TO GOVERN is to choose, and nothing lays bare a government’s true priorities like the choices it makes about spending taxpayers’ money. In that regard, the Senate’s decision to spend $10 billion on education jobs this week is revealing — and deeply discouraging.

The crusade for an education jobs bill, led by the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress, has always struck us as more of an election-year favor for teachers unions than an optimal use of public resources. Billed as an effort to stimulate the economy, it’s not clearly more effective than alternative uses of the cash. Yes, school budgets are tight across the country, but the teacher layoff “crisis” is exaggerated. In fact, as happens each year, many teachers who got pink slips in the spring have been notified that they’ll be hired after all. Many layoffs could have been — and indeed have been — avoided by modest union concessions.

As of last school year, the money for 5.5 percent of the 6 million K-12 jobs nationwide came from Washington through the 2009 stimulus; the new money reinforces this dangerous dependency.

Nor does the legislation target areas with the most projected teacher layoffs.

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“The truth is, a bailout for the teachers’ unions will not improve the quality of education for our children and spending $10 billion on the education status quo will not create permanent jobs.”

By Bill Wilson

This could the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Yesterday the Senate passed a $26.1 billion bailout for bankrupt states like New York and California, which includes $10 billion for public teachers spending and $16.1 billion for state Medicaid spending.  Now, the Politico is reporting that Nancy Pelosi will speedily bring the House of Representatives back from its August recess to pass it and have it on Barack Obama’s desk next week.

The American people rightly are outraged at the prospect of balancing the budgets for states that refuse to cut their own spending. Last year’s $862 billion “stimulus” already included some $145 billion to balance state budgets, and this year’s $26.1 billion bailout will only forestall necessary cuts to those budgets.

While Americans struggle to balance their family budgets during this weak economic recovery, they expect elected officials to muster the political will to do the same.  Instead, all 59 Senate Democrats and Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe have caved to pressure from the public teachers unions — all to help fill their campaign coffers.

Out of the estimated 3.3 million public school teachers nationwide, teachers unions were expecting about 160,000 layoffs this year — just 4.8 percent of all teachers. 38.1 percent of those layoffs are centered in just three states: 9,000 in New Jersey, 16,000 in New York and 36,000 in California.

About 57 percent of those 160,000 teachers are unionized as noted by the Heritage Foundation, with contributions to state and local unions averaging $300 per teacher.  Add another $162 per teacher to the National Education Association and $190 per teacher to the American Federation of Teachers, as reported by Education Next, and the Senate easily has voted to give a minimum $40 million to the public teachers unions’ political coffers.  That money will be mobilized into campaign ads, direct mail, phone banks, you name it, all to help elect Democrats.

Democrats want to ensure that their reelection campaigns well-funded, and so now the House is rushing back to the nation’s capital to secure the political slush money.

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