Terry,

The HEA Act of 1965, which is the landmark
access legislation in higher education, certainly was helped along by
the G.I. Bill.  I’m sure if I go to the Congressional Record from
1965, I will get plenty of references to the HEA being a G.I. Bill for
everyone.  The higher education community certainly thinks they are peas in the same pod.

Most importantly, a 1944 veterans program for higher education
(not K-12) that wasn’t designed for access but to help assimilate
G.I.’s back into society is not a great test to see if current K-12
vouchers will lead to excessive regulation. 

I think the best way to determine if K-12 vouchers will lead to
excessive regulation is to look at K-12 regulation and other K-12
vouchers.  In NC, without vouchers, private and home-school
education already is heavily regulated.

Looking at a K-12 voucher program, like Wisconsin’s, also is helpful.  This NCPA article
from 1998 lists the endless regulation and intrusion into private
education back then–I have no idea what the regulation is today.

Politics may never be over, but it certainly comes close when
you give the government the legitimate and widely supported excuse to
regulate private education–if our taxdollars are being spent on
education, private or public, taxpayers have the right to know how that
money is being spent (the accountability argument).

Political
risk makes sense when it is calculated and you have a real chance to
win.  Vouchers will lead to excessive regulation, probably
immediately.  So, this isn’t so much a question of political risk,
but a calculation of whether the costs of excessive regulation and
government control are worth it.

Again, I like the “idea” of
vouchers, but any proposal needs to figure out how to prevent, within
reason, the government control problems we’ve already seen with other
voucher programs, and the problems that exist even in higher education.