Sep 24, 2026 · 36 min · 9 segments
Please donate to the show at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/impodcast Our government has a choice to make. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act created a federal school voucher program, and states have…
yeah totally Well, I'm hoping we can also talk a little bit about waste, fraud and abuse.
you know, there's plenty of ways fraud and abuse in the American government and, you know, in the way that medical care is, like, we're completely ripped off for medical care.
And, like, I mean, it's just the number of places we could look for actual ways fraud and abuse, and yet instead they're doing their own, like, horrible doge
What really gets me, I think, with this is that you'll probably hear Republicans always say, like conservatives say public schools are sources of waste or abuse when like voucher schemes like fund like schools that just aren't doing anything like there's an excellent as we were chatting right before this that there was an excellent recent piece in ProPublica pulling up the title that was like this private school had students scrub floors and attack a fellow classmate the state still funds it on Arkansas's voucher system, where in the state of Arkansas, the state only requires that private schools conduct regular fire drills, keep immunization records, and have an American flag and a flagpole.
And it's kind of a wild set of contrasts to this when it comes to the way that there can sometimes end up being this like micromanaging of the public realm in order to like harass public workers and like, and accuse everything of not of like being some radical agenda or whatever the, the attack of the day is at the same time that anytime you're shoveling public money to a private entity, it's like no
Like, is there anything, anything that you've been seeing around this about like what act, like what the, what such money actually ends up going to and how little actual forms of accountability end up existing in the use of the money?
There, I know there have been high profile, um, scandals in some States, um, of voucher funds being misused.
I think in Sarasota, Florida, there was another where, um, where public school families that were supposed to get these vouchers didn't actually use them for the purposes they were described for.
There's also a question of how, as long as something on the qualified education list is loosely used for an educational purpose, it can kind of fit in the definition and not really get challenged.
There is some stuff in OBA, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that is intended to curb waste, fraud, and abuse.
If states are not able to put any substantive requirements on SGOs to not even not even to like if you wanted to do more waste, fraud and abuse prevention than what federal law allows, would you be able to? Would you be able to collect data on who's funding certain SGOs and then who's benefiting? SGOs are the ones that are supposed to be responsible for verifying the income of those who are applying.
So even if audits are taking place, can the state make sure that you're not just auditing for waste, fraud and abuse, but you're actually making sure or you can actually evaluate if the program is working for you? Like if we can't even do that, what use is this to our to any of our students? going to public school or private school if we can't evaluate and do basic data collection and just sort of check in and see if this is working well like if we can't do any of that it's it just I don't think it would work for us yeah it's like a why are we here
And this is a point of clarification with this, with these granting organizations.
yeah totally Well, I'm hoping we can also talk a little bit about waste, fraud and abuse.
you know, there's plenty of ways fraud and abuse in the American government and, you know, in the way that medical care is, like, we're completely ripped off for medical care.
And, like, I mean, it's just the number of places we could look for actual ways fraud and abuse, and yet instead they're doing their own, like, horrible doge
What really gets me, I think, with this is that you'll probably hear Republicans always say, like conservatives say public schools are sources of waste or abuse when like voucher schemes like fund like schools that just aren't doing anything like there's an excellent as we were chatting right before this that there was an excellent recent piece in ProPublica pulling up the title that was like this private school had students scrub floors and attack a fellow classmate the state still funds it on Arkansas's voucher system, where in the state of Arkansas, the state only requires that private schools conduct regular fire drills, keep immunization records, and have an American flag and a flagpole.
And it's kind of a wild set of contrasts to this when it comes to the way that there can sometimes end up being this like micromanaging of the public realm in order to like harass public workers and like, and accuse everything of not of like being some radical agenda or whatever the, the attack of the day is at the same time that anytime you're shoveling public money to a private entity, it's like no
Like, is there anything, anything that you've been seeing around this about like what act, like what the, what such money actually ends up going to and how little actual forms of accountability end up existing in the use of the money?
There, I know there have been high profile, um, scandals in some States, um, of voucher funds being misused.
I think in Sarasota, Florida, there was another where, um, where public school families that were supposed to get these vouchers didn't actually use them for the purposes they were described for.
There's also a question of how, as long as something on the qualified education list is loosely used for an educational purpose, it can kind of fit in the definition and not really get challenged.
There is some stuff in OBA, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that is intended to curb waste, fraud, and abuse.
If states are not able to put any substantive requirements on SGOs to not even not even to like if you wanted to do more waste, fraud and abuse prevention than what federal law allows, would you be able to? Would you be able to collect data on who's funding certain SGOs and then who's benefiting? SGOs are the ones that are supposed to be responsible for verifying the income of those who are applying.
So even if audits are taking place, can the state make sure that you're not just auditing for waste, fraud and abuse, but you're actually making sure or you can actually evaluate if the program is working for you? Like if we can't even do that, what use is this to our to any of our students? going to public school or private school if we can't evaluate and do basic data collection and just sort of check in and see if this is working well like if we can't do any of that it's it just I don't think it would work for us yeah it's like a why are we here
And this is a point of clarification with this, with these granting organizations.
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