Pennsylvania House Democrats Are Lying About Scholarship Cuts

Gov. Josh Shapiro and Pennsylvania House Democrats have launched an all-out assault on educational choice—and they’re hiding behind a smokescreen of misinformation.

This week, House Democrats passed House Bill (HB) 2632, a punitive bill designed to gut the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) program, one of the most popular and successful educational choice initiatives in the nation.

This assault is by design. House Democrats are doing exactly what Shapiro called for in his February budget proposal, which sought to reduce EITC funding and restructure charter school funding in ways that would leave students with fewer resources. Shapiro and House Democrats are in lockstep on this issue.

The Lies Targeting EITC

When Democrats took to the floor to defend HB 2632, they offered a rehearsed set of talking points that don’t hold up to scrutiny.

They claim the bill doesn’t cut scholarships but merely “shifts” funding. Originally, HB 2632 proposed slashing about $100 million in available funding for scholarship organizations, denying scholarships to 30,000 kids who currently rely on the program. This sparked a groundswell of opposition that forced House Democrats to amend the bill to restore these cuts.

Despite the House Appropriations Committee pausing this bleeding, the bill still threatens EITC. HB 2632 still cuts tax credit levels, eliminates supplemental scholarships, ties student eligibility to unrelated policies (specifically, legislative-enacted minimum wage hikes), and attempts to intimidate donors, schools, and parents with onerous taxes and reporting requirements.

Bill sponsors and supporters claim the legislation “improves accountability” while also ignoring the hundreds of failing schools that have remained unaccountable for far too long. Currently, 380 Pennsylvania schools, which house more than 200,000 students, qualify as “low-achieving,” based on statewide testing. Many of these schools are habitual repeat offenders, appearing in the bottom 15 percent of standards year after year.

So, where is the accountability of those schools?

Shapiro’s Broken Promises

Perhaps the most glaring hypocrisy belongs to the governor himself.

During his 2022 campaign, Shapiro pledged to “protect what we have on EITC and add more on those scholarships.” But in his latest spending plan, he laid the groundwork for today’s vote, proposing cuts to the very program he once championed and providing House Democrats the political cover to go even further.

This is nothing new for Shapiro. As a gubernatorial candidate, he promised to provide scholarships to students stuck in underperforming schools. But when the opportunity to pass such transformative legislation into law presented itself, the governor—who had agreed to a budget deal that included this program—vetoed it.

Now, Shapiro and House Democrats are actively ignoring the overwhelming majority of Pennsylvanians who support these programs. These lawmakers are cutting off working-class families from options they desperately want and need.

A 25-Year Success Story Under Attack

EITC just celebrated its 25th anniversary. In that time, it has become a pioneering national model for educational choice. Polling shows that 79 percent of Pennsylvanians support expanding tax-credit scholarship programs. Last year, nearly 70,000 scholarship applicants were turned away or waitlisted because artificial program caps have throttled the number of available scholarships. The demand is overwhelming.

Plus, these scholarships directly benefit Pennsylvania’s most needy students. The average household income for EITC and OSTC scholarship recipients ranges between $44,000 and $78,000 annually—well below Pennsylvania’s median family income of over $100,000. This program serves working-class families across the commonwealth.

EITC’s success has also inspired national reforms. Last year, Congress adopted the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit (FSTC), a new opportunity modeled on EITC. If Shapiro opts Pennsylvania into the program, Pennsylvania students stand to receive anywhere between $32 million and $967 million in additional scholarships, according to Education Reform Now.

Shapiro, of course, has yet to opt Pennsylvania into the FSTC, hanging thousands of Pennsylvania kids out to dry. If the governor doesn’t opt in, the scholarship donations will leave Pennsylvania for the 31 states that intend to participate.

Clearly, there is a strong need for these scholarships, so why are Shapiro and House Democrats—many of whom send their own kids to private schools—fighting against them? Working-class families desperately need more educational options, not lawmakers taking their marching orders from the special interests that fund their campaigns.