The Senate education committee approved legislation to stop four of the Trump administration’s deals to downsize the Education Department.
In a 13-9 vote, the Senate HELP Committee advanced S. 5046, a bipartisan bill from Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that would prohibit the Education Department from transferring special education and several other major education offices to other federal agencies.
Thursday’s Senate markup represents a major legislative effort to block President Donald Trump from dismantling the education agency without the approval of Congress.
“This bill is straightforward,” Collins said. “It keeps the administration of important landmark education programs at the Department of Education, where Congress specifically put them and where they belong.”
The Trump administration has initiated agreements with other federal departments to manage education programs in the absence of congressional approval to shut the agency down. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has called these deals “proofs of concept” to show lawmakers how other federal departments can handle education responsibilities.
“Secretary McMahon promised Congress a proof of concept that is currently underway and delivering results across our partner agencies, and it is entirely premature to sabotage this effort before it has the chance to eliminate bureaucratic barriers and fully deliver the results that our students, families, and educators deserve,” Savannah Newhouse, an Education Department press secretary, said in a statement.
Congress approved nonbinding language in its most recent spending bill saying the education agency has no authority to transfer its functions to other agencies. But this latest bill goes further because it would stop the agency from transferring the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services as well as functions of the offices of Elementary and Secondary Education, Postsecondary Education and Indian Education from being moved to other federal agencies. These offices are responsible for overseeing key federal education programs and billions of dollars in federal funding, including Title I funds that support low-income schools, federal TRIO programs that help disadvantaged students prepare for college and tribal education programs.
Murkowski said that programs Congress directed to exist at the education agency “for a good reason” should remain there.
“We cannot lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day, we’re talking about children, whether it’s children with special needs, whether it’s children in our elementary schools, whether it’s our Native students — making sure that we don’t lose that focus,” Murkowski said.
But the bill wouldn’t completely stifle all of the department’s interagency agreements. The legislation doesn’t target agreements to shift career and technical education programs to the Labor Department, federal student loan functions to the Treasury Department or civil rights enforcement to the Justice Department, for instance, despite Democrats wanting to stop those deals too.
McMahon, the heads of Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior, State and Treasury, and the acting attorney general — who are all managing federal education programs under deals with the education agency — sent a letter to congressional leadership Thursday detailing how the agreements are “breaking up the failed federal education bureaucracy.”
The bill’s future in the Senate is unclear, but Kaine told POLITICO that he hopes the bill “factors into appropriations discussions.” The bill would conflict with legislative efforts in the House, where the Education and Workforce Committee voted last month to permanently move a trove of education programs to other agencies.
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