SB1 creates the Department of Early Childhood, “centralizing” all early childhood education, care programs, and services “into a single State agency.”
The Senate passed SB1 on April 12, 2024, by a vote of 56 to 0. We have assigned minuses to the yeas because “social welfare” is not the purpose of government. The care, control, and upbringing of children belongs to parents and the family, not the state. This bill not only reinforces the state’s monopoly over preK-12 education, but consolidates it with so-called “entitlement programs,” such as Medicaid, which is unauthorized under Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution. It relies on immoral and anti-constitutional forms of taxation (e.g., property and income taxes) that discriminatorily provide benefits to “eligible” low-income persons, who have little or no tax liability, at the expense of other hard-working citizens. The reality is that “cradle-to-grave” or “nanny-state” policies only result in more debt, dependency, and poverty. Taxation is the name of big-government “handouts” is neither just nor charitable.
