He accurately points out that a dollar-for-dollar tax credit is much more of an incentive than a deduction of 10 percent to 38 percent. A tax credit is also better than a voucher, in that vouchers require governments to distribute money that already has come in -- with tax credits, officials never get their hands on the funds and have far less opportunity to attach strings. Tax credit funding of scholarships to religious as well as secular schools is clean sailing constitutionally, since parents and not officials are making the educational decisions.

 That's why conservative pillar Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation praises the Children's Hope Act: It provides "a powerful incentive that encourages the principal reform effort to be undertaken at the state and local level, rather than a sweeping master plan whose purse strings will be controlled at the federal level by bureaucrats cloistered in offices at the Department of Education. Furthermore, because the scholarships are delivered to parents, it is they who have full power to choose the school their child attends."

 The Children's Hope Act now has support from the GOP House leadership -- but opposition, as well, from legislators, including some Republicans, who are sour on school choice. Others are concerned about the federal deficit, but the estimated cost of $200 million over the first three years of the plan is, sadly, chickenfeed in Washington these days -- and it could readily be offset by the slaughter of even one of the educational turkeys that federal officials keep on feeding.