Federal budget legislation that may get a vote in Congress next week includes two school choice provisions that would significantly assist in reversing America’s cultural decline, especially if they last long-term.

The first would establish the first nationwide school choice program by allowing U.S. taxpayers to reduce their tax bills by as much as they donate to private K-12 scholarships, up to half of their federal tax liability or $5,000, whichever is less. The bill would cap total donations via the program at $5 billion.

That’s just 6 percent of the Trump administration’s $82 billion annual budget request for the U.S. Department of Education (USED). At $5,000 per child, that’s 1 million American children benefited. The United States has nearly 60 million school-age children. A similar House bill would create such a program with a cap of $10 billion.

The second budget provision is not labeled a school-choice measure but can absolutely act as one — an increased child tax credit. In Trump’s first term, Congress expanded that credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child, but it is set to revert at the end of this year, taking thousands from families amid years of historic inflation.

The current budget would make that expansion permanent, index it to inflation after 2026, and increase the base amount to $2,500 per child from 2025 through 2028. I’ve argued the expansion should only apply to married families to preference married childbearing, as the entire welfare state does the opposite. The House Ways and Means Committee says the child tax credit expansion would benefit 40 million American families.

Putting more money in parents’ pockets gives middle-class and poor folks a greater ability to exercise school choice like wealthy Americans, paying for it directly instead of charging their tuition bill indirectly over 30 years via inflated mortgage payments that lower-income families can’t cover.

Provisions That Change Culture Long-Term

These two measures may be the most important in a bill with many other noteworthy parts. Rather than reapplying fingernail polish to failure — as Congress usually does and most of the budget entails — school choice is a systemic reform that addresses root causes.

Like most government-run industries, the public school system is collapsing, and America’s families and future require a viable alternative. School choice is the way. That’s why Congress needs to keep these two measures in the bill it eventually passes.

The unfortunately small faction that cares about spending has many other places to cut. DOGE it up, people. I’d start with USED. President Trump promised to shut that agency down, fulfilling a Ronald Reagan promise 40 years later. That doesn’t require $82 billion a year. This alone would provide more than the funds needed for the K-12 scholarships. In fact, every federal agency should get a cut, rather than the usual increase. There. Billions saved.

Requiring able-bodied subsidy recipients to work is also a no-brainer. It’s another 80-20 issue with the public, including majorities of Democrats. In addition, Congress should strip subsidies that encourage separating children from their mothers via childcare and paid leave programs.

Children separated from their mothers in daily daycare or “preschool” six weeks, three months, six months, and even four years after birth are at much higher risk for mental difficulties that affect their entire lives. We shouldn’t subsidize ways of life that tend to make America’s future taxpayers less stable, intelligent, and self-reliant.

Refusing to force all taxpayers to subsidize high-tax regimes via a deduction for state and local taxes is another pro-GOP no-brainer. Requiring New Yorkers and Californians to pay for the Democrat policies they vote for will encourage them to vote Republican instead.

The bottom line is: Everyone knows the federal budget is a disgusting, deficit-ballooning sausage-fest. That is not going to change this time. But what could change this time is creating crucial carveouts that have massive potential to improve America long-term in addition to all the wasteful carveouts Congress is definitely going to give special interests.

Don’t Get Distracted on Side Issues

Today most Americans feel trapped in secular schools. Two-thirds of American parents who send their children to a public school say they would rather not, according to annual EdChoice surveys. The top reasons so many American parents feel their children are trapped in public schools are, of course, money and access (i.e., no private or charter school is nearby).

Tax-credit scholarships are yet another 70-30 issue that President Trump has finally rallied much of the Republican Party behind. Even majorities of Democrat voters support them, including some 70 percent of non-white Americans. They are far superior to giving out direct government funds via vouchers or subsidies like the G.I. Bill, because court precedent shields private funds from choice-destroying regulations.

It is strongly within the national interest to help parents act on their preferences, because research shows secular schooling is the No. 1 factor causing Americans to lose their faith. People who love America cannot be neutral about that, because widespread Christianity is essential to keep what’s left of our constitutional way of life. The American Founders believed this fervently, and it is true.

The truth is, the secular indoctrination factories that judges forced all public schools to become are the prime engine of America’s decline. For one thing, the loss of faith is the entire cause of our fertility crisis, a key component of our entitlement spending crisis. Keep more Americans Christian, and entitlement programs become much better funded.

For another thing, identity politics is an anti-reason, anti-thought, anti-human, anti-God philosophy, and it controls public education today from top to bottom. So secular schooling is not just a top driver of America’s intellectual corruption — although it is that! — but also of our moral corruption.

That is the underlying cause of all of our nation’s many co-morbid existential crises, including the fact that Congress can’t cut insanely corrupt and existentially threatening spending. So it’s more important to address the underlying cause than its symptoms. Funding school choice does exactly that.

A Free Society Requires Christian Education

In order for government not to micromanage people and thereby eventually become dictatorial and totalitarian, citizens must responsibly manage their lives. If people do not restrain and order their private lives, eventually government must do it for them. Everyone from James Madison to Alexis de Tocqueville knew and preached this.

We can also see it in just about any public crisis. Take health: If people ate little junk food and exercised often, our corrupt corporate medical system would be far less bankrupt. And yes, Christianity discourages gluttony and encourages physical training. It also encourages working to pay for your expenses rather than taking from others and fosters non-coerced charitable giving to the needy.

The top two places people learn the virtues, or the art of self-governance, are in church and at home. These two institutions do in a nuanced and non-coercive way what government does bluntly and coercively: instruct and encourage people in the art of making morally responsible choices each week, day, and hour.

That’s why there is no such thing as a free society without widespread Christianity, as even professional atheists now acknowledge after spending their lives working to destroy it. And that’s why even people who aren’t Christians should support school choice if they want to live in a free society. Obviously, Christians should also support Christian education as a moral imperative, which is why historically churches have always operated schools.

Everyone who isn’t insane wants to live in a society where children and adults learn not to steal, kill, cheat, and self-destruct. Christianity teaches this without needing any expenditure of taxpayer funds. There are lots of other reasons, too, for a purely rational vote for school choice, including that private schooling costs taxpayers far less while returning far better results than public schooling.

An America without Christianity is not America at all. That is why cultural Marxists treat Christianity as their No. 1 enemy — because it is. And as everyone in the age of woke should be aware, controlling schooling is one of their chief national destruction strategies.

So fighting the left’s destruction of education is a radically good and necessary action. School choice is the prime means of making America competent, solvent, and faithful again, and that’s why it may be the most important budget provision Congress can pass.