Can’t pay our teachers above poverty level, but here’s billions for war any time.
Meanwhile MAGA opponents of US aid want to completely dismantle the Department of Education:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c977njnvq2do.amp
We already have all the future plans of the only significant political group in the country that opposes Ukraine aid, and that group has given us their plans (Project 2025) and they are so far removed from helping teachers that it’s a joke.
The people who care about teachers are the same people who care about Ukraine. We can fund both if we stop handing out billionaire tax breaks like we did under Trump. So if you care about teachers, MAGA is a far greater risk to them than helping our allies in Ukraine.
There’s also the fact that if Russia succeeds in Ukraine he will continue to rebuild the Soviet Union and eventually we’ll have to spend more. We’re supposed to learn from past mistakes and not sit back and let Hitler Part 2 run through the same fucking playbook.
Your heart is in the right place. At a base level yes, it’s a bit fucked that we can send so much aid to a foreign entity and still have people struggling within our own borders. The two don’t directly equate, though I agree with the sentiment. In this situation we need to help Ukraine, that’s a global issue. However, where the nuance comes in is that while Federal and State/Local level administration of funds comes in, no one can disagree that we could easily take this nearly 4 billion, double it, and use that extra 4 billion to help people in need in the U.S.
For me that’s the shitty part. We can support Ukraine AND prop up families in need. War, our direct involvement or not, always seems to be the focus. I’m glad we’re helping though…it’s also sad in its own way
The two issues have little to do with each other. Teacher pay is handled at local and State levels. US Foreign Aid is a Federal issue.
Just because it’s handled at state level, doesn’t mean it has to be handled at state level.
The federal government could easily give money to states with the stipulation that x amount is used to pay teachers.
This would go one of two ways:
- States would take the money, and money being fungible, State budgets for payroll would ultimately go down by that same X. Teacher pay might get a short term bump, but the long term result would just be States relying on the subsidy and using the extra budget room to do other stuff, without meaningful long term changes to teacher pay.
- The money comes with regulations around teacher pay (to prevent the issue above) and many States refuse to take the money to avoid the regulations. The whole thing becomes a political football and nothing really changes.
Ultimately, the US is a Federal system which means a lot of stuff is handled at the State and Local level. A wholesale takeover of those responsibilities by the Federal Government is not as simple as “hand money to the States”. Decentralized authority has long been both a feature and a bug in the US system, but it’s not one which is likely to be changed anytime soon. The upshot of this decentralization is that States can use their authority to push and demonstrate policies before there is a national consensus on those policies. The downside is that some policies need to be fought on a State by State basis, which is a lot harder than a top-down, command style government.
