FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Rep. Mark Harris, R-N.C., has introduced an amendment to stop Democrats from blocking the closure of the Education Department.
In the bill to fund the Departments of Health, Labor, and Education, Democrats had inserted a provision to block funds previously appropriated to the Department of Education “for any activity relating to implementing a reorganization that decentralizes, reduces the staffing level, or alters the responsibilities, structure, authority, or functionality of the Budget Service as in effect on January 1, 2018.”
Harris’ amendment, introduced on Wednesday, would strike this section from the bill.
When asked by The Daily Signal about the Democrats’ plan, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said she is working in conjunction with Congress to codify the reassignments of responsibilities to other agencies.
“As we look at the budget, and we look at the ways that we’re trying to do this, they make sense,” she said in an exclusive interview. “This is not something that’s extraordinary that we’re doing. There hasn’t always been a Department of Education.”
“It didn’t come about until 1980 and all of the funding streams managed to get to where they were supposed to go, and I just certainly think that we can get rid of a lot of the bureaucracy and the cost in Washington,” she continued.
“We can make it more efficient. We can have less regulation and all of that is a good thing for our students.”
McMahon said the Department has spent $1.7 trillion, but it has failed to improve the nation’s report card scores.
“We are not doing something right and the actions that we have taken in Washington so far,” she said, “building up this bureaucracy that we have here has not been effective.”
McMahon told The Daily Signal in July that she planned to work with Congress on dismantling the agency through small pieces of legislation.
That effort would include moving certain critical responsibilities, such as special-needs education and student loans, to other federal agencies, she noted.
