Andrea Williams captured in her senate testimony the essence of the proposition education tax credit supporters are offering the State of New Hampshire:

My name is Andrea Williams and I live in Hampton. I am testifying in support of HB370. Here is my rationale:

The two organizations that have been lobbying for these tax credits — The Network for Educational Opportunity and The Alliance for the Separation of School and State declare on their website:

”I proclaim publicly that I favor ending government involvement in education.”

Many of the schools attending NEO’s information sessions are religious schools, and the organization appears to put particular emphasis on starting Christian schools. How would they respond to requests for scholarships to Judaic or Islamic schools, or perhaps someday Scientology? It’s bad enough that potential state revenue could be used to support religious schools of any denomination. But here is the essential hypocrisy: this tax credit — which prevents revenue from being used to benefit the public under the oversight of our elected representatives, and which the state so desperately needs – derives from a government created source. In other words, the opponents of the bill do not really want government OUT of their schools. They want potential GOVERNMENT revenue to be diverted to the particular schools of THEIR choice.

I would recast their proclamation as follows: “I proclaim publicly that I favor ending government involvement in education. Instead, Government, just find a way to send us the money, and then go away.”