The Club for Growth (CG) supports broad school choice, including charter schools and voucher programs that create a competitive education market including public, private, religious, and non-religious schools. CG says that in an interview in early 2011, Santorum said, “I’ve been for school choice since the very beginning. I’ve sponsored school choice bills.” As a candidate for the Senate in 1994, Santorum filled out a questionnaire in which he signaled his support for school choice. And in 1997 and 2001 Santorum voted to allow a school choice program in the District of Columbia. He introduced a bill in 1998 which would allow states to establish voluntary parental choice scholarship programs. However, he indicated in that questionnaire that he wanted “national standards” from the federal government and he didn’t support eliminating the Department of Education. This bears itself out in his record. As mentioned, Santorum supported No Child Left Behind in 2001 which greatly expanded Washington’s control over education. Santorum now appears to have reversed course. In that same 2011 interview, Santorum said, “Well, the Department of Education is, in my opinion, unnecessary and overseeing a state bureaucracy which is already a big problem.” While Santorum’s school choice goals move in the right direction, he undermines that with support for too much federal government control.
I didn’t realize until the recent discussions regarding No Child Left Behind that education throughout our country was so unequal; that states determine whether or not a child should be held back if not performing at a certain level and a diploma received in one school is not equal to one in another. I find this a terrible inequity and therefore government control is necessary to ensure children in every state get a minimum education. Way back when I was in favor of the voucher program as it was a means for paying people for home schooling children but on February 14 I heard that New York Hasidic Jewish girls go to religious private school where they learn how to be a good wife and with a 4th grade reading level they earn a diploma at age 16. I don’t care what kind of school children attend but I do think that there should be requirements for passing from one grade level to another in order to obtain a diploma of equal value. As such I do not agree with CG in that more competition in education will lead to higher quality; it does lower costs but that’s a sad exchange for the future of our children and country.
Per CG Santorum has supported strong reforms to rein in litigation abuse. In 1995, he voted YES to putting caps on punitive damages in product liability cases and to restrict frivolous class action lawsuits. He has consistently pushed for medical malpractice reform in an effort to drive down the cost of medicine. In 2006, he sponsored a bill to cap non-economic damages related to obstetrical and gynecological services. I’m concerned with votes that support women as subservient beings. I too don’t like frivolous lawsuits but believe instead of just driving down the cost of medicine our medical professionals should provide a level of service that protects the people.
Per CG in the biggest political free speech debate of the last ten years, Santorum voted NO on the oppressive 2002 McCain-Feingold bill calling it “an affront to personal freedoms and liberty.” In 1997 Santorum offered a campaign finance reform bill as an alternative to an earlier version of McCain-Feingold. He proposed expanding the law to ensure that “contributing to campaigns must be completely voluntary.” The practical effect of his proposal would have been that unions couldn’t use their members’ dues on political activity without their permission. But Santorum has supported a milder form of limits on political speech. He advocated low contribution limits in his 1997 bill; his proposal actually increased the individual cap from $1,000 to $4,000 but only for in-state residents. Out-of-state donors would still be capped at $1,000. On the Senate floor, Santorum said, “The fact of the matter is we have low limits. I think we should keep them relatively low, but they should be high enough so people can have some ability to form a little bit of seed corn to start a campaign if they want to run for office”.
CG did give two notable exceptions of Santorum endorsing candidates that went against the Republican Party as a whole; one was in 2004 (as chairman of the Republican Conference in the Senate he did not back the incumbent Pennsylvania Republican for Senate) and the other in 2009 (endorsed a Conservative Party nominee over a liberal Republican in New York). CG said - What is troubling is the lengths to which he would stoop to mislead Republican voters; in the years that followed Santorum offered a series of revisionist explanations, those explanations have changed several times and none of them are consistent with what he said during the 2004 campaign. The only explanation that is consistent is political expediency. Santorum was willing to jettison conservative principles when it suited him in 2004 and wants to try to explain it away when it no longer suits him on the 2012 presidential campaign trail. Per CG as president, Santorum would most likely lead the country in a pro-growth direction, but his record contains more than a few weak spots that make us question if he would resist political expediency when it comes to economic issues. On February 20, 2012 Santorum said that prenatal testing leads to more abortions when fetuses are discovered with birth defects; some Republicans are saying his views will turn off independents, moderates, and women; a top Republican Senator said if Romney loses in Michigan they’ll need to find another candidate.
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