The Week

A small semantic milestone was passed in New Jersey on August 16, when the Trentonian editorially blasted senatorial candidate Jeffrey Bell’s tax-cut proposal. Allowing people to keep their own money, growled the Trentonian, is a “giveaway.”

The Senate has voted overwhelmingly—65 to 27— to allow tuition tax credits of up to $500 for college students. But it defeated, 56 to 41, the House’s provision including private elementary and high schools in the credits. The latter vote was actuated largely by the argument that such credits would violate the separation of church and state—also the Administration’s argument when the President threatened to veto any measure that would aid parochial schools. A pretty flimsy argument: it is hardly plausible to hold that public aid to private education is all right, so long as it discriminates against religious schools. That isn’t the idea of freedom of religion embodied in the First Amendment. But common sense on this point has a lot of convincing to do.

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Jimmy Carter

New Jersey

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A small semantic milestone was passed in New Jersey on August 16, when the Trentonian editorially blasted senatorial candidate Jeffrey Bell’s tax-cut proposal. Allowing people to keep their own money, growled the Trentonian, is a “giveaway.”

The Senate has voted overwhelmingly—65 to 27— to allow tuition tax credits of up to $500 for college students. But it defeated, 56 to 41, the House’s provision including private elementary and high schools in the credits. The latter vote was actuated largely by the argument that such credits would violate the separation of church and state—also the Administration’s argument when the President threatened to veto any measure that would aid parochial schools. A pretty flimsy argument: it is hardly plausible to hold that public aid to private education is all right, so long as it discriminates against religious schools. That isn’t the idea of freedom of religion embodied in the First Amendment. But common sense on this point has a lot of convincing to do.