There’s been a popular, ambitious policy position for those in the Center and on the Right that has been elusive for more than forty years now. That is the dissolution of the Department of Education. The Department of Education has long been a target for valid criticism for being a giant waste of taxpayer dollars just to be extremely incompetent and ineffective.

President Jimmy Carter, largely viewed as one of the worst U.S. Presidents in America’s entire history, established the Department of Education back in 1979 as a new agency to be built separate from the Health and Human Services Department (HHS). Opponents of the establishment of the Department of Education have said it is inherently unconstitutional and creates unnecessary federal bureaucracy. It is the prime example of the federal government swelling and swelling, according to the DOE’s critics.

Donald Trump has his finger on the pulse of the sentiment that the Department of Education is so bad that it needs to go as soon as possible. During his casual discussion with Twitter (also known as X) owner Elon Musk, Donald Trump said that he wanted to “close up” the Department of Education on “day one.”

“What I’m going to do, one of the first acts – and this is where I need an Elon Musk; I need somebody that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts – I want to close up the Department of Education, move education back to the states,” Donald Trump alleged in his online discussion with Elon Musk, hosted on X.

He also has key support from Republicans in Congress to get this done, as well.

Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, has indicated that the GOP may move to dismantle the Department of Education (DOE) if they gain control of Congress and the White House in the upcoming November elections.

In an interview with Fox News Digital, Massie expressed his belief that former President Donald Trump’s stance on eliminating the DOE would depend largely on which party controls Congress and who is appointed as the Secretary of Education. Massie, who introduced a bill late last year aimed at abolishing the department, has garnered the support of over 30 House Republicans, including prominent Trump allies such as Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Byron Donalds of Florida.

“Reagan promised that he would try to eliminate it, and he never did. And then people became comfortable with the Department of Education, and it started seeming like a radical notion just to do what Ronald Reagan said he would do, so I felt the need to reintroduce this bill,” Massie noted about his bill in an interview.

While Massie has not directly discussed the bill with Trump or his campaign, he noted that the issue is a frequent topic of conversation among Trump-aligned Republicans. This suggests that the long-standing conservative goal of dismantling the DOE could become a reality if Republicans seize power in Washington this November.

Massie referenced former President Ronald Reagan’s unfulfilled promise to eliminate the DOE as a motivating factor for reintroducing his bill. He remarked that over time, the idea of abolishing the department has come to be seen as a radical move, despite its roots in Reagan-era conservatism.

The Kentucky “Libertarian-Conservative”, as he labels himself, argued that the funds currently used to maintain the DOE and its 14,000 employees in Washington, D.C., could be better allocated directly to school systems, reducing bureaucratic overhead.

Thomas Massie also pointed out that key aspects of academic policy, such as student lunches and the Head Start program, are managed by other federal departments like Agriculture and Health and Human Services, raising questions about the necessity of the DOE’s existence.

Earlier this year, in March 2023, over 160 Republicans supported an amendment proposed by Massie to dismantle the DOE, although the measure ultimately failed. Despite its historical ties to the Reagan administration, the push to abolish the DOE has become a contentious issue, particularly after it was included in Project 2025, a policy framework backed by the Heritage Foundation for a potential future Republican administration.

While Trump and his allies have distanced themselves from Project 2025, which Democrats have criticized as an extreme vision for the country, Massie emphasized that his efforts to eliminate the DOE predate the initiative. He stressed that his proposal stands on its own merits and aligns with the long-held positions of conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation and FreedomWorks.

Department of Education’s Growing Budget and Growing Incompetence

In 1981, the Department of Education had an annual budget of 14.1 billion taxpayer dollars. That would grow to nearly $36.9 billion during the Bush era, and then when Barack Obama became President, it soared to nearly $61 billion for the year of 2009. Today, its budget is an eye-watering $77.2 billion.

Many Americans want to know why the Department of Education’s budget has been growing fatter than a creole five course meal in New Orleans when there’s next to nothing to show for it. In a 2019 audit of the U.S. Department of Education’s effectiveness, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that the federal agency doesn’t even know where millions of taxpayer dollars end up going, as they were “missing key monitoring documents.”

The GAO also said of the Department’s ability to properly assess program effectiveness that it “did not independently assess the accuracy of these program data submitted by grantees or perform basic logic checks.” So, essentially the one job it has to evaluate K-12 grantee programs isn’t even being done properly.

What do you think about the Department of Education? Is it even necessary? Sound off in the comments below.