because Donald Trump seems kind of mean because he's kind of rude or bombastic. If you just don't like how he interrupted at the debate, if you are concerned about his past philandering or his personality or his tone or even his more serious and very real moral flaws like pride and defensiveness, understand that you need to expand your perspective. That doesn't mean that you can't care about those things or criticize those things. but, and I mean this lovingly, in this case, you are being short-sighted. Trump's personality, like I said, will not shape your life, your kids, or your grandkids'

futures. Even his personal flaws will not shape your kids' lives or your grandkids' lives. They just won't. That doesn't mean that you have to condone Trump's behavior at every turn. It doesn't mean that you have to brush aside his sins or brush them under the rug. It doesn't mean that you have to pretend. Like he is Christ-likeer, that he is a representation of Christianity. doesn't mean you can't criticize him. I do it all the time. As Christians, no politician is our

savior. We know that. So we look at the policies that actually have an effect on our lives and lives of others. And again, you have to look at the results, not just the intentions of these policies. But if you have only been reading left-wing articles and social media trends about what Biden believes or you're just turned off by Trump's tweets, then you are misinformed or uninformed about this particular decision if that's the only indicator of how you are going to vote if that's the only basis that you have for your decision what will you say Christian who says that you are being pro-law life by voting for Joe Biden what will you say when they do exactly what they say that they want to do overturn the Hyde Amendment and your federal tax dollars are funding abortion or when

abortion is codified through nine months or when they defund the police so that sex traffickers can no longer get caught in the single mom whose home was broken into has no one to call. Or when they buy back her guns, or when taxes are raised to the point of people feeling like they can't afford to give to the church or charity anymore. Or when they continue, their 60-year war, Democrats on poverty and their results continue to be more homelessness like we see in every city where Democrats have been in charge for decades. Or when your daughter is playing soccer against boys and she's sharing locker rooms with boys or when your tax dollars are funding gender reassignment surgery or when pastor you are facing fines or jail time for preaching that marriage is between a man

and a woman because they call that illegal conversion therapy, what are you going to do? Or when the Equality Act says you can't refuse to hire a transgender person to pastor your church or teach your kids at a Christian school. Or when parents' kids are being taken away from them because they won't affirm their newfound gender identity when they're 11 years old. Or when your friends and poor communities are told their school voucher program is coming to an end and they have to send their kid back to the public school in their area even though that was where they were getting bullied. This isn't hyperbole. These are all the very real consequences of the policies the Democrats have either implemented

or are proposing right now. Will you still say that you've made a good decision? Will you still say that you're being pro all life? We have the courage to criticize the administration that you voted into office that you insisted was caring for the least of these. I keep hearing these women say that Democrats are the ones that are advancing the cause of life, that are advancing the cause of compassion that better represent our faith. Please go back and listen to last Wednesday's episode. The idea, again, that Democrat presidencies or policies are promoting life and are decreasing abortion. just is not backed by fact. You say the Democrats care for the poor, not any more than Republicans do.

Again, not by results. In fact, many of their policies are counterproductive through welfare programs that make it more lucrative to be jobless than to be employed. That's not biblical, guys. That's not biblical. The Lord created work before the fall. Work is not a necessary evil. the necessity to be productive, to contribute to the world around you, whether or not that is actually earning a salary, you can be a stay-at-home mom and be productive and be a worker in that sense. But to especially to enable able-bodied, able-minded people into unemployment by making it more lucrative to stay unemployed than to seek work. It's sinful.

It's wrong. It makes the mind and the body atrophy. It's bad for society. in L.A. where more than 80,000 homeless people roam the streets, live in squalor, are addicted to drugs and defecate on the sidewalk. Is L.A. caring for their poor by making it more comfortable to be homeless? Are they going to be able to care for their poor when all the people move out of L.A. and move out of California and they don't have the tax money to fund these programs anymore? What about Baltimore or Austin or San Francisco, New York, Detroit? It's the same story. You're not

caring for the poor by defunding the police or prisons. You're not caring for the poor through unlimited and unconditional welfare. I do believe that there is a place for social safety nets. I'm not saying the government doesn't have a place in that at all, but unconditional unlimited welfare is enabling it's unhealthy and it's unkind. You're not caring for the poor by eliminating school choice, which is what we're going to talk about in a few minutes. Simply voting for more social programs and bigger government and higher taxes does not mean you're more compassionate, or more pro all life than the person who believes that the government should be limited and small. Taxes should be lower.

Social programs should be limited. Welfare should be conditional. And that individuals, churches, and charities should bear the brunt of responsibility for our neighbor. And people scoff at that. As if churches aren't doing a good job, they are. We do it so well, especially in America, especially in red states, as we talked about and cited in last Wednesday's episode. additionally, and let me just go through some of these points because I keep hearing, well, if you are really pro-life, you have to be anti-death penalty, you have to be anti-gun, you have to be pro-open borders. Let me break some of those misconceptions down. You can be pro-life and be for the death penalty. You don't have to be for the death penalty. Compassionate and reasonable people can absolutely disagree on that, but the Bible certainly does not rule out the death penalty, but actually prescribes it for certain crimes. like murder. So you can't say that it's entirely unbiblical. You can still oppose it. If you believe that the

risk is too high for a not guilty person to be executed, sure, I think that there's a good argument there. But issuing the death penalty to a man who tortured, repeatedly raped, and then murdered a three-year-old, is not the same as being against the death penalty for a defenseless unborn child. It's not the same thing. and drawing a moral equivalence between those two things. Executing a murderer and executing a defenseless baby in the womb is utterly insane. It doesn't make any sense. And the death penalty, according to God in the Old Testament, actually shows honor to the victim. It shows the value of the life of the person who was murdered.

It shows that God cares about life so much and hates murder so much, which is the killing of an innocent person. and it's not just any kind of killing. So much that he said the only just punishment is the death of the murder. So does that make God not pro-life? It's God in the Old Testament, not pro-life, according to the people who are defining pro-life today. Again, I think that there are some good arguments for opposing the death penalty.

And if you do oppose it, that's totally fine with me. But if you call someone who is for the death penalty and against abortion, not pro-life, then you're calling God not pro-life. and I'm not really sure that you want to go there if you're a Christian. Banning guns does not make you pro-life. Second Amendment limitations disproportionately affect poor people in high-crime neighborhoods who can't afford to go through the hoops of owning a gun in areas where it's difficult to do so. Rich people will be able to get their guns.

Joe Biden's proposal simply makes it hard for regular income and poor people to get guns so much so that actually a writer at the Washington Post, a far-left writer, opposes his plan. I believe being for safe, responsible gun ownership is extremely pro-life. It shows that you care about innocent life so much that you believe that it should be defended. Restricting the Second Amendment is not going to stop the murders in Chicago, in New York, in D.C., which have the strictest gun laws in the nation, by the way. It's not going to stop mass shooters, unfortunately, tragically. Those people obviously do not. care about the law and they will find a way to carry out their attacks. Restricting the Second

Amendment only makes law-abiding citizens, especially poor citizens, more vulnerable. So that does not make you pro-life. We can disagree on gun restrictions. Absolutely. I'm not saying that you're not pro-life if you are for some kind of gun control, but you're also not pro-life if you are against gun control and you are for the Second Amendment and safe, responsible gun ownership. Latching on to the liberal definition of so-called racial justice does not equal pro-life. Show me the results of Democrats' form of racial justice. All of these riots are going on in cities and states run by Democrats, saying that America is systemically racist, which in 2020, as we have dissected and heard from guests so many times

on this podcast, is not backed up by fact because it's looking at disparities, claiming discrimination, without any actual investigation into the facts. and the reasons for some of those disparities. So claiming America is racist, systemically racist in 2020, as Joe Biden has done and apparently did not fix when he was in office for 47 years and was vice president for eight years

does not mean that you are championing racial justice, pointing to disparities between groups and claiming the cause is unconditionally always an undoubtedly discrimination, is not racial justice, and it's not pro all life. believing in open borders does not mean pro all life. Obama administration, they are the ones that built the cages for the kids at the border.

I did an episode on immigration where I said, I agree that family separation is wrong. I understand there's also complication there with some of the so-called parents bringing kids are actually drug traffickers and human traffickers. And so there has to be some policy to be able to protect those kids. But at the same time, taking babies away from their real mothers is a punishment. for crossing the border illegally, I think is immoral and wrong. And I absolutely agree. We should treat the foreigner with care that is biblical. I absolutely agree with you. But that does not mean that we should be borderless. We have to protect the sovereignty of our nation if we have compassion

and care for the people inside our nation. We have to have strong borders if we want to keep the people safe inside our country because it's a national security threat. Borders are absolutely biblical. We've talked about that. Go listen to the immigration episode. If you want to be truly anti-racist, if you want to be truly pro-immigrant, if you want to be pro-love, pro-neighbor, pro-vulnerable, then go out and love your neighbor as yourself. You don't have to vote for Joe Biden to do that. I mean, think about, for example, the black unemployment rate was the lowest that it's ever

been, or at least that it's been in several decades, under Donald Trump. I mean, why wouldn't we want that for them? Joe Biden just said that the reason that he's able to do what he's doing is because there's black women stocking grocery shelves. He continually says these kind of patronizing things about black people and the media never makes it into a moment, never makes it into a thing. But when Trump either doesn't say something exactly correct or he trips up on his words or he says something stupid. It becomes a huge moment that shows that he's a white supremacist. But when Joe Biden says, oh, yeah, black people are the ones that are stocking shelves, black women, it's just brushed under the rug. It's just weird Uncle Joe. I mean, he's the same guy who said in 2007 that Barack Obama

was the first clean, articulate, mainstream, African-American. And he also said around that time, I think it was a couple years later that you can't actually go into a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts you have a slight Indian accent. He said more recently that if you don't vote for him, you ain't black. He said unlike the Hispanic community, the black people, they all kind of think the same way. That's paraphrase. You can go listen to the video yourself. He authored the 1994 crime bill, which, you know, I don't agree with all of the dissenters

or all of the leftist activists that disagree with this bill for certain reasons. But the fact of the matter is is that it sent thousands and thousands of, of black men and women to prison under his bill. And yet this is all brushed under the rug. I mean, he eulogized a former KKK leader. That's real. That happened. And some people are saying, well, you know, the guy came out later and said that he regretted

joining the KKK. Do you think we would give the same benefit of the doubt to Donald Trump if he did the same thing? No. So every single flaw, especially when it comes to racism that we ascribe to Donald Trump, we can just as easily find a way to ascribe to Joe. Biden. So at the end of the day, you got to look at the policies. Joe Biden has also been accused of sexual assault, you'll remember, but the media doesn't care about Tara Reid. They don't care about her.

All the flaws that you see in Trump, you've also gotten Joe Biden. So you have to move beyond their personalities and you have to actually look at their policies. We hear that if you are really pro-life, that you will fund education. And this is what's going to segue us into the next part of the podcast. Education funding guys has increased drastically since the 1960s. The problem is the majority of the funding goes to administrative bloat not to teachers and students. As teachers unions get more money, more members, more power, and as public schools get more funding, that is not translate into better outcomes for students. And that's what I want to talk about now. I want to get into some of the nitty-gritty of our education system and why the liberal approach to education is not.

good. It's actually counterproductive. And so the argument that being pro all life means being a liberal on education, it's just not true. It doesn't even make any sense. It sounds good. I mean, all of these things sound good. That if you're pro all life, you are pro all of these liberal policies. Yeah, if you don't think past them what these policies actually are and what they mean and what Joe Biden and Democrats have actually done and proposed, then sure, they all sound good. But I believe we're smarter than that, right? Like, I believe that we can think a little bit harder than that. Again, if you agree with Joe Biden's policies, by all means, vote for him. But if you just think Trump is a meanie, that's not a good reason.

It's not a good reason. So let's dig in to education and what it looks like here. So first I want to talk about teachers unions. You guys have heard me talk about teachers unions a lot. I'm going to link an interview that I did with Corey DeAngelis, who is an expert on school choice that I did several weeks ago. I'll link that. and you should definitely go listen to that and follow him too because he is a wealth of information

about this subject. But teachers unions are public unions. They are funded by our tax dollars. Our tax dollars fund the public schools and the salaries of the public school teachers, these public school teachers, they pay their member dues to the public union in exchange for theoretically lobbying for better pay for teachers, protections from lawsuits, etc. The reason why I, and many conservatives believe that public unions are unethical and should not exist, including police unions, by the way, is because the tax money that is funding the teachers' unions typically goes into supporting whatever politicians they want in power. And nine times out of ten, those are Democratic politicians.

But I would say whether or not they were supporting Republican or Democratic politicians, I don't think it's ethical for our tax dollars to go towards campaigns that many of us might not actually support. Not only that, teachers unions lobby for issues and policies that a lot of people don't agree with, and they often protect bad and incompetent and sometimes even criminal teachers. So they are working against, in so many cases, the well-being of the schools and the students. Teachers unions may work on behalf of the teachers, but it is rare. They exist like all bureaucracies for their own power.

They take the money that they're given and they use it. to bolster their own influence. They're a big reason why, although, like I said, funding for a public school has increased over the past several decades. Teachers' salaries are stagnant. Teachers are still having to buy their own supplies. Outcomes for students have it really improved for the most part. But it's not just teachers' unions.

It's the public education system in general who spends its money on administrative bloat and not the teachers or the students. Democrats continually say that we need to fund education, that the reason why teachers, teachers are having to buy their own supplies is because we and especially Republicans refuse to fund education. But that's just not true. The problem is not that there's not enough money. It's that it's not being spent efficiently or effectively.

So giving more money to an organization, to a group, to a system that is not spending money wisely is not going to solve any problems. So that's the summary of what I'm about to say. Let's get into some of the details. Here are some examples of the partisanship. of teachers unions in the public education system and how they work against the well-being of their students. We saw this most of the beginning of the school year when teachers unions were pushing for the schools to stay closed, despite the fact that top medical and scientific professionals in the

country and around the world were saying that the pros outweigh the cons when it comes to kids being in school. I mean, kids have to stay on track educationally in many cases. Unfortunately, they need welfare checks. They need the food that is provided for them. They need socialists. They need structure. Special needs kids need that close attention. They need that care. They need those lessons and that consistency. And the risk to these kids when it comes to coronavirus is very low and for many of the teachers. However, the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers union in the country, pushed hard for schools to stay closed in most places. Randy Weingarten, the head of the unions had nothing was off the table. She said, not at advocacy or protest negotiations, grievances, or lawsuits, or if necessary, and authorized by a local union as a last resort, safety strike. So as kids are needing to go back to school with special needs kids, kids who need welfare checks, kids who are relying on that middle of the day meal in order to get through their day without hunger pangs, the teachers union and the teachers say that they

might go on strike. There was a Florida Teachers Union, Florida Education Association sued they sued the state for ordering schools to reopen in the fall. In D.C., teachers unions lined up fake body bags outside school system offices that were supposed to represent their corpses after being forced to teach in the fall and be exposed to the coronavirus. Arizona teachers were protesting going back to school with what they were calling six days of action. One of the days was spent writing their obituaries to send to the governor, another was spent marching with Black Lives Matter. Now think about that.

Think about that. If they're worried about the coronavirus because they're going to be in school, do you really think they would go out and protest with Black Lives Matter? What? You're going to catch the coronavirus in school, but not when you're out in the streets. It makes a lot of sense. In L.A. Teachers Union, United Teachers, Los Angeles, said teachers will only go back to school if local authorities will meet their demands,

which include defunding the police. That has a lot to do with students' welfare, right? Medicare for all, a moratorium on charter schools, and more financial support for illegal immigrants. If teachers are really worried about the education for their students, if these teachers unions really cared about the safety of their teachers, would they be encouraging them to organize and to protest and to go out like this? No, of course not. I think that it's safe to say that this was not about safety from the coronavirus. If we are to take national coronavirus reporting at face value, the death rate for the virus is about 0.3% and that includes

elderly people and people with underlying conditions. For people without these things, it is actually much lower than that. According to a commentary in the peer-reviewed medical journal Pediatrics, international studies show that it is exceedingly rare for a child to transmit the virus to an adult. They said serious considerations should be paid towards strategies that allow schools to remain open, even during periods of COVID-19 spread. Even in B.B.E., see reported that the pediatricians they consulted will definitely, we're definitely going to send their kids back to school in the fall because clearly based on all available evidence, the benefits to kids going back to school were greater than the risks.

But the teachers unions don't care. It doesn't matter. They want their left-wing policy prescriptions to move forward and they are going to take away their presence from the public schools to get that. Look at this New York Times headline. teachers are wary of returning to class and online instruction too. The article goes on to say unions are threatening to strike if classrooms reopen, but are also pushing to limit live remote teaching.

This was back a couple months ago. Their demands will shape pandemic education. And now you've got a lot of teachers saying publicly that the reason that they're worried about online instruction is that the parents might actually hear some of the things that they're teaching their kids about gender ideology and racism. So, I mean, can you really say that the public education system, especially the teachers unions that are protecting some of these awful teachers, can you really say that they are looking out for the best interest of your kids? Not only do teachers unions not want teachers to have to teach in person, but they also don't want them to have to teach remotely, but they still want to get paid. They still want your tax dollars. And in case you forgot, those tax dollars are then going to fund politicians, many of whom you don't agree with and are funding an initiative. and policies and policy proposals that work directly against your own interests.

And for many teachers' unions, the coronavirus crisis was simply a bargaining tool. It's just a way for them to get what they want. They thought it was going to be bad press for Republican officials. It was going to be this whole PR campaign against Donald Trump, and that is what they used it for at the expense of kids who need to be in school. Teachers unions fight really hard to get as many teachers as possible to join them, insisting that a non-union teacher is missing out on the manifold benefits and protections that the union provides. And this is somewhat true for some teachers. The negative effects of teachers' unions

outweigh the positive ones. According to the National Center for Education Studies, since 1960, the United States has increased spending per student by 280 percent. And yes, that is adjusting for inflation, has increased spending per student. Now, per student, student just means that's how they're doing the math. That doesn't mean that that money is actually going towards the student. So that's just how much money is actually increased in going to the public schools. So as an aside, the common quip that America has been defunding education for years is just not true.

It's been up by 280% per student. Our steady increase in education funding has not translated into better outcomes for students or higher salaries for teachers. Knessaw State University professor Ben Scafidi found in a study that while real spending per student increased by 27 percent from 1992 to 2014, teacher salaries dropped by 2%. As education experts, Lindsay Burke and Corey DeAngelis note in an article for Yahoo News, the money, quote, largely goes towards hiring more support staff in overall administrative bloat. Adding employees to the system does not benefit.

students, but it does benefit the unions. A larger membership means increased dues revenue and political power. This political power is wielded in the ways that you are seeing right now, holding the education of students hostage until their left wing, often non-educated, non-education related demands are met. Further evidence that teachers' unions are typically not looking out for the best interest of students or teachers is union's insistence upon protecting incompetent and even corrupt, teachers. According to Christian Barnard, at the Reason Foundation, quote, more than 60% of teachers in the United States work in districts that are under a union contract that typically contain seniority rules that make firing ineffective teachers almost impossible. Barnard also writes, a 2011 paper from the

National Bureau of Economic Research found that replacing a highly ineffective teacher with even an average teacher raises each student's lifetime income by $52,000, or roughly $1.4 million for a single classroom. You want to talk about systemic injustice. Teachers unions and how they work against the well-being of students, even just in this one aspect of protecting bad teachers, that is a systemic injustice that I guarantee you affects poor, vulnerable, immigrant, and black and brown communities more than any other community. You want to talk about systemic racism, systemic injustice, that maybe you should be looking here.

That means that protecting bad teachers, as teachers unions do, has lifelong negative effects on kids' futures. You may have heard of rubber rooms where public school teachers who have been accused of misconduct go while still being paid their full tax funder funded salary while they are waiting reassignment. This is thanks to teachers,

unions. Listen to this from Lindsay Burke and Corey DeAngelis. Quote, union opposition to teacher accountability takes many forms. Just last year, the two teachers unions in Rhode Island fought against a bill that would have criminalized sex between school employees and students. Did you hear that? Teachers unions in Rhode Island fought against a bill that would have criminalized sexual activity between teachers or between school employees and students. And New York City. New York City warehouses teachers accused of misconduct while still paying them. One teacher in Queens accused of sexually abusing female students has been exiled in a rubber room for 20 years.

During that time, he has collected $1.7 million in taxpayer-funded salary while retaining full benefits. Wow. Teachers unions are against accountability for bad teachers. They are against competition, too. That is why they fight so hard against school choice. And because they are empowered by Democrats and Democrats are partly funded by teachers' unions, that is why Democrats also fight against school choice.

School choice is an umbrella term for programs that allow parents of public school students to place their child in a different school not in their school district or a charter school, which is an independently run publicly funded school. Right now, public school students are forced to. to go to the public school in their district. And if there are no school choice programs in their state, they have to stay there, even if they are not receiving the education or the treatment or the attention that they need, even if they have incompetent teachers, even if they're being bullied, even if they have special needs. And this school doesn't have the special needs program that

this child needs. It doesn't matter. If you don't have school choice, you can't afford to move. You are forced and you can't afford to do homeschool. You are forced to go to the school in that district, matter how bad it might be for your child. School choice advocates simply believe that taxpayer dollars should follow the child instead of just going to the school in their district, which would mean that parents have the power, they have the freedom, they have the funding to do what is best for their child and their child's education. This not only benefits the child who can now receive an education experience that works for them, which we already said a few minutes ago, actually has an effect on their lifetime income, their ability to make money,

on in life, it also benefits the other public schools who are now incentivized to ensure their teachers are performing well and that they're allocating their dollars efficiently so that when given the choice, parents will choose to keep their kids at their originally assigned school. You hear all the time, the Smith, that school choice hurts public schools because you're taking kids away from that school. Well, you shouldn't be, they wouldn't be taking kids away from that school if the money that that school was getting was actually used wisely and well. It's a basic economic principle that competition increases equality. This is the basis of capitalism. As it is right now with kids being forced to go to the school in their school district,

there is no incentive for these schools to use their money efficiently or to hold bad teachers accountable. And to anyone who says, again, that school choice hurts the students and teachers who remain at the schools that families are leaving, that's just not true. As we've already established, we have been increasing funding for public education for years. And what's clear is that no amount of money can produce better outcomes for students if the money is not spent wisely. A 2017 article in the Washington Post says this, the Obama administration pumped $7 billion into the nation's worst performing public schools and it yielded no positive results.

None. $7 billion during the Obama administration to the nation's worst performing schools yielded no results. The article says this, quote, test scores, graduation rates and college enrollment were no different in schools that received money through the school improvement grants program, the largest federal investment ever targeted to failing schools than in schools that did not. That goes to show that we do not have a funding issue. We have an accountability issue, a competition issue, a quality. of education issue that is being stifled by teachers unions who care more about partisan power

than they do their teachers or their students. The reason why there is still public school teachers buying their own supplies for classrooms is because education dollars are not being well spent. And school districts are being weighed down by the bureaucracy of teachers unions. All of this is at the expense of the students and not just any kind of student, but in particular, poor students, middle and upper class families already have school choice. It's called having money to send your kid to a private school. But if you don't have that money, you don't have school choice unless you have a school choice program that it actually gives you the taxpayer-funded ability to have a voucher or some kind of school choice option to send your kid to a charter school or another school of your choice. The outcomes for kids in charter schools are on average, overwhelmingly more positive than for kids in public school.

The same goes for the average kid who attends private school or a homeschool. If we want public schools to be able to compete with other kinds of schooling, we need higher quality schools, which means we need more efficient spending of education funding and a refusal to shield bad teachers from getting fired, which would be incentivized by the competition created by school choice. despite that, despite all of that, Joe Biden with his unity task force that includes Bernie Sanders. So any of you who think that Joe Biden is going to be this moderate guy, he's not. First of all, he's not a moderate. He never has been a moderate.

But he's obviously not going to be a moderate because Bernie Sanders is part of his policymaking and policy proposals. And Bernie Sanders said that he is going to be the most left wing president. this is going to be the most left-wing presidency since FDR. Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed socialist is saying that. So Joe Biden is not a moderate. Bernie Sanders, part of his Unity Task Force, they put together this education plan that I will link to on their website. It says this, quote, Democrats oppose private school vouchers

and other policies that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from the public school system. So that is how they are. are, uh, that's how they are using a particular kind of rhetoric to say that they are against school choice because it's quote, diverting taxpayer funded resources away from the public school system. Well, we've already busted that myth. We've already busted it. It's not about not having funds at these public schools and public schools would actually be helped by the competition. So despite all of the evidence showing how great school choice is for low income students, which happen to be disproportionately black and brown students, Joe Biden and his union,

Task Force with Bernie Sanders is explicitly against school choice, against private school vouchers and other policies that promote school choice. And Democrats don't like school choice. They just don't, they stand against school choice, even though it is proven to help these vulnerable communities that they say that they're fighting for the holistically pro-life party. Because teachers unions don't like school choice, teachers unions want more power. They don't want parents to be empowered. They want the power. They want the money. They don't want accountability. They're predominantly these teachers unions made up of liberal bureaucrats that use our tax dollars to support democratic politicians and their policies. And if you don't like the idea of your tax money supporting

politicians that you disagree with left or right, then you should be opposed to the idea not just of teachers unions, but all public sector unions, which all generally function in the same way. Unfortunately, teachers unions will continue to work against the interest of students and the thousands of wonderful, hardworking public school teachers as long as they are propped up by the mostly Democratic politicians who rely on them for support. If you are saying that education is something that matters to you, and that is a pro-all-life issue, Republicans have been the ones. Republicans aren't great on everything. They're not as pro-life as I want them to be. They are not at the forefront of the culture war as I want them to be.

is small government, low taxes, I want them to be. But Republicans have been really good in a lot of cases on school choice, especially President Trump. So this is a headline Trump administration announces $85 million to support disadvantaged students in nation's capital attending K through 12 private schools of their choice. So this is a direct opposition to Joe Biden's plan, which he wants to limit the expansion of charter schools in D.C. specifically. And Trump is countering that. U.S. Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, announced today that the Department of Education will award at least $85 million over the next five years for disadvantaged students from families with lower incomes in Washington, D.C. to attend private schools of their choice. So you see the

difference here. This is money to families, to empower parents to make the best choice for their kids, which conservatives, the conservative world deal, should be the Christian world deal. believes that parents have the authority and have the stewardship over their kids, not the state, not the public school, that parents should have the power and can have the funds to send their kids where they think is best best rather than the public school system who really doesn't care, does not care about your kids or the well-being of your kids. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program is the only federal-funded school choice program in the the program was restored by President Donald J. Trump in May 2017, following a cruel decision by the Obama administration to cut its funding. Again, the Obama administration does not want to empower individual families to make the choices that are best for the students. He just wants to pump $7 billion into the school system and say, see, the government did it and we gave more power to the public school system. Well, how did that work out? It didn't work out at all. There were zero improvements whatsoever after Obama pumped that $7 billion taxed.

dollar, those seven billion taxpayer dollars into the public school system. Now, when it comes to higher education, Joe Biden, according to the Wall Street Journal, would cancel all or some debt for many public college graduates, public sector workers, and victims of fraudulent practices by some for-profit schools. For remaining debt, the Democratic presidential nominee would slash monthly payments. And so, you know, Bernie Sanders was a big free college advocate. So is AOC. I think Ilhan Omar is too. So Joe Biden is kind of giving that plan, but not as extreme as Bernie Sanders. Just a reminder, nothing is free. And so by canceling the debt or, quote, forgiving the debt of people who have gone into debt going to college, you are charging the people.

You are forcing the people who did pay off their debt or who saved for college or who chose not to go to college and saved their money. You are forcing them to pay for people who chose to go to college and chose to take on that debt. debt. I just don't see that as a justice. I understand that, you know, you went into debt. You might have gone into debt for a good reason if you went to college. Maybe it was worth it for you to get your degree or to get your post-grad degree until you took on that debt. Maybe you were a victim of fraudulent practices, which of course is terrible of whoever manipulated you into that. Maybe you were young and you made a bad decision, but it is still not the responsibility of other people to pay for the debt that you chose to take on. It is not your responsibility as someone who paid off your

debt or someone who chose not to go to college and save your money or someone who saved for your kids to go to college or for you to go to college to then pay for the debt that other people decided to take on. That's not a justice. Donald Trump, according to WSJ, hasn't endorsed wide-scale student debt forgiveness. His administration has previously urged Congress to allow all borrowers to make monthly payments equivalent to 12.5% of their income for up to 15 years. for undergraduate debt and 30 years for graduate school debt and then have any balances canceled. Again, like, I don't understand really how the cancellation happens. These colleges are going to get paid. The Biden campaign said it hasn't calculated the cost of his plan or decided how to pay for it.

That's always good. The Biden campaign said it hasn't calculated the cost of his plan or decided how to pay for it. So how are all of these debts going to be forgiven by people who chose to stake on the debts to go to college and grad school? We don't know. We just know that the American people are going to bear the cost of it. Mr. Biden has separately called for tax increases of about $4 trillion over a decade through levies on corporations in high-income households. It's not just going to be high-income households to pay for a variety of programs. Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of Savingforcollege.com, which advises families on financial aid, says Mr. Biden's proposed debt forgiveness could cost as much as $1 trillion. $1 trillion.

on the taxpayers, many of whom couldn't even afford to go to college and have decided to make a life of their own and have, you know, made something of themselves to provide for themselves and their family are now going to be paying the debt for people who did decide to take on debt to go to college. Just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, one trillion dollars, but Biden says that he hasn't even calculated that. So those are the education plans for Trump and for Biden. Trump and Republicans are for school choice. They believe that parents of poor kids, of disadvantaged kids, of parents especially and black and brown and immigrant communities should have the power, should have the funding to decide the education that is best for them. And what we see is the outcomes for kids who are able to choose their education are far and away, on average, better than the kids who are not given that ability.

But Democrats, because they are funded by, because they are empowered by the public education system and the teachers union, they want to take. take away school choice. And that's the liberal mindset and the liberal worldview is that bureaucrats in Washington know what's best for you and your family and ultimately leftism believes that your child belongs to the state and should belong to the state, not to you parent. I'm sorry. As someone who is pro-family, as someone who is pro-vulnerable, pro-the-least of these, pro-child, holistically pro-life, I cannot get on board with a platform with the president with any politician who is against school choice. I just can't.

There's no good argument for it. There's no good argument for it. And I'm going to link you some resources in the description for you to learn more about this. So this is yet another reason why I'm voting for Donald Trump. This doesn't necessarily affect me personally. This doesn't necessarily affect some of my friends personally. But it does affect the least of these.

It does affect people that I know that are in these vulnerable. communities that I care about. I want the best possible future for their child. So of course I'm going to be for school choice. I don't understand how these so-called social justice advocates who claim to care for the least of these say that they're holistically pro-life, but they're voting for a guy who is explicitly against school choice. It doesn't make any sense. So be pro-all life and be pro-school choice. That is my pitch to you. Okay. That's all I have for today. I will be back here on Wednesday. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country

aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular.

This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.