US Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Sunday insisted there won’t be cuts to programs involving special education and student loans even if they end up administered by other departments.
Laying out her game plan to unwind her agency as much as possible, McMahon explained that the Trump administration has at least loose ideas about which offices under the DOE to move elsewhere.
“The outward-facing programs that are going to be affecting students are — there’s not going to be any defunding for those programs,” McMahon said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“When [Trump] talked about student loans, that would be going to the Small Business Administration,” McMahon said. “The programs for students with disabilities will more than likely rest in [the Department of Health and Human Services], which, by the way, is where they began.
“We want to make sure that that funding continues in departments where it needs to be but at the same time give states the opportunities to be innovative and creative with their teaching,” McMahon said.
President Trump signed a vague executive order last week directing McMahon to begin the closure of the Education Department to the “maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”
He later said he specifically wanted to shift the DOE’s work on student loans and special needs kids to other departments.
“I think we’re looking at putting things in different departments where they can operate very efficiently as we look at how we can shut down the Department of Education,” McMahon said.
She noted that the department doesn’t teach a single student or develop curriculum.
The education secretary has acknowledged that the Trump administration will need an act of Congress to fully eliminate the department.
But she’s already taken drastic steps to begin dismantling it, including by slashing nearly half of its workforce earlier this month.
The Department of Education was created in 1979 under late former President Jimmy Carter. The department has the lowest staffing levels and one of the largest budgets of any department in the presidential cabinet.
Starting with former President Ronald Reagan, conservatives had long pushed to abolish it but have been unsuccessful thus far.
Former President Barack Obama signed legislation in 2015 restricting the Department of Education from wading too heavily into local education issues. Still, McMahon contended that the DOE, which had a $268 billion budget last year, is too cumbersome with states in how it doles out money.
“A lot of the funding that goes into states now goes with a lot of red tape, a lot of strings attached to it,” she argued.
In some areas such as support for children with disabilities, McMahon said she wants to see “even more funding go to the states for that” and contended that the administration of those programs should largely be done at the state level even if the DHHS takes over them.
“Certainly, President Trump has said he will move things in accordance with the law and in cooperation with Congress,” she added.
During the interview, McMahon also briefly touched on Columbia University’s decision to cave to the Trump administration’s demands that it revamp its approach to combating antisemitism on campus.
Trump’s team had frozen roughly $400 million worth of federal aid to the Ivy League school while demanding changes.
McMahon said Columbia University’s concessions mean “we are on the right track now to make sure the final negotiations to unfreeze that money will be in place.
“[Interim Columbia President] Katrina Armstrong wanted to make sure there was no discrimination of any kind” in agreeing to the White House’s demands, McMahon said. “She wanted to address any systemic issues that were identified relative to the antisemitism on campus.”
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