The coverage of President Obama’s soon-to-end bus tour and his promotion of S.1723, the portion of the defeated American Jobs Act dealing with teachers and first responders, has missed a big problem with the approach the bill takes.

Carolina Journal Executive Editor Don Carrington attended Obama’s three main events on the North Carolina leg of the bus tour as a reporter and photographer — at the Asheville airport, at West Wilkes High School, and at Guilford Technical Community College.

Here’s some of what Obama said Monday in Asheville (photo by Don below):

So this week I’m going to ask members of Congress to vote on one component of the plan, which is whether we should put hundreds of thousands of teachers back in the classroom, and cops back on the street, and firefighters back to work. (Applause.) So members of Congress will have a chance to decide — what kind of future do our kids deserve? Should we stand up for men and women who are often digging into their own pockets to buy school supplies, when we know that the education of our children is going to determine our future as a nation? (Applause.)

The president echoed these sentiments at all three stops.

He and supporters are saying, in essence, that they know the proper level of funding and staffing for K-12 teachers and emergency-service workers. State and local officials are wrong, or ignorant. Otherwise, why would Washington immediately pump more (borrowed) money into local agencies that were funded using a democratic, deliberative process taking several months and involving hundreds of state legislatures, city councils, and county commissions — and using input from countless numbers of local citizens?

Obama’s bill would second-guess state and local officials, substituting his preferences for theirs. In North Carolina, our General Assembly chose to set funding levels for K-12 education and a host of other public functions. Lawmakers allocated revenues to those tasks. Counties supplemented that funding. And local school boards decided how to divide the money and responsibility among thousands of school facilities across the state.

If the people of North Carolina — or any other state — disagree with the conclusions made by the people they elected, voters can replace those officials in a little more than a year with new representatives who have different priorities.

But Obama wants to bypass that orderly process, scrap all those decisions, and substitute his judgment for those of the people who were chosen to make those difficult calls.

Carolina Journal has reported and commented on the screwy nature of the American Jobs Act — how it supports teachers and first responders for only one year, leaving states on the hook for the remainder of the three-year program, how it makes a mockery of the principles of federalism, and how the president’s plan would fund many more teachers than the number of education jobs that have allegedly been lost.

But the bottom line is this: The president thinks you and the people you elect are too stupid to decide on your behalf how to spend the money to run your local schools.

Might as well suspend next year’s election and have Washington run our legislatures and school boards.