House education chair backs Trump move to abolish federal agency

EXCLUSIVE: The top lawmaker on the House Education and Workforce Committee is backing President Donald Trump as he readies to potentially abolish the federal Department of Education, but the lawmaker is skeptical Congress could offer support.

“I support him in the fact that we need to abolish the Department of Education, return education to the states, especially for K-12, and gain control of the higher-ed institutions and make them work,” Chair Tim Walberg, R-Mich., said in an interview with Fox News Digital. “Whether we can abolish it or not is the question”

He pointed out that the Senate’s threshold for most legislation, which is 60, means Republicans could likely be forced to seek Democrat votes if a bill to abolish the department came to Congress.

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“It takes votes. The president can do executive orders, but they’ll be limited in time and scope. The votes aren’t there, I would think, to totally abolish the department in the Senate, at the very least,” Walberg said.

However, the Michigan Republican signaled that Congress could still look at what kind of changes they could make.

“So what can we do to de-power, to reform, to replace in such a way that, for the time being, we’ll make the system work? I think that’s the question that we have,” he said.

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Trump is expected to sign an executive order to abolish the Department of Education, something that’s been pushed by conservative Republicans for years.

It comes just after his new secretary of education, Linda McMahon, was confirmed by the Senate on Monday.

The department was created in its modern-day form in 1980 after then-President Jimmy Carter separated it from what’s now the Department of Health and Human Services.