…your education dollars. Part of the Republicans’ platform this fall should be to abolish the Department of Education. No one would be able to accuse them of going back to “Bush’s failed policies” with that one. Well, at least not credibly.
23 thoughts on “Race To Waste”
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This si an idea well past time to be implemented. The Federal Department of “Dumming Down Education” is sucking this country dry of money and is not authorized by the constitution.
Abolishing the Dept. of Education was part of the RNC platform in 1980. So much for that.
Reagan never had a Republican Congress with which to do it.
We wish.. the GOP would never be that brave. But maybe we could convince them of a compromise. Let’s get rid of the DOE’s bureaucrats.. we will get rid of the bureaucracy and just give the money to each student enrolled in school in the form of a voucher. The slogan could be money for the children not the bureaucrats, and more money as their won’t be any more overhead.
This can be done if the right tactics are used. For example, why not propose abolishing the department and converting it’s entire 45M budget to education grants directly to local school districts. Just parcel that money out to the local districts to help pay teachers, etc. Once the dept is gone, it’s just another general budget line that will be easier to begin shrinking.
Oh just think of all the nasty things the leftists would say about hating children, science, minorities, schools, teachers, ect.
Why stop with the Department of Education? Time to drain the Federal alphabet soup bureaucracy swamp.
I’m very pessimistic that the Dept of Education will ever be abolished or trimmed, because too many people who aren’t paying enough attention believe that “more money = more education” and therefore “less money = less education”.
Therefore, anyone proposing to reduce the DoE’s budget must dislike education. The fact of the waste, and even counter-productive use of, so much of that money is not considered.
I went to school before the Department of Education was more than a gleam in Jimmy Carter’s eye. I graduated just in time to miss it affecting my life. (It went operational May 16, 1980; I graduated in June — graduation delayed due to the Miami riots.) And I went to one of the worst school systems in the country — though Coral Gables Senior High was one of the best schools in the area. And I still managed to learn reedin’ ‘n’ ritin’ ‘n’ all that stuff! Whaddaya know. Math is still hard, though.
Wodun, no kidding. One doesn’t need to imagine the screaming “GOP wants to terminate all education!” headlines, we see those headlines already whenever the subject of education funding comes up.
BUT.. if you are spending the same amount and more of it is going the kids none of the howls and screams will be true.. HAVE the fight, don’t surrender before.
Yes, the Left will scream bloody murder, but all you have to do is ask one simple question: “Where in the Constitution is Federal oversight of education authorized, much less the Dept. of Education? Specific clause or paragraph, if you please.”
I read recently that 80% of the federal jobs created since the Obamanation came into office are D of Education. I would love confirmation of that but haven’t found it. One of the primary reasons that my wife and I home school is that the local public schools are so terrible.
They do this regardless. There’s no reason to make policy decisions based on what the opposition will say about you — the regressives learned this about a hundred years ago. It’s high time mainstream America learned this as well.
It would be pretty great if something like scotty’s idea was implemented. Convert the whole budget over to a voucher for every kid from age 5 to 18, and let ’em rip. Place no requirements on where the money can go either, as long as its in the business of providing education.
Rick’s idea about giving the money to local school districts is just terrible, however. Are you TRYING to empower the teachers’ union? Give the money to the KIDS. Let the teachers compete for funds and the union would be toast inside a year. A major leg of the Democratic Party’s fundraising base would collapse over night. It would be glorious.
The Dept. of Education, the Dept. Energy, the Dept. of Transportation, the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, the Dept. of Health and Human Services; can any of us say what they do that was not done as well or better before they existed? None of them existed for more than half of my life and our country seemed to get along just fine without them and does not seem to work better with them. Start with getting rid of these money suckers, return any real funcitons to the States or to Treasury, Commerce or Justice and then review the new landscap from there.
Harry Reid is already using Shaharon Angle’s comment that the Departments of Education and Energyshould be deleted to label her as an extremist in his commercials here in Nevada.
Titus: exactly what I was thinking.
I hope one enduring aspect of the discontent with government of late will be that more citizens equip themselves with hair-trigger BS detectors when it comes to political rhetoric. Reform will be a heck of a lot easier if the usual histrionics have little or no effect anymore.
Part of the Republicans’ platform this fall should be to abolish the Department of Education.
I have to disagree. I think the platform should be stuff that has a reasonable chance of happening. Abolishing the DoEd over the objection of a hostile president isn’t going to happen.
If the GOP gets control, they control the purse. They just have to stay on message to reduce federal spending. Once Obama is gone they can start to eliminate any dept. that can’t justify it’s existence; which for the DOE means DOA.
If the GOP gets control, they control the purse. They just have to stay on message to reduce federal spending. Once Obama is gone they can start to eliminate any dept. that can’t justify it’s existence; which for the DOE means DOA.
And if they don’t get a veto-proof/filibuster-proof degree of control, then they’re setting themselves up for a fall.
Look how the 1994 congress was crushed by the media during a brief government shutdown, during which absolutely nothing serious actually happened. They were never the same again; many backed off, some decided to switch sides (if not parties) and focus more on enriching themselves than on fighting the bureaucracy.
Good point, D, but that was almost a full generation ago, the Congress peopled with Boomers and up — folks who lived through an era genuine racism and oppression, and thus were susceptible to White Guilt.
In contrast, the non-Leftist segment of the O’Bama generation and younger has heard Godwined discourse from birth in the face of basically nothing. It’s all wolf-crying as far as we’re concerned. I would hope that our collective disgust of the burnt-out hippies keeps us rolling our eyes at them instead of rolling on our backs for them.