Giuliani backs private school vouchers to improve education
MERRIMACK, N.H. --Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani on Friday argued for taxpayer-funded vouchers for private elementary and secondary schools, saying school choice works for the nation's colleges and universities.
People come from all over the world to attend college in the United States, Giuliani said at a town hall meeting in Merrimack, N.H.
"How is it that we have the best higher education in the world and a weaker K-through-12 system?" Giuliani said. "What's the difference? Why does one operate so well and the other not nearly as well? American higher education is based on a quintessential American principle -- choice."
As mayor of New York, Giuliani backed vouchers for private and parochial schools in the face of opposition from his own schools chancellor.
"I'd give parents control over their children's education," Giuliani told the audience of about 150 people at a solar power products plant. "We've got to have competition operating. If we don't do that, our education system is going to deteriorate."
Giuliani stressed his desire to have private forces shape the country's economy in education as well as in health care and Social Security. He said he supported President Bush's unsuccessful proposal to allow people to invest some of their Social Security taxes in private accounts.
"I would have preferred, over my lifetime, if I could have invested some of that Social Security money myself," said Giuliani, 63. "I think I would have done much better than the government did. I believe young people today, a lot of them feel that way. I think people who want a private option should be entitled to have it."
He said people who want traditional Social Security with no private accounts should be allowed to have that, too. And he allowed that the issue "is going to have to be compromised out" because Democrats who control Congress oppose it.
Also Friday, Giuliani:
--Reiterated his support for abortion rights: "I believe we should reduce abortion and increase adoption, but in a society in which we don't want government running people's lives ... we should keep the government out of it. We should allow the mother ultimately to make those kinds of decisions."
--Defended the Iraq war to a questioner who said nothing is being accomplished: "I think it's a mistake, both substantively and emotionally, to tell the troops we're accomplishing nothing in Iraq, and a very serious overstatement, which I think comes in a large way from the way the media covers it."
--Said he would keep medical marijuana illegal. "I've asked the question before, checked with the FDA, which says marijuana has no additional medicinal benefits of any kind. Illegal trafficking in marijuana is so great, it makes much more sense to keep it illegal."
