Senator says eliminating the Department of Education could take 'years'
South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, who introduced legislation last month to eliminate the Department of Education, told ABC News closing the agency could take "a couple of years."
"We want to do it right," Rounds said, making it unlikely the department will see major changes on Day 1 of the next administration. "This is not just a 'make noise' bill. This is a serious [bill]. It's taken us a year and a half to write this bill."
Rounds' "Returning Education to Our States" bill builds on one of President-elect Donald Trump's key campaign promises. It has a road map to elimination, sending block grants to states and redistributing major federal funding to other agencies, but it needs 60 votes in the Senate to pass and then be signed into law.
"We've tried to set this up so that some of it could be done within reconciliation. Some of it we'll have to gain consensus on by executive order, some of which may very well take 60 votes. So we might not get everything we want," Rounds acknowledged.
Rounds said he has not met with or discussed the bill with Linda McMahon, Trump's education secretary pick. Meanwhile, Rounds insisted that federal programs affecting vulnerable students and those with special needs will not be gutted.
"We don't want to lose the specific offices that deliver particular congressionally directed funds, such as special education, IDEA and so forth," said Rounds, referencing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. "All of that is included in a redirection to other locations, but all those offices still remain with the focus of sending that money back [to the states]."
Earlier this week, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a member of the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told ABC News that reaching a 60-vote threshold to pass legislation that dismantles the agency would be "very difficult."
"We need to downsize it," Tuberville said. "More money needs to go back to the states, every state, and you know, we can have a group up here that can -- they can supposedly be the Department of Education, but to have [4,000] or 5,000 people up here makes no sense. I mean, we need to take as much money as we can, put it back in the states, put it back in the schools and give these students a chance."
Augustus Mays, vice president for partnerships and engagement at the advocacy group The Education Trust, said block grants could disproportionately affect marginalized students.
"If you were to take away, or block grant, the funding that goes towards IDEA, then you will have a situation where students with disabilities may not be getting the support they need towards a free and appropriate public education, which is required by law," Mays told ABC News.
"That could be $34 billion from the federal government that would be going out to all these states to support those needs, and states would be picking up that bill. … [Lawmakers] need to understand what that would actually mean if they were to eliminate Department of Ed," he warned.
However, if the president-elect and his Cabinet picks start firing federal employees, education experts suggest it would be too tall a task for a diminished department to administer Education Department funds to states and have states distribute them to school districts. Clare McCann at American University said that is something skilled employees at the Department of Education would be equipped to do.
"There's a reason the Department of Education was created, and it was to have this kind of in-house expertise and policy background on these [education] issues," McCann told ABC News. "The civil servants who work at the Department of Education are true experts in the field."
North Carolina Sen. Ted Budd, a Republican, said he disagreed with McCann's stance.
"The goal is more education, right?" he said. "And do you need a massive government bureaucracy to do that? Probably not."
Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie told ABC News he will also be bringing forward legislation to abolish the Department of Education within the "first few weeks" of the 119th Congress.
"There'll be one sentence -- only thing that will change is the date: The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2026," Massie told ABC News.
However, experts have told ABC News that Massie's one-sentence bill may not be realistic as all the funding that currently goes to the department will have to be redirected.
"The Department of Education administers a whole lot of laws," said Neal McCluskey, an education analyst at the libertarian think tank The Cato Institute. "Those laws have to be changed about who runs student aid and who is tasked with making decisions about cancelling student debt and who decides or who administers Title I and lots of these other federal programs."
