DeVos Defends Trump’s Education Budget. Will Democrats Stick to Promises for Something Better?
Betsy DeVos has been on Capitol Hill in recent weeks trying to defend an indefensible, fiscal year 2021 Education Department budget proposal. She has testified to House and then Senate appropriations subcommittees, where members of Congress deserve credit for defending common sense and the common good by summarily rejecting what Betsy DeVos was trying to sell them.
In late February, DeVos appeared before the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees the budget of the Department of Education. Education Week‘s Andrew Ujifusa explains: “DeVos defended the Trump fiscal year 2021 budget blueprint that would cut $5.6 billion from the U.S. Department of Education’s current budget of $71.2 billion and roll most federal K-12 programs—29 in total—into a formula-driven block grant… ‘What have we bought with all that spending?’ DeVos asked, before answering her own question that there were merely ‘sad results’….” Ujifusa continues: “But the most significant moment of the hearing perhaps came when Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., the chairwoman of the House appropriations committee, told DeVos: ‘We are going to reject this proposal.'”
Last week, DeVos went before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies. Unlike the House, the U.S. Senate is dominated by a Republican majority, but that fact did not change the response of members of the committee to the proposal DeVos came to defend. The Hill‘s Marty Johnson quotes DeVos’s assessment of American public schools: “DeVos, in her opening statements… claimed that the new $19.4 billion block grant program would ‘unleash new innovation at the state and local level, and continue to expand proven reforms, including public charter schools, magnet CONTINUE READING:DeVos Defends Trump’s Education Budget. Will Democrats Stick to Promises for Something Better? | janresseger
