At a town hall event on Monday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) was asked about potential cuts to the Department of Education.
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00:00Thank you. So we're sitting here in a public school, a nicely renovated auditorium, and I'm wondering, with the plan to dismantle and eliminate the Department of Education, are we worried about the impact, or do we know what the impact will be on public schools here in Rhode Island?
00:22Do we know if federal funding for education, particularly special education, is still going to reach down to our local school districts? Do we have those answers yet?
00:33We do not have those answers yet. Some of them will come through that reconciliation process that I talked about.
00:39So to the extent that you and people like you across the country can make life difficult for the folks who are going to vote to strip funding out of the Department of Education,
00:52that really will make a very significant difference. The other thing that will make a very significant difference is when the continuing resolution expires in September,
01:02have we got agreement on a funding bill? And I think Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski on the Republican side are very senior appropriators who want to do a very good job.
01:15Jack is one of our senior appropriators. There's a prospect that we actually get an appropriations bill that sets benchmarks that are harder for the Trump administration to violate
01:29because they've happened since his election, and they're the current voice of the Congress.
01:37Now, that still has to get through the House, and they get a little bit animated over there, so it's hard to tell.
01:41But it's a little bit early, I think, at this point in the game to tell. All of this presupposes that they will indeed follow the law about appropriations,
01:56which they have not had a habit of doing so far, and that they'll follow the law when court orders are issued requiring them to follow the law.
02:10And just a quick word to our court here in Rhode Island. Two of the really important decisions requiring the administration to release funds despite their so-called freezes
02:24were by Jack McConnell and Mary McElroy, two of our judges. Jack went first, and he went through a blistering set of attacks
02:36from the far right for his nerve in making what's really an obvious and easy decision that, hey, if the money's been appropriated legally and the period for a veto is passed,
02:50the president doesn't have a whole lot to say about it. In fact, he's got a constitutional obligation to see to it the faithful execution of the law.
02:59So, you know, I think we've got a pretty good example here in Rhode Island that we're seeing kind of around the country, too,
03:05of the judges standing up when they needed to, and I just want to give Jack and Mary a particular thumbs-up for having had the courage to leave that.
03:18Let me add to what Shulman said about education. First of all, we have to recognize 15% of education funds in the state of Rhode Island are federal funds.
03:28And I don't think any organization can absorb an immediate 15% reduction. Frankly, I think Trump would not mind that at all.
03:39But here's kind of the mechanics of what's going on. They've disassembled the public education.
03:45They can't eliminate it unless Congress passes the law, but it's just a shadow of itself.
03:50They transferred the IDEA, the Students with Disabilities Act, for presumably funding and for enforcement to the Health and Human Services Department,
04:04led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
04:07Yeah, I know.
04:09But they have cut 20,000 employees from the Department of Health and Human Services.
04:16How do you take a new program that no one has really dealt with in the Department, when you've lost 20,000 people, you're in chaos?
04:29So we could see a situation where the money might be available, but they can't deliver it.
04:36And this is a problem across the board.
04:41They've done several other things in the Department of Education, taking programs.
04:46They took the Pell Grants and the Stafford Loans, and they transferred to the Department of Treasury.
04:53Again, they've never had any dealings with Pell Grants, student loans, or the higher education communities they come,
05:01or in Rhode Island, or in Rhode Island, our great community, sort of the college placement service.
05:08So, you know, it's just like giving, okay, you're responsible for, you're the Secretary of the Navy.
05:16You're not responsible for the Mojave Desert.
05:18Take care of that.