President Donald Trump’s effort to dismantle the Education Department faces resistance and is undergoing revisions as it circles the beltway, according to various news reports.
To shut it down completely would require 60 votes, and that appears unlikely in the Senate as even some Republicans are wary, Politico reports:
“The Department of Education actually has some functions that we think are important,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in the Capitol. “I support it.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has grown frustrated with the slash-and-burn methods of Elon Musk’s spending cuts and Trump’s expansion of executive authority, sought to lay out some boundaries.
“There may be a case for spinning off some programs. There may be a case for downsizing the department. But those are decisions the new secretary should make,” Collins, the Senate’s top appropriator, told reporters. “The decision of whether to abolish the department is one that only Congress can make.”
Late last week Trump drafted an executive order that “directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to ‘take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department’ based on ‘the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.'”
Since then, the draft has been “revised significantly from earlier versions, according to people familiar with the directive who spoke on the condition of anonymity,” Politico reported. “That includes the removal of key operational language, dates and deadlines that had been present in a prior draft.”
MORE: Trump drafts executive order to close down Ed Department
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