Austin (NEXSTAR) — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, stopped by the Texas Capitol on Thursday morning to express his support for education savings account (ESA) legislation — also known as school choice. The legislation, currently represented by HB 3 in Texas House, would allow taxpayer dollars to help parents pay for private school K-12 education.
“(I’m here) simply to cheer the House on,” Cruz said. “Right now, the House of Representatives is taking up what I think is the single biggest issue before the Texas Legislature, and that is school choice. School choice, I believe, is the civil rights issue of the 21st Century.”
Cruz is throwing campaign dollars behind the movement.
“Today I launched a quarter of a million dollars of ads online — over-the-top, digital and text — supporting freshman house members who are taking a bold and courageous stance supporting school choice,” Cruz said. “This is a battle that matters, and I’m very proud of the leadership I’m seeing here in the state legislature.
According to the Texas Tribune, Speaker Dustin Burrows, Brent Money of Greenville, Joanne Shofner of Nacogdoches, Trey Wharton of Huntsville, Janis Holt of Silsbee, Matt Morgan of Richmond, A.J. Louderback of Victoria, Alan Schoolcraft of McQueeney, Wes Virdell of Brady, Helen Kerwin of Glen Rose, Shelley Luther of Tom Bean, Don McLaughlin of Uvalde, Marc LaHood of San Antonio and Andy Hopper of Decatur are the recipients of Cruz’s ad campaign.
One day after U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, said ESA legislation puts the country back on path for segregated schools, Cruz argued the opposite.
“I recall a conversation with a father — African-American man who had a six-year-old daughter. The school she was going to was not teaching, it was failing and there was violence,” Cruz said. “And I remember — this was a big man, he was about 6’7″ — I remember he was crying. ‘Why won’t they let me send my little girl to school?’ This is a civil rights issue because in Texas, predominately the children being failed by our system are disproportionately Hispanic children and African-American children.”
HB 3 is currently being held pending in the Texas House Committee on Public Education.
