On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Ingraham Angle,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon stated that the cutting of the Department of Education’s staff is the first step to closing down the department altogether, but “we know we’ll have to work with Congress to get that accomplished.” And that she wants money to go to the states, “Perhaps block grants without so many strings and red tape attached to it.”
Host Laura Ingraham asked, “Now, is this the first step on the road to a total shutdown?”
McMahon answered, “Yes, actually, it is. Because that was the president’s mandate, as directed to me, clearly, is to shut down the Department of Education, which we know we’ll have to work with Congress to get that accomplished. But what we did today was to take the first step of eliminating what I think is bureaucratic bloat. And that’s not to say that a lot of the folks — it’s a humanitarian thing to a lot of the folks that are there, they’re out of a job. But we wanted to make sure that we kept all of the right people and the good people to make sure that the outward facing programs, the grants, the appropriations that come from Congress, all of that, are being met, and none of that’s going to fall through the cracks.”
McMahon added, “[S]o many of the programs are really excellent. We need to make sure that that money does get to the states. But we want more money to be able to go to the states, and that’s what the president’s said all along, if we get rid of the bureaucracy, the states will get more. It’ll go directly into the states. … Perhaps block grants without so many strings and red tape attached to it.”
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