With Republicans Letting Them, Arizona ESA-Private School Voucher Parents Are Still Hoarding Money from the State Welfare for the Rich Scam Program

When I first heard about Craig Harris’s report yesterday about ESA-Private School Voucher Parents hoarding scholarship funds and saving them to fund, among other mysterious needs, their children’s college education, I thought this sounds familiar.

Looking back at past articles, I found one I wrote in June, 2024 where the headline read, “State Republicans Cut Programs to Help Seniors and Poor Children when the Richest Hoard $175 Million in School Voucher Accounts.”

Except the amount of funds being hoarded this year are considerably larger with Harris reporting that families of non disabled children who receive Empowerment Scholarship Account funding has grown to about $220 million.

Families of disabled children were holding on to about $230 million.

Furthermore, Harris reported that:

• “More than 10,000 ESA accounts are sitting on at least $10,000 each.
• Nearly 200 people have more than $100,000 each.
• Ten accounts have more than $200,000 each, and one account has $261,159.”

What do the supposedly budget sensitive Republicans, many of whom would throw poor kids off free school meals and deny disabled kids access in less than a heartbeat, have to say about their welfare for the rich scam program going off the fiscal rails?

Not much.

These are the same Republicans who have ignored common sense calls for reforms to this program, like means testing so the rich do not scam the system, year after year because they do not want to alienate both their plutocratic affluent base that has no problem bilking hard earned money from working and middle class taxpayers to subsidize their greed and their home school/private school clique fanatical supporters like Turning Point who use the funds to indoctrinate their children along MAGA-White Nationalist reactionary lines.

After Harris’s report, Arizona Senate Democrats posted on social media:

“Republicans know this. We had bills to stop this. Neither got a hearing: SB 1417 would require funds to revert back to the state after a year of nonrenewal. SB 1451 would prohibit funding from being used for college. Senator @LaurenKuby sponsored both bills this legislative session.”

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, an outspoken proponent of ESA reform, commented to Blog for Arizona:

“The Universal ESA’s are a billion-dollar boondoggle.  Since I took office, I have wanted to reform that program and bring it back to its original intent which was helping kids with disabilities and low-performing schools.  It was never intended to subsidize private education for people that can already afford it and the more we speak about the unaccountable spending now with this new information about people not using the fund, but keeping them, that’s very concerning. And I think we’ll continue to make the case of why we need to put reasonable guardrails in place and the need to get back to with the original purpose and not bilking the Arizona taxpayers.”

Democratic Assistant House Leader Nancy Gutierrez also stated:

“I’m grateful to the press for reporting on the ongoing misuse of the universal vouchers. Clearly, if parents are stock piling this tax payer money, they do not need it for tuition. This is blatant fraud and I call on the Superintendent of Public Instruction to stop this practice and put an end to this practice.  This is why we need an income cap for these vouchers and much more oversight for this million dollar grift.”

Governor Hobbs and Leader Gutierrez also commented for the Harris piece cited above.

Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Candidate Dr. Teresa Leybra Ruiz also offered her perspective on the latest example of the Republican Welfare for the Wealthy program running amuck, commenting to the Blog:

“This money is being used by families who can already afford a college education, but instead, they’re getting a free ride on our dime while the public school students who need it the most are left behind. This isn’t school choice; it’s a taxpayer-funded scholarship for the rich. The voucher program must be regulated for public education to survive.”

She also posted the below video on social media:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Teresa Leyba Ruiz (@drruizforarizona)

Tyler Kowch, the Communications Director for Save Our Schools Arizona commented to the Blog:

“It is outrageous that nearly half a billion dollars is sitting unused in voucher accounts while our public schools continue to lack adequate resources for Arizona’s 1.1 million students. With schools facing dramatic cuts due to Trump’s massive tax bill just passed by Congress, our legislature must stop allowing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for vouchers that sit unspent.”

In the coming 2026 campaign, the allies of public education, expanding the middle class, and helping poor children should run on how Republicans created a scam welfare for the wealthy system where the rich took hard earned working and middle class taxpayer dollars to pay for their children’s college education and ski trips while the children of poor and middle class families, thanks to MAGA budget cuts, struggled to come up with money to buy breakfast and lunch.