Republicans Oppose Legislation Demanding Details on Trump’s Plan to Close ED

Republicans struck down a Democratic-led attempt to gather more information on President Trump’s plans to dismantle the Department of Education on Wednesday, arguing collecting agency documents would cost time and distract political appointees from their efforts to repair the American education system.

“This resolution of inquiry is an attempt by the Democrats to derail the work of this committee and gaslight Americans about Democrats’ decades of failure on education,” Rep. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican and chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said in his opening remarks.

The committee voted 18 to 12 along party lines to kill the one-page resolution following a three-hour markup hearing earlier yesterday morning. The legislation received letters of support from the National Education Association and National Down Syndrome Society and no letters of opposition.

The resolution would have required Education Secretary Linda McMahon to turn over unredacted copies of any documents or recorded communications such as emails or texts concerning the president’s executive order to close the department to the “maximum extent” permitted by law. The inquiry also sought records related to a March 11 reduction in force that slashed the department’s staff nearly in half and about McMahon’s memo describing her agency’s “final mission.” The resolution did not seek to reverse Trump’s plans for the department’s closure—only to gain more information about how McMahon would carry it out.

Due to procedural rules for resolutions of inquiry, the legislation will still head to the House floor but with an adverse report, essentially stopping it dead and preventing a full chamber vote.

The committee also considered three Republican-sponsored bills during Wednesday’s markup regarding K-12 education as well as the Flexibility for Workers Education Act, which would cut red tape that requires employers to count professional development opportunities as working hours. All four bills cleared the committee.

When arguing against the resolution, Republicans repeatedly pointed to statistics that they say prove America’s K-12 schools and universities are failing in their mission to prepare students for success. Democrats are trying to defend a department that has produced poor results while the Trump administration is trying to fix it, they argued.

“Republicans believe there is a better way. We believe in reducing bureaucracy, trusting our educators, trusting our state and local leaders, and trusting the innovators who are pushing against the barriers thrown up by the bureaucracy,” said Rep. Bob Onder, a Missouri Republican. “And thankfully, we finally have an administration that shares our vision.” Onder added that opposing the resolution would be the best way to continue that momentum.

But Democrats argued that allowing unelected billionaires like Elon Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency, to reduce the capacity of a Cabinet-level department would cause more harm than help.

“This resolution of inquiry isn’t a cheap political stunt. It’s a call for transparency and accountability,” Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and the committee’s ranking member, said in his opening remarks. “We are simply asking for the administration to share their plans for how they intend to dismantle the department while still carrying out its essential duties.”

‘Left in the Dark’

Although McMahon has said she’ll work with Congress to close the agency, as required by law, and abide by statutory requirements until then, she has not clarified what those statutory requirements are or how she intends to fulfill them with a shrunken staff.

“Mr. Chairman,” Scott said, “I do not know if the details of the department’s actions have been shared with you or your staff, but I can tell you that we’re being left in the dark.”

Still, Onder and other conservatives said the Democrats’ resolution was nothing more than a political show. He noted that the GOP utilized resolutions of inquiry throughout the Biden administration but said they did so after months of “stonewalling” from President Biden.

“In contrast, the Trump administration has been forthcoming with information, but the minority has still skipped all the ordinary oversight steps,” Onder said.

Rep. Michael Rulli, an Ohio Republican, piggybacked on Onder’s statement, railing against the department for how it currently distributes per-student spending unequally.

“The answer isn’t always throwing money at it. The answer is taking it at a grassroots approach,” he said. “We had 200 years of America where the local school districts, the local one-room schoolhouse was able to educate the kids in the community—very lovely—and then we have this organization, which is nothing but federal bureaucracy, fat, bloated admin cost that isn’t really fulfilling anything.”

Just for “giggles,” Rulli added, if you crunch the numbers and split up the department’s budget among the 50 states, each of Ohio’s 620 public school districts could receive an additional $5 million.

“We will take this money from the Department of Education, and we will put it right into the local school districts,” he said.

(A large chunk of the department’s nearly $80 billion discretionary budget goes to running the student aid system, grants to support institutions and the Pell Grant program, among other budget line items.)

But Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat, refuted that assertion, saying Rulli’s claim that no money makes its way to local districts was “flat out wrong.” She noted that schools in his Ohio district received about 9 percent of their funding from the federal government, or $1,592 per student.

Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat, agreed that cuts to the department won’t put money back in the hands of local leaders. Instead, they functionally terminate offices that protect students with disabilities, require moving “massive programs” like the Pell Grant and student loans to other agencies and choke off “billions of dollars” in funding for tutoring, mental health and addressing the teacher shortage, he explained—all without congressional approval, which is against the law.

“They have hacked away at the infrastructure of the federal education system and left states scrambling to figure out how to cover the gaps,” he said.

Takano and Scott were both particularly alarmed by cuts made to the department’s Office for Civil Rights, which lost approximately 240 of its 550 employees and seven of its 12 regional offices.

“How is it more efficient to give half the staff twice the amount of work?” Scott asked.

In the meantime, Takano said, the Trump administration is force-feeding Americans a “diet of misinformation.” Trump says he will return power to the states, but only about 10 percent of funding for K-12 comes from the federal department, so what is there to return, he asked.

Rep. Jahana Hayes, a Connecticut Democrat, was the last of her party’s members to speak. She referred to Rulli’s statement that 200 years ago a one-room schoolhouse worked, saying, “A lot has changed in 200 years.”

Public schools and colleges now depend on federal funding for wraparound support services, especially for students with disabilities, explained Hayes, who was a classroom teacher before she was elected to Congress. The resolution only asks the education secretary to share what the plan is “so parents can have a sense of comfort in knowing how these services can be provided.”

“If this plan is so great, why is it so secret?” she said. “I suspect that we have not seen it because there is no plan.”