Washington Wednesday: Funding government and closing a department

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 12th of March.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today! Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Time now for Washington Wednesday. Today, expelling the Department of Education. But first, more details on the House plan to avoid a government shutdown.

WORLD’s Leo Briceno reports.

LEO BRICENO: Tuesday’s vote on extending government funding into September is not ideal for fiscal hawks that want to see spending trimmed.

But it gives Republicans room to focus on fiscal year 2026—and, more importantly, Trump’s legislative agenda.

CHIP ROY: I think this is a responsible step forward.

That’s Chip Roy of Texas, a long-time critic of government spending extensions speaking in a Rules Committee hearing on Monday.

ROY: Look, I’ve got some on my more moderate flank and conservative flank that have concerns. A lot of people have said ‘we’re moving a full-year funding through a continuing resolution. That’s not how we should do business.’ I would agree. That’s not, we would like to have 12 appropriations bills, I think this is a big step forward and we should now focus on FY26.

The bill does contain a few changes to spending levels. Among hundreds of other tweaks, budgets for the wildfire suppression operations reserve and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are marked to go up by several hundred million dollars each. The bill also contains a modest 7 billion dollars in spending cuts. That includes seasonal items like election security grants, and an 80 million cut from the Afghanistan security forces fund.

When asked about his expectations for next year, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma said that he believes Congress will continue the work it started last year, passing single issue appropriations bills.

TOM COLE: The Senate didn’t move a single one. We got five—about seventy percent of spending.

Cole says another big priority this year will be writing recommendations from the Department of Government Efficiency into law.

COLE: They’re working on trying to codify the DOGE savings and, you know, having these discussions.

That could happen through next year’s spending bills, but it could also come through a rescission package. That doesn’t have to do with economic recessions it’s a bill that would rescind or cancel spending that Congress previously approved. It’s a tool the Nixon administration used to slash foreign aid. I spoke with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana in the Capitol Basement.

STEVE SCALISE: Obviously, DOGE is identifying a whole lot of fraud, waste, and abuse in government. It's a long time coming to root out a lot of that fraud. Ultimately that’s compiled will be put in a rescission package… I think the American people want those savings locked in.

For now, the spending bill now heads to the Senate, where it must receive support from all Republicans and at least seven Democrats before President Trump can sign it.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno in Washington, D.C

MAST: Republicans in Washington have called for dismantling the Department of Education since President Jimmy Carter established it in 1979. About two years later, the new president, Ronald Reagan, called it a big waste of money.

REAGAN: The budget plan I submitted to you on February 8th will realize major savings by dismantling the departments of energy and education and by eliminating ineffective subsidies for business.

EICHER: Reagan did not have the support in Congress he needed to pass that plan. And since then, the department has ballooned, boasting a budget of more than 100 billion dollars. Much of that goes to student loans, but it also funds an array of discretionary education programs.

MAST: President Trump also promised to close down the education department during his first term, and made the promise again coming into his second. So how’s that coming along? WORLD’s Washington Reporter Carolina Lumetta has that story.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: President Donald Trump has given Education Secretary Linda McMahon a unique directive: shut down her own department.

TRUMP: Linda, I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job.

That’s not a throwaway line. In McMahon’s first interview since being confirmed, she told Fox News that Trump means business:

MCMAHON: He has made crystal clear since the time he was running for president that this is his intent. He wants to make sure that education is back at the state level where it belongs.

Back in 1976, Jimmy Carter made a campaign promise to the nation’s largest teachers union: he would create a cabinet level position for education. But Congress needed some convincing before it passed a law to codify the department in 1979. So Carter gave the Education Department a specific mandate, to enforce non-discrimination laws that authorize financial aid for low income students and equal access to education for students with special needs. Carter nominated 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Shirley Mount Hufstedler to be the department’s first secretary, heard here in a 2007 interview on C-SPAN.

MOUNT HUFSTEDLER: There were those that didn't want a department of education created at all, because the primary responsibility for education is given to the states, not to the federal government. But the federal government had numerous programs involving education, not the least of which is the student loan program.

That student loan program has become a $1.6 trillion dollar portfolio.

The Department of Education has a yearly budget of roughly $80 billion, but it often exceeds that in discretionary spending. Three quarters of that goes to research and loan servicing, while about one quarter goes to help states fund their education programs.

The Department of Education does not determine curriculum or hire teachers, but federal funding accounts for roughly 11 percent of each state’s education budget, though it varies across the country. States with high rural populations, such as Alaska and North Dakota, receive the largest shares. Here’s McMahon again.

MCMAHON: I think there is definitely a role for education to make sure that as we move education back to the states that we are providing the tools for the governors, for the teachers, that we can provide them with research to show best practices.

But the process of abolishing it is complicated. Since Congress passed a law authorizing the department, President Trump may not simply sign it away. So he needs to convince 60 senators to approve his plan. Or he may try something simpler.

MALCOLM: President Trump is going to test this. He's just going to deprive it of all of its powers and all of its people.

John Malcolm is the vice president of the institute for constitutional government at the Heritage Foundation.

MALCOLM: There will be a building there or maybe he'll sell the building and lease it back. But there'll be nobody doing anything in the Department of Education, he'll take all of the funds that the Department of Education gets, and he's going to try to give that all to the states and return all of this power to the states.

During her confirmation hearing last month, McMahon suggested the Treasury or Commerce Department could take over student loans. She promised that responsibility for programs like disability access to education would continue, but under other departments, like health and human services. But this concerns teachers, like Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education Foundation.

BURRIS: There are guardrails that are put in place by the department as to how that money is to be distributed to schools with lots of protections so districts cannot willy-nilly use those funds as they would like to. It's questionable as to whether any of those guardrails would exist.

Switching programs to other departments might also disrupt services. Reed Scott-Schwalbach is president of the Oregon Education Association. She attended McMahon’s confirmation hearing in February.

SCOTT-SCHWALBACH: Having another department that does not work with students, that doesn't understand education, try to administer grants and then be able to effectively assess if those grants are being used, if the federal dollars are being actually officially used, that is not going to be done better by another department.

Scott-Schwalbach says teachers also rely on Department of education testing and research, especially the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, often called the nation’s report card. While each state determines its own testing standards, they use the NAEP results to inform those standards.

SCOTT-SCHWALBACH: We can't expect 50 states to do quality research and then to come together magically and say now let's all share our research and see what's working in our state and compare it to your state, and it will come up with some really great ways that we can make sure we’re being effective across all of our state borders.

If the Education Department’s operations simply shift to other departments, it’s likely that states and schools won’t see an immediate change. Martin West is a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In a recent episode of the Harvard EdCast podcast, he outlined the push and pull between federal oversight and states rights.

WEST: Ultimately I think the engines of improvement in American education need to be the states and school districts. With the federal government playing a supportive role.

As of Tuesday, Trump had not signed an executive order on the department’s fate. But last week in the Oval Office, he reiterated that it could be on the chopping block.

TRUMP: We want the education to be given by the states. It'll be much better. it'll be- it'll move us to the top of the list from the bottom of the list and actually save us money

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta in Washington.

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