The GOP backers of vouchers found a funding formula that does not directly take money away from public education, which is funded from the Uniform School Fund.

However, all Utahns pay sales tax — no matter how poor or how rich we are. Worse, from a tax regressivity perspective, Utah still places a small sales tax on unprepared food — our most basic commodity.

So, GOP legislators and Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. (no Democrats voted for HB148) want to create a new government entitlement program that takes money away from all Utah citizens and gives it to a small group of citizens who send their children to private schools.

Thus, vouchers are, in my view, an entitlement program that redistributes wealth.

Smile from your grave, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

When U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, co-sponsored a new federal child health insurance program with Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., at the Utah Republican Convention that year a resolution was passed by the conservative delegates that damned Hatch, saying CHIP was another big government socialist entitlement program. Hatch later addressed the convention shaming delegates with biblical references for opposing a new program that helped sick, poor kids. And I think CHIP was a fine idea — a worthy government entitlement program that redistributed wealth.

But apparently hard-core Utah Republicans can favor a new entitlement program passed by the Utah Legislature but oppose one passed by the federal government.

What's behind GOP lawmakers' support for vouchers? Well, they would say "family choice" is at the heart of their argument. Some children need a private school alternative, and the state should help in that.

But I believe it goes further. I see a deep-seated, almost irrational, hatred of the Utah Education Association — the main public education teacher union that year after year spends tens of thousands of dollars trying to defeat conservative GOP legislators. Pushing vouchers through the divided Legislature is clearly a slap in the eye to the UEA.

In recent years legislative Republicans have tried to harm UEA PAC funding — and succeeded in doing so for a while until overruled in federal court. And now Republicans are looking to change State Board of Education nonpartisan elections to make board candidates go through county or state party conventions, to win party nominations and pass partisan philosophical barriers.

It's an arrogance of power that says oppose us and we will make you pay.

In any case, citizens will decide whether we have private-school vouchers come Nov. 6. I say educate yourself on the advantages and disadvantages of vouchers before you vote — for there really are two sides to this issue.

But also understand that at the ballot box you will vote for or against a new government entitlement program that redistributes wealth.

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Deseret Morning News political editor Bob Bernick Jr. may be reached at bbjr@desnews.com.