I see that Donald Trump has reaffirmed his plan to abolish the Department of Education, so I'll remind everyone yet again that this meaningless. The question is what programs you're going to abolish, and on that score the Department of Education is pretty simple:¹
You've got Pell Grants for working and middle-class college students. You've got Title I grants for elementary and high schools in low-income areas. And you've got money for special ed kids.
Aside from that you've got a hodgepodge of tiny programs: deaf and blind students, historically Black colleges, kids with disabilities, Indian schools, vocational rehabilitation, etc. etc. But the Big Three are all that really matter. Does anyone really want to kill those off? And if not, who cares what the name of the agency that oversees them is?
¹These figures are approximate and don't include government guaranteed student loans. FY24 was a weird year with lots of continuing resolutions and no federal budget until halfway through the year, so it's hard to figure out spending in detail.
What he wants to stop isnthe guidance issued to allow queer (and minority) people equal access to school. You know, because his religious friends hate us and we'e icky and see through his game.
About 75% of HBCU students use Pell Grants. Those are the kind of students they don't want educated.
Unless I missed it, not a single mention of the kill-the-DoE proposal in the NYT. Not in the LAT, either. Lots of mentions in social media but DC journalists must be busy with more important stuff.
Waaaay down in the folds, if at all.
MEOOOOOW...WE Republicans...WE no want any education..WE want YOUR MONEY....WE want you to work and obey....WE make rich people richer.....GET BACK TO WORK...KITTIES KNOW
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Truth. Still damn funny.
Would that this question (as KD puts it) could be asked of the Republicans, and hear their answers.
All grants for college education should be eliminated and replaced with loans.
Schools should be responsible for the first 20% of defaulted loans for each student.
A college education should deliver more value than it costs and every student and school should be laser focused on making sure that every student's education does that.
"Schools should be responsible for the first 20% of defaulted loans for each student." So no responsibility for the lenders? Of course not. Predatory lending is capitalism at its finest.
That makes sense too. I might want to split it.
Then lenders need to assess ability to repay based on amount borrowed, high school record, standardized test scores, university, major, and academic performance in university. If a student is unlikely to be able to repay they do not lend.
Do you actually think Republicans are going to hamper or limit the ability of private lenders to fleece people with high interest loans? There is an issue with student loans, but leaving it up to the free market is part of the reason we have an issue to begin with.
Student loans are not a free market. They are mostly government guaranteed.
They also are usually low interest rate.
When I could get an unsecured HELOC for 4%, student loans started at 10%, dear.
Which one of these loans is dischargeable in bankruptcy?
Ahh, yes, the "I got mine fuck you" guy who supports murderers who plan and execute pedestrians for complaining about being hit with a car.
A college education should deliver more value than it costs
Ah, yes , the idiotic conservative belief that there is no value except what you can turn into money.
If you claim there is additional value you should be able to articulate what that value is and explain why its value to the US exceeds the cost if you want the American taxpayer to pay for it.
Roses are pretty and that has value but that doesn't mean that our taxes should pay to plant rose bushes in every highway median in the country.
We don't need no Education...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0bi7OfaKMY
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The aim of so many on the right (particularly but not only the christianists) is to turn education into indoctrination, to absolutely destroy the notion of "liberal arts," to subvert science to religion (for christianists; fossil fuel magnates just want to ensure capital overrules science all the time), and to generally diminish the prestige associated with higher education.
They see ending the Department of Education as the first step toward their greater goal. But it's not by any means their ultimate goal.
+1
They want profits over science at all points.
Yeah, why would anyone worry about Trump wanting to eliminate grants for poor people, that would be so out of character for Republicans there's no way they'd go for that right?
Title One programs benefit poverty-stricken districts. I used to work in one such district, and the program assured that my colleagues and I had decent qualifications and received suitable professional development. The program funded a Literacy Coordinator. Among other things, she provided training that improved my classroom teaching dramatically. The program gets targeted by the conservative think tanks like the Manhattan Institute for "(morphing) into a wedge used by the federal government to pursue its own educational agenda. That strategy seems particularly ill-suited to the partisan educational issues of today, which cry out for local deliberation, innovation, and educational pluralism." Note the term "partisan."
I think the attack on the DOE is primarily chum for social conservatives who hate public schools for a variety of reasons. Since Title I is a means-tested program that benefits poor public sschool districts, it doesn't help private schools or religious schools at all. HOW UNFAIR!!!! /s
I doubt any of these three major programs will be cut.
Expect an attempt atleast. If they comtroll both houses of congress they will definitely try to do as much as they can.
Isn't the Dept of Ed also in charge of all federal student loan program terms? They decide how the PSLF and income-based repayment plans will work.
Given the right's desire to increase private education, homeschooling, and charters, I figure most money will be turned into block grants for the states with few controls. Public schools in lower-income urban and rural areas in red states are in deep trouble. Lots of rural areas will basically become special ed deserts - no charter or private will take them. It'll be homeschooling with a weekly visit from a specialist, probably online.
Block grants: Trump announced that exactly. He wants to give the money to the states to use as they see fit.
Exactly. Block grants that allow for religious based education at the taxpayers expense.
Block grants are worse than that. They can be used to displace local funding.
It's welfare for the welfare states.
How much education do you need to pick berries or tobacco or cotton?
The red states will simply get rid of all the immigrants, then replace them with the grownups who didn’t get special ed (or went to jail).
Two birds, one stone, lots of cruelty.
Once Trump gets rid of the undocumented works, he'll march college kids and professors from the elite colleges into the fields to harvest the rice (or was that Mao?).
Just to be safe, follow the Khmer Rouge playbook at conscript any brainy-looking malcontents wearing eyeglasses. 🤓
Nah, Stephan Miller will fulfill the conservative wet dream of making all the people on welfare earn their checks in the fields and slaughterhouses. Somebody has to replace those illegals and the freeloaders who won't work are easy answer.
This should definitely kill universities after a single semester of implementation. Unlike in China, our universities aren’t free - they cost a fortune. Nobody is going to pay $20,000+ a year to work on a farm.
You say that they will think that's a bad thing. Universities are hotbeds of godless logic and critical thinking, they'd be happy to have them killed off.
Does anyone really want to cut support for middle class and poor people? Um, yes. They are called Republicans. Jebus Kevin.
Kevin is one of those smart people who knows nothing about how things actually are working.
Kevin's comment section is full of people incapable of recognizing rhetorical questions and insist on treating them as literal.
"Once Trump gets rid of the undocumented works, he'll march college kids and professors from the elite colleges into the fields to harvest the rice"
Only if they flunk the physical to get into the military - you know, bone spurs and all that
"Does anyone really want to kill those off?"
Sometimes, Kevin, you sound like someone who has just moved here from another continent.
Very often, you insist on treating rhetorical questions as if they were literal.
I think that this is the start of a cycle of purposeful mismanagement rather than a bid to eliminate the funding.
DoE ends and the programs get transferred to other departments, such as HHS.
HHS isn't equipped to manage it, doesn't know history/institutional memory and money moves slower and less efficiently.
Public Outrage ensues or is astroturfed.
Tech Bros say that they can do it better, if allowed to "wet their beaks"/earn a profit.
etc.
The funding gets whittled little by little and more people get to take a taste.
Additionally, folding the appropriations into a larger department inflates the department's topline numbers and makes cutting the topline number easier, resulting in backend budget cuts that couldn't be achieved as easily.
+1
Thiel and his merry band of libertarians will make sure everything that can be outsourced for private profit will be. The voters will be so pleased that big government is finally out of their lives /s.
DoEd & Thiel? Nah, Waltons, Langone, Decker, and a bunch of Big Box CEOs/founders that started up "education reform" think tanks to destroy teachers' unions to prevent their stores from unionizing.
The thing is. We don't really need people like Kevin explaining how Trump is just being performative and isn't really going to do anything bad.
What we need is people saying:
Trump is going to eliminate student aid for middle and lower class students
Trump is going to eliminate special education funding
Trump is going to eliminate Title 1 funding for poor schools....
etc.
Because that is actually what happens if you SHRINK the government by eliminating the Department of Education. Which is actually what Republicans say they want to do. As opposed to simply re-organizing the government and changing the letterhead.
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You assume the voters will care. They clearly just want lower grocery and gas prices and are willing to give up whatever it takes to get them.
This and also will the voters will be allowed to care? Like, if voters discover groceries and gas prices aren’t going down and even go up (because of all the mismanagement and corruption), will they be presented with a meaningful choice at the next election to reverse it? Will we even have another election? Lots of people are disgruntled in Hong Kong right now, but they no longer have any means to express it to their leadership.
I don't see any major changes on the Dem side. The power structure has bought into subservience to their capitalist overlords who provide campaign funds. I think the Dems thought they could take the money and funnel it into good causes, but it sure hasn't worked out that way.
Telling everyone to learn to code and forgiving college loans was a slap in the face to the non college educated working class, whom they've lost forever at this point.
The larger problem at work on a global scale is that the modern world is leaving behind those who work with their hands and backs in favor of those who can add value to profit margins by working with their brains. This isn't unique to the US. In lower living standards countries there has been an increase in living standards, but it plays out the same in the long run. Eventually wages will stagnate and costs will go up, with a similar result.
'Slap in the face' you lie about what was said and done.
You are the cause of the problem.
so, getting rid of DoEd reduces the overall budget by 1.8%
and this helps exactly how?
Since McConnell refused to confirm any of Obama's judges, Schumer should return the favor and refuse to confirm ANY cabinet nomination.
There's nothing wrong with Revenge. It's a great way to get even
"Schumer should return the favor and refuse to confirm ANY cabinet nomination."
Tough to do when you are not the Senate Majority Leader, which Schumer won't be by the time Trump is president in January.
This and also Trump’s team already is signaling they’ll just have permanent “recess” appointments. So even if the Senate were to oppose a nominee - yeah I couldn’t stop laughing at this idea either but maybe 4 GOP senators will be personally peeved at one? - he’ll just install them on a rotating short-term basis without approval necessary.
Keep em uneducated, less they start looking behind the curtain
If I’m not mistaken, newer Cabinet positions like Education, HHS, etc. were created by acts of Congress, and eliminating or defunding them would require Congressional action. We’ll see if the votes are there.
Jesus christ, people. I'm autistic and even I can recognize when Kevin asks a rhetorical question. A lot of you are making yourselves look like idiots when you insist on responding to them by berating Kevin for believing something that he clearly does not.
I'm pretty sure that, by asking them as often as he does these days, he's trolling you. And you fall for it every time.