GOP Senator: 'Long Past Time' to End Education Department

Earlier this week, President-elect Trump nominated WWE co-founder Linda McMahon to head the Department of Education—but if Mike Rounds has his way, there soon won't be any department for her to lead. The GOP senator from South Dakota introduced a bill on Thursday that would shut down the federal agency and distribute its tasks to other departments, legislation that already has an implicit thumbs-up from Trump, per the Hill.

The agency "has never educated a single student, and it's long past time to end this bureaucratic department that causes more harm than good," Rounds says in a statement. The Hill notes that the Returning Education Back to Our States Act has virtually no chance of passing the currently Democratic-controlled Senate, but come January, the GOP will take the majority in that chamber, as well as a likely slim majority in the House.

Rounds isn't the only Republican lawmaker already thinking ahead to that: On Thursday, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie told ABC News he'd also be proposing a bill to dump the DOE, within the "first few weeks" of the upcoming 119th Congress, and that his legislation will contain an actual end date. "The Department of Education shall terminate on Dec. 31, 2026," says Massie, who's made a push to pull back funds from the DOE since last year. Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute think tank, however, says it won't be an easy task to accomplish Rounds' and Massie's mission, as the Senate would typically need 60 votes to make something like this happen.

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Trump "can certainly use the bully pulpit to drive this a lot," notes McCluskey, adding people would need to be put in place to administer the various programs currently under the DOE. "He could provide legislative blueprints if he wanted to. But ultimately this has to come through Congress." Dakota News Now lays out the various other government agencies that would theoretically gain control of such things as loans, disabilities advocacy, and other services now under the DOE, including the Interior, State, Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services departments. "This legislation is a roadmap to eliminating the federal Department of Education by practically rehoming these federal programs in the departments where they belong," Rounds says in his statement. (More Department of Education stories.)