Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) introduced a bill to dissolve the Department of Education on Thursday, bringing President-elect Donald Trump‘s campaign promise to life.
The bill, “Returning Education to Our States Act,” would divide the DOE’s responsibilities and hand them off to other departments while still leaving primary decision-making to state and local education departments.
“One thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and sending all education and education work it needs back to the states,” Trump said on the campaign trail.
Removing the DOE was seen as a far-off goal until Republicans secured a trifecta in Washington, D.C., and Rounds introduced the bill. Now, the possibility is closer and more realistic than ever. Rounds argued that education is best left to local school boards and state departments rather than “unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.”
“The federal Department of Education has never educated a single student, and it’s long past time to end this bureaucratic Department that causes more harm than good,” Rounds said in a statement for Fox News.
Rounds has had his sights set on abolishing the DOE for years but has felt emboldened by the influx of Republicans coming to Congress next year and the incoming president sharing his vision.
Rounds’s plan consists of moving multiple Native American education programs to the Department of the Interior, transferring grant and loan programs to the Department of the Treasury, placing disability programs in the Department of Health and Human Services, giving career programs to the Department of Labor, and letting the State Department oversee the Fulbright-Hays Program which “supports research and training overseas.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The news of the bill comes just after Trump tapped Linda McMahon as his education secretary, a promotion from her previous position leading the Small Business Administration in Trump’s prior administration.
“It is my great honor to announce that Linda McMahon, former Administrator of the Small Business Administration, will be the United States Secretary of Education,” Trump said in a statement.