From http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/additional-issues
"President Obama and Vice President Biden are committed advocates for children. They will make sure that every child has health insurance, expand educational opportunities for low-income children, extend resources for low-income families, support and supplement our struggling foster care system, and protect children from violence and neglect."
Who isn't against violence towards children? They will make sure every child in the world has health insurance, or just America? The above paragraph is all I saw on the whole website, specifically dedicated to "child advocacy". I didn't see many specifics...
But should Obama "expand educational opportunities for low-income children? To many people, this is the most noble type of activity that a president could be engaged in. However, before stone me for daring to question something that seems so obviously beneficial, please consider the following:
The Federal Government shouldn't duplicate services provided for by the states. When you have administrators in Federal, State, and County agencies all with the same responsibility you are wasting money. When you have administrators in Federal, State, and County agencies all with the same responsibility there is no accountability for the performance of any of the government agencies. When the federal government has a mission that is the same as more local governments, they often don't really do anything besides set standards which the local agencies are not required to follow, and funnels money which they takes from individuals in each state, and put is back into other states. This whole process is overly complex, prone to corruption, bad incentives, inefficient with our money, and leads to bad results.
The Federal Government's power should be more limited than the states.
If cities, counties, and states all have agencies working to expand educational opportunities for low-income children, then there is no reason for the Federal Government to duplicate these efforts.
There is no reason to have a Federal Department of Education, because no one from the Federal government teaches kids. All kids are taught by teachers who are employed by local jurisdictions. The Federal Government is worse at providing services than local governments. When the Federal Government gets involved in the same efforts as the states, it prevents us from learning which states are doing things the right way and which states are not running their programs correctly, because the duplicative efforts from the Federal Government make it more difficult to tell what is the cause of success or failure.
