Campaign Promises and Reality

The Department of Education

By Andrew Zuelke

Chairman, Constitution Party of Wisconsin

DOGE logo myCountrAI on X, via AI image generation, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I wanted to share some comments on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the efforts of President Trump. We Constitutionalists praise President Trump for the mass deporting of illegal immigrants, for fighting the fentanyl epidemic, stopping the alphabet soup people’s (LGBTQIA) Godless agenda allowing biological men in women’s spaces, sex-change mutilations, and the indoctrination of children in public schools. We thank the president and his team for exposing the enormous waste of our taxpayer dollars not just through USAID but other agencies of the government.

Some Points of Concern

It is the fervent hope of the Constitution Party that Republicans in Congress, after decades of promises to do so, will follow through on their campaign promises of eliminating the many unconstitutional agencies and will restore our federal government to its permitted funding duties under Article 1: Section 8. Will they also withdraw America from the one-world government agency that is the United Nations? Will they end the IRS (Infernal Revenue Stealers) and the Federal Reserve? Here are some points of concern –

On March 20^th President Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the so-called Department of Education (DoE). Great! The Constitution Party of WI and the national CP have advocated from our party’s humble beginnings as the US Taxpayer’s Party for the shuttering of the DOE.

A March 20^th article from The Hill, quotes Donald Trump as saying, “The department’s useful functions…will be preserved, fully preserved.” The article refers to Pell Grants, Title 1 funding and programs for students with disabilities. “They are going to be preserved in full and redistributed to various other agencies and departments.”

However, press secretary Karoline Leavitt is quoted in the same article as saying, “The Department of Education will be much smaller than it is today. As you know, the president’s executive order directed Linda McMahon [Education Secretary] to greatly minimize the agency. So, when it comes to student loans and Pell Grants, those will still be run out of the Department of Education.”

Leavitt added, “Any critical functions of the department…will remain.”

McMahon is quoted as saying that Trump’s “directive to me, clearly, is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we’ll have to work with Congress, you know, to get that accomplished.” Again, great! McMahon has laid off 1,315 staffers of the DoE, going from over 4,000 employees to just over 2,000.

Remember the Contract with America?

Just some thoughts on these quotes –

1. Both President Trump and McMahon said “shut down” the DoE, but Leavitt used the phrases “much smaller” and “greatly minimize.” Now, which is it? Minimize and eliminate are not the same. It also quotes Leavitt as saying things will “still be run out of the Department of Education.” How can you run programs out of an eliminated agency?
2. 

   IowaPolitics.com, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

   McMahon said she knows we will “have to work with Congress to get that accomplished.” If Republicans wanted to eliminate DoE all these years, shouldn’t GOP incumbent congressmen have already had the legislation to do that written up before the general election in anticipation of a Trump victory, so that come January 20^th, 2025 they could have hit the ground running? Remember the Contract with America? The GOP pledged that if they took control of the House of Representatives, they would bring ten items to the floor (which Democrats had blocked) for an up and down vote within the first 100 days, which Republicans to their credit did.

In fairness to President Trump, he has only been president for a few months, but it is now over sixty days and the legislation to eliminate this department still must be “worked on” by Congress? Couldn’t we have had a Contract with America II – this time for eliminating government departments – ready for an up and down vote?

3. On March 23^rd Trump said in an Oval Office press conference that he decided that the Small Business Administration (SBA) “will handle all of the student loan portfolio” and that student loans are “coming out of the Department of Education immediately.” Trump added that HHS Secretary Bobby Kennedy will be “handling special needs and all nutrition programs.”

So, the president still wants the federal government overseeing student loans, and the DoE will continue to exist, just in a diminished capacity? Republicans have said for years that they are against the federal government being involved in student loans. President Trump campaigned on eliminating the DoE, not just paring it down. We are also not going to eliminate the SBA? Small businesses were being created in America long before the SBA began in 1953. Mr. President, we do not need the SBA either.

Trying to Justify

High School Diploma
Mike Czyzewski from Oakland, CA, USA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

For any leftists trying to justify the continued existence of the DoE and are fighting its demise, I have two questions for them:

1. How did we educate children across America before October 1979? This was when the DoE was signed into law by the late Jimmy Carter.
2. If you received your high school diploma before 1979, do you think you are stupid? Many of you went on to get and hold down jobs, buy homes, pay bills, and start new businesses, all without a federal DoE “overseeing” your education.

If we do not fully eliminate the DoE, should Democrats ever retake power, they will take all the transferred duties and put them right back into the DoE. Worse, Democrats in Congress will vote to put additional funding into the DoE. They will cry that additional funding is needed to “make up for all the years of lost funding under Trump which hurt millions of poor, minority children in states across America.”

I hope I am wrong and that the Republican-controlled Congress passes the necessary legislation to eliminate the failed socialist experiment that is the DoE. Nothing would please me, and other Constitutionalists more.

Listen to this blog post as an audio file below.