Trump should use the Education Department, not abolish it
Max Eden
October 16, 2024
During his 1980 presidential campaign, former President Ronald Reagan ran on shutting down the Department of Education, then in its infancy. But he couldn’t even get a Republican in Congress to introduce a bill to do it.
Ever since, Republican presidential candidates have made the same campaign promise, only to know not really what to do with the department when their friends in Congress tell them to pound sand.
If he’s elected back to office, former President Donald Trump could totally break that mold.
After eight years of former President Barack Obama’s overreach, there was almost total consensus among conservative education policy wonks that it was time to rein in the Education Department. Back then, if you proposed using the agency to do anything proactive, you’d be told, “If we push the envelope, that’ll give them ideas and make them angry, and they’ll overreach even more next time.”
So, under Trump, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos governed in a relatively restrained manner. And the Biden-Harris administration came in afterward and went about as administratively bonkers as anyone could have imagined anyhow.
