As the Cato Handbook notes, “In 1943, the U.S. Constitution Sesquicentennial Commission, chaired by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, published a document that included the following: ‘Q. Where, in the Constitution, is there mention of education? A. There is none; education is a matter reserved for the states.’”
How ironic that Republican presidential contenders in 2023 agree with the liberal FDR—now that’s bipartisanship!
Let’s take a note from FDR and close the Department of Education.
It is unconstitutional.
It is a complete waste of money.
It has been a miserable failure over its entire existence, overseeing educational decline in the United States, not excellence.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has outlived its usefulness by many years.
In the early days of television, there was a valid need for a public option, given the extremely poor quality of private television in providing educational and informational options and the lack of modern technology.
But the public now has literally thousands of educational and informational options.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting should be defunded.
There is still a niche that requires the availability of public stations, but Federal funding is no longer required.
As someone who worked in education I can absolutely verify 2 & 3! There’s absolutely NO NEED for a federal DOE, it’s a complete waste of time and money!
Ah, but the standard is not required or even necessary but “necessary and proper”. Many things can seem necessary or be asserted to be, they may even be, but that does not make them proper as well.
Necessary alone is the route to Arbitrary Government.
Funding educational and informational content probably would have been necessary and proper (in relation to the Interstate Commerce Power) in the context of the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s and probably 90’s.
Educated folks know what Conservatives think about DOE.
Conservatives are not against education, they/us want to be able to CHOSE WHO will educate us and HOW.
Today’s brainwashing of the youth, for example, is NOT education.
You’re welcome.
I would eliminate most of that as not only unhelpful, but overall harmful. Subsidies do what subsidies always do, raise the price of the subsidized commodity (i.e. secondary education). I would retain Pell Grants. I would eliminate Federal loan guarantees and require students to seek loans in the free market.
Not just because loan guarantees act as subsidies but also because they encourage reckless borrowing. Without loan guarantees, banks would be far more selective in issuing loans and more often than not, would decline to give the loan. That in turn would keep many students out of college who simply do not need to be there in the first place and would obligate some to work their way through school. Others would pursue less costly educational options.
Loan guarantees are not helpful and indeed are actually harmful to students.
Young people want the student loan programs reformed.
They don’t want them done away with. It is another example of an older generation granting themselves something and then pulling up the ladder.
It is a popular position among a minority of people… but it isn’t going to play on a national scale unless there is a plan to continue the services that the department provides.
