Lower taxes vs. our children’s future

Paul Feldman, Las Vegas

Thursday, Feb. 11, 2010 | 2:04 a.m.

Once again, Gov. Jim Gibbons has abdicated leadership in favor of spouting sound bites from the GOP playlist. “It’s time to stop whining that education in Nevada doesn’t work because of a lack of funding,” he said Monday. How could he possibly reach this conclusion when this state has never adequately funded education? “We need to quit throwing money at programs that ... don’t work,” he said. This state has never thrown money at education programs.

If not for the children who bear the brunt of this state’s broken education system, these statements would be comical. Yet comments like these are made year after year by GOP politicians. And people in Nevada choose to believe them rather than accepting that more money is needed to get us off the bottom of almost every list that measures achievement in education.

How many years or decades have to go by before we Nevadans realize it’s not a coincidence that our schools are both consistently underfunded — and consistently underachieving? We want the same services that citizens of other states take for granted. The only difference is that we think we can get them without paying for them. And nothing will change as long as voters continue to put lower taxes ahead of their own children’s futures.