Trump Education nominee Linda McMahon says shutting down DOE would ‘require congressional action’

Congress would need to pass a law to shutter the Department of Education (DOE) before it could be abolished, President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Education (DOE) told a Senate committee Thursday.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., first asked Linda McMahon whether she agrees the DOE would need congressional approval to close down entirely. 

“Certainly, President Trump understands that we’ll be working with Congress,” McMahon told the members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “We’d like to do this right. We’d like to make sure that we are presenting a plan that I think our senators could get on board with, and our Congress could get on board with, that would have a better functioning Department of Education, but it certainly does require congressional action.”

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Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., asked McMahon a similar question after a line of questioning about her support for Pell Grants.

“Let me just once again, get your feelings on this, that if there is a movement to abolish the Department of Education, it has to go through the United States Congress?” Sanders asked. 

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McMahon responded, “Yes, it is set up by the United States Congress, and we work with Congress. It clearly cannot be shut down without it.”

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, asked McMahon about Maine’s TRIO programs that help first-generation college students from families without higher education experience. Collins questioned how these programs could be maintained if the Department of Education were “abolish[ed]” or “substantially reorganized.”

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“These various things, especially the TRIO program, which we both agreed was just hit with a terrible blow just by regulatory action, when some of the students who were applying, their applications were rejected simply because of spacing on a form. And that kind of regulatory control just cannot stand. That is just impossible,” said McMahon.

“If I am confirmed to be able to get in and assess programs, how they can have the best oversight possible, how we can really take the bureaucracy out of education,” she said.

McMahon, nominated to head the Education Department, is stepping into a role that Trump has suggested he is seeking to eliminate. Trump recently indicated that if McMahon is confirmed, he wants her to “put herself out of a job.”

Ahead of McMahon’s confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Trump reiterated his intention to close the department, calling for it to be shut down “immediately.”

“It’s a big con job,” Trump said. “They ranked the top countries in the world. We’re ranked No. 40, but we’re ranked No. 1 in one department: cost per pupil. So, we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, but we’re ranked No. 40.”