David, I should clarify: What I meant was that a tax-credit voucher program has the same effect on outlays as a normal voucher program of the same value. Obviously, a normal voucher program is funded up front, whereas funding for a tax-credit program depends on how many people choose to participate, so the effect of the latter is unknowable until all the “donations” have been counted. But once the bill comes in, the effect is the same: That much tax money/would-have-been tax money gets spent on voucher programs, and the rest of the tax receipts are divided amongst the rest of the budget.

And to reiterate: It is completely irrelevant to my point whether these programs save money. In fact, I agree that they probably do, at least in the long run. My point is that no matter how much I support the policy of using tax dollars to fund private-school education, I cannot support the enactment of such a policy unless it’s arrived at through an open and fair democratic process. If we can’t pass a law that funds a voucher program with tax dollars, then we can’t use tax dollars to fund a voucher program. We also can’t (or at least shouldn’t) sidestep that obstacle by selling vouchers to the public as “donations” — when the government, not the “donor,” is the entity forgoing money with each “donation.”