GOP 2024 contenders seek to abolish Education Department.
Abolishing the Department of Education: A Hot Topic Among 2024 Republican Presidential Candidates
Abolishing the Department of Education is emerging as a favorite talking point among the 2024 Republican presidential candidates who say they would rein in a runaway federal bureaucracy if elected.
The agency, which was established in 1980, has long been a favorite punching bag of Republicans, with President Ronald Reagan among the first Republican standard-bearers to declare the department unnecessary and call for its elimination.
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Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who led the department during the Trump administration, told the Washington Examiner in an interview that eliminating the department has been a favorite talking point of conservatives for decades, but the discussion today has shifted due to the emergence of the parental rights movement.
“The talk about it today is really founded more in a desire to empower parents and families,” DeVos said. “Many have realized in what ways the department stands in the way of that empowerment.”
A number of the Republican presidential hopefuls have made abolishing or limiting the department a central theme of their campaign. Former President Donald Trump previously unveiled plans to eliminate the department during his term in office, while Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and former Vice President Mike Pence have all singled out the department for elimination.
DeVos, who has called for shutting down the department herself, said that the agency’s creation during the presidency of Jimmy Carter was a “payoff” to the teachers unions that supported Carter’s campaign in 1976.
“It is totally beholden to political organizations through the teachers unions,” DeVos said. “The federal government only funds less than 10% of education overall, yet the political blanket that they have over everything is undeniable, and it influences decisions down to the most local level.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Trump, DeSantis, Pence, and Ramaswamy campaigns, as well as those of former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie about their positions on abolishing the department.
The Trump, Pence, and Christie campaigns did not respond to the requests.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the DeSantis campaign pointed to a June 28 interview on Fox News where the governor vowed to eliminate the Education, Commerce, and Energy departments, along with the IRS, if he had the support in Congress.
“What I’m also going to do … is be prepared if Congress won’t go that far,” DeSantis said. “I’m going to use those agencies to push back against woke ideology and against the leftism that we see creeping into all institutions of American life. So for example, with the Department of Education: we reverse all the transgender sports stuff. Women’s sports should be protected. We reverse policies trying to inject [agendas into] the curriculum in our schools. That will all be gone.”
The campaign of Tim Scott shared a quote from a recent interview where the senator did not directly say if he would abolish the department, but said he would “starve” the department of funding beyond the 10% it provides to education institutions.
“We only provide 10% of the education dollars from the federal level,” the senator said. “I would starve the rest of the Department of Education and make sure that the states get to keep more of their money, to make more of their decisions that’s in the best interest of the kid. And it gives the parents a choice. When parents have a choice, the kid has a chance. That is not a political issue. That is an issue of surviving in the greatest country on Earth. And if you get a good education, you don’t survive. You thrive.”
Haley, who served as governor of South Carolina before her appointment to the U.N. ambassadorship, also declined to commit to the department’s elimination in a recent interview, but said she would “would send a team into every single agency and tell them to cut regulations, cut bureaucracy, take out any people that are problems.”
Ramaswamy has gone further than simply calling for the department’s elimination. The political newcomer features a comprehensive plan on his website to roll the functions of the department into other agencies, namely the Labor, State, and Treasury departments.
Ramaswamy told the Washington Examiner the increased spending on education has yielded worsening student achievement rates, and said the money spent would be better used if given to parents directly.
“Parents who move their kids to schools spending less money per student while achieving better outcomes ought to be able to keep half the money,” the candidate said. “A student at a failing school in NYC that receives $40k per student, who transfers to a school 15 miles away that receives $20k per student, gets to keep half the difference, $10k. Do the math. The Left calls math ‘racist.’ I call it a $250k-plus graduation gift for kids. You pick which one is better. I will shut down the Department of Education, without apology, there are much better uses for that money: put that money back into parents’ pockets where it belongs.”
For DeVos, she sees a challenge ahead for the candidates as they attempt to sell voters on the prospect of eliminating a department. The goal, she said, is to explain how the department is an “obstacle” to ”empowering students and families and teachers at the most local level.”
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The former secretary declined to single out any candidate’s messaging on the issue as particularly compelling, noting that they are “all finding their voice on it.”
“I think the emphasis needs to be on empowering students, teachers, families, and states,” she said. “We [shouldn’t] be for [anything] standing in the way of ensuring that every single student can achieve their full potential. The department, by definition and by practice, stands in the way of that.”
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