A presidential campaign laced with promises of bi-partisanship has ended and the unveiling of President-elect George W. Bush’s conservative agenda has begun. At the top of the agenda are school vouchersa program that drains funding from public schools and pours it into private, often religiously affiliated, institutions. Voucher programs have failed in the courts and in legislation across the country recently. Last week, a Cleveland court ruled the city’s government funded school voucher program to be unconstitutional because vouchers funnel government funds into religious school education–a violation of laws separating church and state.
In an equally partisan move, Bush has promised to sign a bill that will ban late-term abortions–a prohibition President Clinton vetoed. Bush also intends to pursue privatization of Social Security, which would take huge amounts of money out of the Social Security trust fund. A weakened Social Security system means less support for many older people, 60 percent of whom are women.
