When it comes to “investment,” Barack Obama and Joe Biden are using scare tactics to rile up the ignorant Democrat voting base. Too bad (or not!) the facts just aren’t on their side, though that’s no surprise.

Here’s a prime example. Recently Barack Obama slammed the Republicans for “trying to gut our investments in education.” Ironically, in that same speech in Pennsylvania, Obama said, "We're just not going to put money into programs that don't work.” By any measure, would you say that our education system is a system that works? I didn’t think so. That goes double for the Department of Education. The fact is that even if you “gut” current “investments” in education, we will likely still be way above historical averages. This is the same thing as Obama saying that we can’t afford to cut government spending, after he alone has increased that spending by 25%. But let’s get back to education …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS_FlA_kSXo

There’s an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal by Steven Malanga about our “investments” in education and public safety (more on that in a minute). The fact is that this administration and many Democrats will have you believe that our education system is in desperate need of money that is being denied to them by the evil Republicans. But the truth is that per pupil spending on education is still increasing, despite our economic hardships. At a time when private sector businesses are having to make cuts and do more with less, education spending is still increasing.

Also, despite what the Democrats may claim, we actually have more teachers in the classrooms than ever before. The number of teachers has increased at a faster pace compared to student enrollment. From 1971 to 1984, the number of students in government school actually declined by 15%, while the number of teachers increased by 7%. In 1955, the number of students per teacher was at 26.9. By 2010, that figure has been lowered to 15.6 students per teacher. Now why would that be? Let me offer one explanation:

If you take taxpayer dollars and put those dollars toward hiring more teachers – you create more teacher’s union members. When teacher’s unions have more members they get more dues dollars. When teacher’s unions have more money they have more to donate in political campaigns. When teacher’s unions have more money to donate in political campaigns they donate that money to Democrats. So – when Democrats increase spending on teachers they are actually taking a roundabout way of taking taxpayer funds and pouring them into Democrat campaign coffers.

But it wasn’t just teachers that saw an increase in hiring. Government schools decided that they needed a whole host of other bureaucrats on their government payrolls – administrators, counselors, instructional aides, etc. Teachers used to make up about 65% of educational workers. Now teachers make up less than half (40%) of government school workers.

So we have more teachers in the class rooms with less students enrolled, we have more administrators than ever before, and what has been the result? Average SAT scores are DOWN 7% since 1966 and there has been zero gain in reading scores.

It seems to me that our government education system is just what Obama was talking about when he said that we should not be investing in programs that do not work. And yet, any attempt to modernize the system or make it more efficient (doing more with less) is labeled as the gutting of our education system.

And as I mentioned, it’s not just education where the Democrats will pull this stunt. They will also do it with public safety. Remember just recently when Joe Biden implied that if Republicans manage to cut investments in public safety, that we would see a rise in the number of rapes? Yeah .. talk about fear mongering. What Biden doesn’t tell you is that previous decades saw a dramatic increase in hiring for public safety personnel. Much of this included unsustainable pension plans, but that’s another issue. The fact is that historically we were at a peak: “From 1992 through 2008, according to the Department of Justice's Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, the ranks of state and local cops and other law-enforcement personnel soared by one-third, to more than 1.1 million. That growth far outpaced the country's population increase in the period, driving up the percentage of law-enforcement personnel relative to the general population by 12%.” Just read that bit I said about teacher’s unions again, and apply it to police and fire unions.

Yup! You got it! The real reason that Obama and Biden are pandering to teachers and law enforcement employees is quite obvious: union votes. They don’t need more money. That isn’t going to make our education system stronger and it isn’t going to solve the underlying pension problem plaguing local governments. But what it IS going to do is solidify votes for Democrats. And all of this vote-buying will be done with your tax dollars!