'Why Are You In This Job?': Madeleine Dean Grills Secretary Linda McMahon About Shuttering Education Department

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During a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) questioned Secretary of Education Linda McMahon about the Trump administration's goal to shutter the Department of Education.

Transcript

00:00Ms. Dean.

00:02Ms. Thank you, Chairman Adderholt, Ranking Member DeLauro for holding this hearing,

00:05and I thank you, Secretary McMahon, for being here today.

00:09I want to start with the role of the Department of Education.

00:12I come at this as a mother, as a grandmother, a former teacher myself,

00:16a former state legislator with two grandmothers who were public school teachers.

00:20I have a lot of experience with the education system in Pennsylvania as well as the country.

00:25First, the history of the federal education involvement, and Ms. Watson Coleman was getting at some of this that I'd like to build upon.

00:34Federal investments in education began to increase dramatically in the 50s and 60s and 70s,

00:41in tandem with the rise of the success of the Civil Rights Movement.

00:45Americans finally began to recognize the vast inequalities in our education system.

00:51Plus, federal funding was used to improve education access for students from poor backgrounds,

00:56or minority students, for women, for people with disabilities, and other marginalized groups.

01:01Finally, Congress established the Department of Education in 1979, replacing the Office of Education.

01:08Secretary McMahon, it's alarming that you and the President want to turn that clock back.

01:15You take us back to a time before any federal oversight of education,

01:20before many of the programs that guarantee free and equal access to education for all Americans.

01:25You said as much in your testimony.

01:27After all the Department of Education's work to ensure equal access to education,

01:32you're embarking on the Department's final mission?

01:35You intend to put yourself out of a job?

01:38That's a little jarring to me.

01:40If you were a pediatric oncologist, I'd welcome that.

01:45Let's get you out of a job through cures, through healing, through ending of pediatric cancer.

01:51But ending a department that is supposed to oversee the education of our very youngest to guide their future?

01:59Have you taken the time to educate yourself about this history?

02:03I'd encourage you to go ask students who attended school back then.

02:06Black students, brown students, students with disabilities, students from poor families.

02:11What was access like for them before the Department of Education?

02:16Frankly, eliminating the Department of Education to me is rather Orwellian.

02:21The President and his administration don't want an educated populace.

02:26Why don't we just go back to the book 1984 if it hasn't been banned?

02:30It's clear to me, you, this administration, wants an uneducated electorate,

02:36so that Mr. Trump and his courtiers can control thought, therefore control votes, and control the population.

02:43I'll note a secondary measure here that is going on.

02:48The increase in funding for charter schools.

02:50We know that charter schools originally were supposed to be incubators of the best ideas,

02:55great practices to be brought back into the public school education system,

03:00so that every kid had an access to such things.

03:03But this administration, and you, who want to put yourself out of a job,

03:07following the playbook, page 319 of Project 2025, first sentence,

03:13shutter the Department of Education.

03:15You're all following the book, that book.

03:17Too bad that one wasn't banned.

03:19And yet, privatizing is really the other ambition.

03:24An uneducated electorate and profit and privatization of our education system.

03:30Do you promise us that that isn't your ambition?

03:34That clearly is not my ambition.

03:36I think I've stated that very well today.

03:38Then why in God's name do you want to shutter it?

03:40Why don't you want to protect kids with disabilities?

03:42Why don't you want to protect kids who have been every decade denied equal access,

03:49simply because of how much their parents make, the zip code they live in,

03:53the color of their skin?

03:54Why are you shuttering a department that's supposed to lift up those children?

03:58Because those programs don't have to flow through the Department of Education and they...

04:03They can flow through the state.

04:05I'm a state, I was a state legislator.

04:07That's called shift and shaft.

04:09I've spoken with the governor of Pennsylvania.

04:11They can't pick up the tab anymore for education of our students.

04:15Not to mention it would be inequitable by state, by state, by state.

04:20Why are you in this job at all if you don't have a dedication to the future of our children?

04:26Why are you in this job?

04:28I too am a mother and a grandmother.

04:30And I want the best for my family going forward.

04:34Vouchers.

04:35For my grandchildren, for my great-grandchildren.

04:37And I hope to leave a legacy that we have established best practices for education that all the states can use.

04:43That would be a great legacy to be able to leave, to be able to show states these are some of the things that they can do.

04:49I think states have to look at their budgets.

04:51Madam Secretary, the legacy you will be leaving is that I shut down the Department of Education.

04:56How we educate our children determines not just their future, but our own.

05:01I think it's a sad legacy you will leave.

05:03I yield back.

05:04The Department of Education is not educating anyone.

05:07Well, I can say this and I will.

05:09thank you.

05:16I will move.

05:19I will model policy and will do the work.

05:25I will do the work clubs, make new addresses for everyone for their children and present during the services.

05:28Let me introduce myself to Mr. eyelashes.

05:31Thank you so much.

05:32I will miss out the legal trick, please.

05:34We'll make sure the police work is really good.

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