Under new Secretary Linda McMahon, the U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday announced layoffs of almost 50% of its 4,000-plus workforce.
Those who are being let go were simply extra people on the payroll, or “bloat,” McMahon said.
It’s the first significant act by McMahon toward what President Donald Trump has said he hopes will culminate with the complete abolishment of the DOE.
That doesn’t mean the abolishment of services, as Trump’s political opponents might suggest, said Rep. Owens, a House Republican from Utah, on Washington Watch Wednesday.
Instead, it parallels the U.S. Supreme Court’s path for abortion in its 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Control of education, like abortion, will be returned largely to the states.
“We’re going to start block-granting funds to the states," Burgess explained. "So your state, whoever’s listening to this, will have income for your child to have choices and a better environment to grow and prosper.
With a starting budget of $14 billion, the Department of Education was created under President Jimmy Carter’s administration in 1979. At the time it split the Department of Health, Education and Welfare into two agencies, the Department of Education and Health and Human Services.
Critics of that move say the return on investment, from $268 billion DOE budget in 2024, has been a waste and that states need more say in matters of public education.
According to the most recent worldwide data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. ranked sixth in reading, 13th in science and 28th in math.
The U.S. also ranks third in spending on education per pupil among developed nations, according to OECD data.
Trump has repeatedly called the DOE a “big con job.”
“The president's directive to me clearly is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we'll have to work with Congress to get that accomplished. What we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat,” McMahon said.
McMahon’s business acumen
Owens told show host Tony Perkins that McMahon’s business background makes her imminently qualified to make cuts that federal agencies almost never see.
McMahon co-founded Titan Sports Inc., along with her husband Vince McMahon, in 1980.
The business became known as World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE). She served as president in 1993, then became CEO in 1997, before the corporation merged with TKO Holdings, Inc. in 2023.
Wrestling fans saw the McMahon family's antics in the ring but there were big business decisions going on behind the scenes. WWE eventually grew from a 13-person regional operation to a publicly-traded global operation with 800 employees and offices worldwide under her leadership.
McMahon later served with the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term and on the Connecticut State Board of Education before that.
“For the first time we’re bringing innovation (to the discussion). We’re putting a focus on what the end game is, and that’s our kids, not adults,” Owens said. “We’re having people who understand what bloat looks like.”
It appears no individual and no pet program will be spared in Trump’s remake of education, American Family Radio host Jenna Ellis said.
“He’s gutting it completely," she told the "Today's Issues" program this week.
A question of federal power
There are constitutional considerations, however. The administration has long acknowledged that it can’t abolish the department, birthed by Congress, on its own. But is that the end of Trump’s limitation? Does he have the authority to trash the department if it continues to exist in name with much of its responsibility repurposed?
“The question is whether Trump can unilaterally just completely dismantle it or whether this would take another act of Congress because Congress is the one that created the department,” Ellis said.
It could be reasoned that Trump is overstepping his bounds, says Ellis. But Congress overstepped its bounds first, she adds.
“According to the 9th and 10th Amendments, all powers not reserved to the federal or state government are reserved for who? We the people. We actually have powers of government," she argued.
Education is not a subject matter that Congress can appropriate funding for, Ellis continued, but Congress did it anyway in 1979 and in every annual budget since.
"So, I think that if Trump really wants to do this, he should attack the Department of Ed from that threshold question to say that the origination of the department was unconstitutional at its inception,” Ellis said.
With that strategy, Trump could encourage Congress to reverse its Carter-era creation.
“That would be the easiest way to completely get rid of the Department of Ed,” she said.
All about the product
An enterprise with similar productivity would never have lasted this long in the private sector, said Owens, who worked as a professional football player and also with communications companies Motorola and Nextel before his election in Utah’s Fourth District in 2020.
“The product has to have a good return on investment. What we've had with the Department of Education since 1978 is a terrible return on investment. Our kids have been dumbed down. We've been made to be more divisive. We don't have pride in our country, no connection with our founding fathers and a God who actually had his hands all over our nation,” Owens said.
At the end of the day, he concluded, "it’s all about the product.”
