TN-01 Rep. Phil Roe’s most recent constituent newsletter pretends to celebrate “Teacher Appreciation Week” with some boasting about what he claims is his respect and support for teachers.
Shall we see how much hypocrisy Roe is trying to offload onto voters this week? In particular, let’s consider three issues:
- Roe voted for a tax bill that undermines the ability of local communities to pay for schools.
- Roe voted to attack the pocketbooks of individual teachers by eliminating deductions for money they spend out-of-pocket for classroom supplies and by opposition to government protections for borrowers, including teachers who paid for college with student loans.
- Roe has undermined programs that support childrens’ readiness to learn, via opposition to healthcare access and to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps).
Roe’s Attack On Ability of Local Communities to Pay For Schools
Roe’s newsletter says that he wants to:
empower educators and return decision-making power back to local classrooms.
That sounds nice, but what Roe leaves out is that he voted to make it harder for local schools to actually have the money needed to make meaningful decisions. This is not a small matter, as many school systems outside wealthy communities chronically operate in financial survival-mode.
When Roe voted to restrict the federal deduction for state and local taxes, he voted to make it even harder for local education systems to operate. That is because state and local taxes pay for the bulk of education expenses. A restriction on the deduction, which has the effect of making state and local taxes less affordable, cuts into the ability of local governments to generate the funds needed for schools. This is not economic rocket science. That’s why the Democratic minority on the Senate Joint Economic Committee flatly said that cuts to the state and local tax deductions would “crush public school budgets.”
Along the same lines, here is what the President of the American Federation of Teachers said about the House tax bill for which Rep. Roe happily voted:
The House bill “shows President Trump and the G.O.P.’s clear commitment to the rich and powerful at the expense of children, educators and families,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Roe’s Attack on Individual Teachers
Roe’s so-called “Teacher Appreciation Week” message says, in part:
These are people who have dedicated their careers to educating students. I know many who have spent nights and weekends working on lesson plans and used their own funds to buy items for their classrooms or for students whose families cannot afford supplies.
As this quote makes clear, Rep. Roe is fully aware that teachers spend money out of their own pockets for classroom supplies. He says teachers do this because families cannot afford supplies — but that’s only part of the story. By law, public education is supposed to be free, so the bigger question is why school systems can’t afford supplies and are forced to try and shift the cost onto parents or, ultimately, teachers.
Roe’s slap-in-the-face to individual teachers came in the form of his vote to eliminate a long-standing tax break that allows teachers to deduct up to $250 of personal expenses that they pay out of their own pockets for classroom supplies. In contrast, the Senate wanted to double this deduction to $500.
How many dedicated teachers dig into their own pockets to help our children and how much do they spend? Here’s one report:
The Education Market Association says that virtually all teachers wind up paying out of pocket for supplies, and it’s not chump change, either. On average, most spent nearly $500 last year, and one in 10 spent $1,000 or more. All told, a total of $1.6 billion in school supply costs is shifted from parents — or, increasingly, from cash-strapped districts — onto teachers themselves.
To appreciate the magnitude of this sacrifice, these figures should be considered in relation to teachers’ low salaries and often crushing student loan debt. Here is what the Economic Policy Institute said about teacher pay in 2016:
The teacher pay penalty is bigger than ever. In 2015, public school teachers’ weekly wages were 17.0 percent lower than those of comparable workers—compared with just 1.8 percent lower in 1994.
According to 2014-2015 data compiled by the Tennessee Education Association, the lowest starting salaries for teachers in some communities in Rep. Roe’s district begin at under $26,000 (Greene County). Experienced teachers earn more, but as the recent wave of teacher strikes across the nation is showing, teacher salaries are often simply inadequate to support their families.
As for the effects of student loan debt on underpaid teachers, a 2017 NPR analysis concluded:
Research on student loan debt shows that, as loans climb higher, they weigh on borrowers' most intimate and personal life decisions. People with higher student loans are less able to get married, buy houses and save for retirement … Loans have an invisible, internal effect as well, research shows. They cause stress and anxiety and interfere with mental health.
Roe’s opposition to the federal agency that protects borrowers from abusive lending practices has been clear from the beginning of his time in office.
Roe’s Attacks on Children
Sick and hungry children don’t learn well. No one can dispute this.
And there are certainly hungry children in Roe’s Congressional District. Food insecurity in Tennessee is significantly above the national average. Cocke County, located in Rep. Roe’s district, has the state’s highest rate of food insecurity among households with children, at a whopping 32%. So why does Roe favor increasing restrictions on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (food stamps)?
With respect to healthcare, Rep. Roe has been a persistent and vocal opponent of the Affordable Care Act, the law that brought health insurance to millions of American families. Here are Roe’s own words from an interview with a local business journal in January 2017:
What I would like to see us do is go bold and just do away with Medicaid and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) and do an advanceable, refundable tax credit so you wouldn’t have this hodgepodge of Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, private health insurors and the exchange market. What you would have is a marketplace where someone who has a tax credit can go purchase health insurance.
So Roe, stalwart opponent of government bureaucracy, wants the IRS to administer a health insurance program? ! Why not? What could possibly go wrong?
And Roe wants to place the burden of “shopping” for often incomprehensible insurance policies on groups that include people who may lack the ability to shop and that include people who don’t file tax returns due to disability, lack of income, or other reasons.
Does anyone care to estimate how many people would fall through the cracks of the economic magic show that underlies Roe’s preferred health care system?
In the end, Rep. Roe apparently would rather jeopardize or decrease our basic lifeline security programs than require corporations and the rich to continue paying taxes as they have in the past. Tennessee is in the Bible-belt, and our values support a tradition of helping our neighbors in times of need — but there are not enough churches to make up the safety-net shortfall that Roe’s incomprehensible austerity could impose on our communities.in order to pay for the massive corporate tax give-away for which he voted.
BOTTOM LINE
OK - so maybe this week , “Teacher Appreciation Week”, Rep. Roe has managed to refrain from doing anything to hurt schools, teachers, or children. But that can’t be said for what he has done repeatedly during other weeks of this year and other years.
Indeed, Rep. Roe’s elitist economic cruelty is not limited to his own constituents. He recently voted to starve children overseas as a tool of U.S. foreign policy.
If you would like to help Rep. Roe not be a liar and keep his own original term limit promise, you can make your views count by sharing and following this ongoing blog and by supporting Dr. Marty Olsen, a refreshing Democratic alternative, here: Responsible Change.
Oh yeah, and don’t forget to vote!