| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
And the cable industry support, not government funding. | |
| But this public service isn't guaranteed. | ||
| All this month, in honor of Founders Day, your support is more important than ever. | ||
| You can keep democracy unfiltered today and for future generations. | ||
| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your gift today preserves open access to government and ensures the public stays informed. | |
| Donate now at c-span.org slash donate or scan the code on your screen. | ||
| Every contribution matters. | ||
| And thank you. | ||
| At a news conference, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Senate Democrats react to President Trump's proposal to dissolve the Education Department. | ||
| Okay, good afternoon, everybody. | ||
| Thank you all for coming. | ||
| So last night, reports came out that President Trump is preparing to sign an executive order to abolish the Department of Education. | ||
| Now, of course, the White House has tried to start walking it back. | ||
| But let's be honest, there is no secret that they're aiming to abolish the Department of Education. | ||
| They said so. | ||
| Here's what Donald Trump said last month. | ||
| Quote, I'd like it to be closed immediately. | ||
| So they're not backing off. | ||
| We'll just, you know, they're erratic as usual, but this is part of his campaign. | ||
| It's part of what McMahon stood for. | ||
| And we believe that they're trying to make it happen. | ||
| This would be, if it happens, one of the most destructive and devastating steps that Donald Trump has ever taken. | ||
| Who's going to be the victim? | ||
| Americans' kids, America's schoolchildren. | ||
| To get tax breaks for his billionaire friends and hurt our schoolchildren? | ||
| I don't think that's what America wants. | ||
| I don't think that's what America bought into. | ||
| I sent my kids to public schools in New York City. | ||
| Public schools are the bedrock of our country. | ||
| I went to public schools. | ||
| In fact. | ||
| And they don't always succeed, as you saw. | ||
| Most of the time. | ||
| We went to Madison High School together. | ||
| And I think PS 197? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Okay. | ||
| But in any case, 90% of students in the United States attend public schools. | ||
| And every single district will suffer because of what Donald Trump is doing. | ||
| Again, America, he's using your kids' education money to give tax breaks to his billionaire buddies. | ||
| It's that simple. | ||
| He's looking to find any money he can so his billionaire club can pay even less taxes. | ||
| And this is why every single Democrat said hell no to the nomination of Linda McMahon, one of the only nominees in history tasked with destroying the very agency she's trying to lead. | ||
| Linda McMahon wants to detonate the Department of Education. | ||
| So why is she taking the job? | ||
| Just to be destructive. | ||
| The blast radius of this order will harm nearly every child, every teacher, every family, and every community. | ||
| Taking a chainsaw to the Department of Education and undermining its mission to educate our next generation would be horrible for our schools, our families, the children Secretary McMahon is supposed to serve. | ||
| And don't forget, defunding education means property taxes will go up across the country, particularly in suburban districts. | ||
| If you look at this chart, the states that have the most to lose if the Education Department is dismantled are Trump states, Trump states, and particularly rural states. | ||
| In rural America, there's one school in the community. | ||
| You undercut it, and education just dramatically declines. | ||
| The Department of Education, as I said, is a lifeline for schools across America. | ||
| Without it, rural schools, many of them, would vanish and schools will crumble at the foundation. | ||
| And education is the best investment for a struggling community. | ||
| Without good schools, without the funding to support these schools, children will be hurt, our country will be worse off, and the American dream falls by the wayside. | ||
| Kids with special education in particular will be left out in the cold. | ||
| We've struggled for years to give these kids a good chance out the window to help the billionaires. | ||
| Class sizes will explode, job training programs will vanish, college will become more expensive and out of the reach for more middle-class kids. | ||
| Homeowners will be hammered with rate heights. | ||
| So you look across the board, they're just going at it with the Elon Musk chainsaw blowtorch approach. | ||
| If the Republicans want to work together with us on real education reform, we'll be the first in line to do it. | ||
| If there's things that are wasteful, show us what they are. | ||
| But don't use the chainsaw to just eliminate the Department of Education and public education because you're gambling with our kids' future. | ||
| Democrats will fight this awful decision every, every step of the way. | ||
| Senator Sanders. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you, Chair. | ||
| Elon Musk, the wealthiest person on earth, at the behest of President Trump, is now on the warpath against the working families of our country. | ||
| Saving money by dismantling the Department of Education, which, by the way, is illegal and unconstitutional, so that the billionaire class can receive huge tax breaks, is terrible public policy and morally reprehensible. | ||
| Mr. Musk, who is worth some $400 billion, and his fellow billionaires do not have to worry about the quality of public education because they send their kids and grandchildren to fancy private schools. | ||
| So what happens to public education is not of great concern to them. | ||
| But for the working class of this country, high-quality public education is an imperative if their kids are going to do well in life. | ||
| And the cutting of funding for 26 million low-income and working-class students, many of whom are in rural states like Vermont, will be a disaster. | ||
| Mr. Musk and his fellow billionaires don't have to worry about the high cost of college because they can afford to get their kids into any college they want. | ||
| But that is not the case for the 7 million working class families who depend on Pell Grants to get a higher education. | ||
| Years ago, parents who had disabilities had no decent option as to how to do well by their kids. | ||
| We have made progress in that area over the years. | ||
| But if Mr. Musk gets his way, seven and a half million kids with disabilities may be unable to receive the services they need in a high-quality public education. | ||
| What happens to those children? | ||
| What happens to those families if those services are cut? | ||
| The Department also enforces our federal civil rights laws to ensure all kids can get a decent education, no matter what their race, creed, color, or gender may be. | ||
| And let's be clear, if the federal government ceases to fund the educational needs of working-class communities, that will mean higher local and state taxes to fill the void. | ||
| In other words, shutting down the Department of Education would be a disaster for low-income and working-class families in every state of our country. | ||
| Do we need to make the Department of Education more efficient? | ||
| I believe we do. | ||
| Do we need to destroy it and wreak havoc for working-class families across this country? | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| And let me conclude by simply saying this. | ||
| We are the wealthiest country in the history of the world. | ||
| We should have the best educational system in the world. | ||
| Among other reforms that we need to introduce is we need to attract the best and the brightest into teaching. | ||
| Minimum salary should be $60,000 a year. | ||
| We need to greatly strengthen childcare after-school summer programs. | ||
| We need to invest in the mental health of our kids. | ||
| We need to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act. | ||
| Bottom line, our job is to protect low-income and working-class kids all over this country. | ||
| It is not to give huge tax breaks to the billionaire class and the oligarchs. | ||
| The American people must stand up and tell Trump and Musk we must not dismantle the Department of Education. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Bernie. | ||
| Senator Murray, former chair of the Health Committee. | ||
| Now, Ranking Member of Appropriations. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Well, let's be clear. | ||
| We may not know when, but we absolutely do know Trump is preparing to ask the Department of Education to slam every door they can in the face of our students. | ||
| And let's not pretend for one single second we think he's serious about doing so while following the law, because the very premise of his plan, shuttering the Department of Education, fundamentally goes against the bipartisan laws we have passed, established, and funded. | ||
| And it goes against a very basic principle in this country. | ||
| We put our kids first. | ||
| We do everything we can to set them up for success. | ||
| That our future depends on whether our kids get the support they need to grow and thrive. | ||
| And it doesn't take a former teacher to tell you how obliterating the Department of Education hurts students. | ||
| I think even a preschooler could tell you this is a terrible, terrible idea. | ||
| Trump and Elon Musk want to do to the Department of Education what they did to USAID. | ||
| They don't care what they can legally do. | ||
| They will act first and not care about the consequences. | ||
| Trump's move to dismantle the Department of Education, fire the people who keep it running, and terminate funding will mean fewer teachers at our public schools. | ||
| It will mean students stuck with outdated technology. | ||
| It will mean less access to special education for students with disabilities, and states and schools will have to pick up the cost. | ||
| It will mean no enforcement of basic education standards and no data helping us know what is working and what is not working. | ||
| It will also mean more barriers keeping students out of higher education, fewer career training opportunities, fewer watchdogs protecting our students from predatory for-profit colleges and predatory student lenders, and from discrimination, harassment, and sexual assault on campus. | ||
| That is all just the reality. | ||
| Get ready for the disinformation now, because you can bet when they realize how painful and unpopular this is, they're going to try and pretend everything is roses. | ||
| They will say, oh, this won't go away. | ||
| Oh, we'll just move this somewhere else. | ||
| As if we haven't already seen how they operate with as much chaos and pain and damage as they can inflict. | ||
| We know that playbook. | ||
| We are seeing it everywhere. | ||
| And as we saw from Trump last time, just because a program won't disappear doesn't mean it will still work. | ||
| In Trump's first term, he didn't abolish public student loan forgiveness. | ||
| That's also written in federal law. | ||
| But he broke it so badly as he possibly could to the point where 99% of applications were rejected. | ||
| So how is that functionally any different? | ||
| That's what Trump and Musk and McMahon are planning to do to the entire department. | ||
| They're going to break it up into pieces and then break the pieces. | ||
| Trump and Musk don't know what it's like to count on their local public school having the resources to make sure their kids get a great education. | ||
| They don't know why Pell Grants are so important, and they don't care to learn why. | ||
| They want to break the department, break our government, and enrich themselves. | ||
| However, we are not going to let the department and the programs it supports for our kids go down without a fight. | ||
| I first got into politics many years ago to save an education program. | ||
| I was told I couldn't make a difference because I was just a mom in tennis shoes. | ||
| Well, here's the thing. | ||
| There are a heck of a lot of moms and dads in tennis shoes out there, and they do not play when it comes to their kids' future. | ||
| I saved that program back then by getting moms and dads to join with me, speak up, and say, wait, our kids come first. | ||
| And we're going to fight for our students, for our teachers, and the schools the same way by getting moms and dads and students too to speak up by making clear this is not some program you play politics with. | ||
| This is about our kids. | ||
| And we will not let anyone, not if they are the president, not if they're the richest man in the world, put our kids' future on the chopping block. | ||
| Thank you, Patty. | ||
| Senator Murphy. | ||
| Thanks, Chuck, for gathering us here today. | ||
| So nobody wants this. | ||
| Nobody in America wants the destruction of public education. | ||
| The plan to eliminate the Department of Education is wildly unpopular in this country, except with a handful of people on the fringy right. | ||
| So the question is, why are they doing it? | ||
| Listen, I think Bernie's point is really important. | ||
| Billionaires do not need public schools. | ||
| Billionaires don't understand the magic that happens in public schools. | ||
| The billionaires that are in charge of our government right now send their kids to the most elite private schools, and if every public school disappears in this country, they will still be able to get their kids an education. | ||
| And it's consistent with the entire way that they are approaching the first six months of this administration. | ||
| Billionaires don't need Medicaid. | ||
| So to them, it doesn't matter if Medicaid disappears and rural hospitals close and addiction treatment centers shutter their doors because the billionaires will still get their health care. | ||
| They talk about Social Security being a Ponzi scheme. | ||
| They're shutting down Social Security offices around the country because they don't need Social Security. | ||
| They're billionaires. | ||
| They're never going to need a Social Security check like millions of American seniors do in order to put food on the table. | ||
| So the billionaire mindset is just different than ordinary average Americans. | ||
| And that's why to them, public education doesn't matter. | ||
| But to Senator Schumer's point, here's the other reason why. | ||
| All that matters right now is the billionaire in corporate tax cut. | ||
| All that matters is hoarding as much money, stealing as much money from middle class and poor families in this country so that they can pass that money along to the billionaires, the millionaires, and the corporations. | ||
| Everything that they are doing is about making sure that they shrink the parts of government that help regular people so that they can pass along more benefit and more help to their billionaire friends. | ||
| But then here's the last piece of the story of why. | ||
| The billionaire class, the corporate class, the private equity class, they are sick to death that they don't have their hands inside the Department of Education Treasury, that they can't get their hands on our schools like they've gotten their hands into our health care system and into every other aspect of our economy. | ||
| What they want to do is to sell off our public schools to the highest bidder. | ||
| The voucher program that they're talking about, that they will be more easily able to implement if the Department of Education is gone, is really about just making it easier for the billionaire in corporate class to be able to buy up our schools so that they can make money off of it like they make money off of the Medicare program, like they make money off of so many other aspects of our government. | ||
| So if the Department of Education closes, it's going to hurt millions of families in this country. | ||
| It's just going to enable the theft of resources from regular families to pad the pockets of the billionaires. | ||
| But it is also likely to result in you waking up one day and finding out that your local elementary school that your kids go to is owned by a private equity firm on the other side of the country and is being run for profit instead of being run for the education of your kids. | ||
| So this is deeply unpopular. | ||
| Nobody wants the Department of Education eliminated and it's really important for us to explain to the American people why it's happening. | ||
| Senator Peters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Senator. | |
| Well, this is a very personal issue for me. | ||
| I'm the son of a public school teacher. | ||
| I'm the product of the public schools. | ||
| My children all went to the public schools as well. | ||
| And as my colleagues highlighted today, the Department of Education plays a critical role in student success, from providing IDA grants to support students with disabilities to Perkins grants that support career and technical education and Pell Grants to make sure that Americans can go to college. | ||
| Dismantling the Department of Education is also going to just absolutely open up the floodgates for this administration to privatize education, as Senator Murphy said. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And funding that is taken away from public education, we know where that money is going to go. | |
| It's going to be going to give tax breaks to billionaires. | ||
| Newly appointed Secretary McMahon and Republicans in the past have tried to sell some of this program as school choice, but it's basically a voucher program, as Senator Murphy mentioned, which gives private schools the ability. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Private schools will then have the ability to handpick students and close their doors to everybody else. | |
| We've already seen this private school voucher program in many states, and we'll talk a little bit about Michigan, where Republicans were led by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, when she attempted to direct taxpayer dollars away from public schools. | ||
| Vouchers in Michigan is overwhelmingly unpopular and was overwhelmingly rejected at the ballot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Republicans then in the Michigan State House later tried to slash public funds for schools, for public schools, to provide tax credits for private schools. | |
| Over $50 million diverted away in that effort, and voters once again overwhelmingly rejected that attempt just a couple years ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Meanwhile, as Senator Murphy said as well, this is unpopular. | |
| 68% of Americans want to boost public education funding and give our kids the education and career opportunities that they deserve. | ||
| That is an overwhelming majority. | ||
| Under this executive order, which we don't know when will come but will likely come soon, it would not only eliminate federal resources for public education, but would also put more power into private schools to make decisions as to who gets education and who doesn't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We all know that these private institutions are going to privatize the bottom line. | |
| The needs of students will not be at the top. | ||
| But perhaps most important reason we need federal Department of Education is to make sure that all students, no matter who they are, no matter where they live, regardless of their economic status, that they have access to quality education and an opportunity to be successful in life. | ||
| I would urge my Republican colleagues to join us in this effort to make sure that we do everything we can to protect public education, the Department of Education, and give every student the opportunity to be successful. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Gary, questions on this subject? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Leader, would Democrats, we've heard a number, obviously the Department of Education is something that you've dedicated this entire press conference to. | |
| The slashing of government agencies, we know Democratic lawmakers want to maybe put some constraints on things like this needing congressional approval and they want to tie that to government spending and this latest continuing resolution. | ||
| Would that be worth, would those Doge cuts be worth shutting down the government over as some of your colleagues say that they would? | ||
| The bottom line is Democrats are working to avoid a shutdown. | ||
| If there's a shutdown, it's on the Republicans' back. | ||
| They have yet given us their proposal. | ||
| Yes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Leader Schumer, your Democratic constituents are hoping to hear more from their elected leaders. | |
| Obviously, Republicans are in control of the government, but can you do anything else but message on these issues? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Look at lawsuits. | ||
| Just yesterday, many NIH, the cuts to NIH were rejected. | ||
| We have filed over 100 lawsuits working with the AGs and working with independent groups. | ||
| We've won 87% of them. | ||
| We also intend to work on legislation. | ||
| I had a call with, I thought it would be 500 activists. | ||
| 3,000 got on the phone. | ||
| And we are focusing in all of our states on the Republican congressmen and senators voting for the things that will be so unpopular. | ||
| And we're going to get a chance to have them vote on it in reconciliation. | ||
| Yes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Have you heard any concern from constituents about how these cuts could affect other programs like school lunches, Head Start? | |
| Yeah, people, if you use this blowtorch to the Department of Education and eliminate it, kids are going to go hungry. | ||
| They're not going to be, I don't know where they're going to get their breakfast, where they're going to get their lunches. | ||
| The schools are going to be so hard pressed. | ||
| And a lot of these programs are part of the Department of Education as well as, of course, the Department of Agriculture. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Senator Schumer, up until yesterday, all the plans were to impound spending that had been approved by Congress and just ignore the Impoundment Control Act and sort of fight it out in the courts. | |
| Yesterday, Republican senators started pushing back on Musk and saying, hey, send us a rescissions package that can bypass a filibuster here in the Senate. | ||
| Wondering if you think that that is the appropriate way for them to actually try to cut spending, and are you looking forward to those votes? | ||
| Look, first, we're having many ways to get votes, including reconciliation. | ||
| Second, these programs are so unpopular. | ||
| What the Trump has proposed, whether it's tariffs or Social Security or Medicaid or tax breaks for billionaires, is so unpopular with the American people that the Republicans are ducking and trying to bob and weave and say, well, maybe we're for it, maybe we're not. | ||
| Maybe do it this way, maybe do it that way. | ||
| Just the classic example. | ||
| Don't have a town hall meeting, the Republican leaders told the Republican congressmen, because they're so unpopular. | ||
| Day by day, the Trump Must Doge program becomes more and more unpopular with the American people. | ||
| The more they see it, the less they like it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Congress returns Monday facing a government funding deadline, which is Friday at midnight. | |
| The House, later in the week, plans to vote on legislation to extend funding through the end of September to avert a government shutdown, followed by the Senate. | ||
| The House will also vote on legislation giving the Justice Department five more years to criminally prosecute individuals who committed fraud in the COVID-19 pandemic unemployment insurance programs. | ||
| Their current authority is set to expire on March 27th. | ||
| The Senate gabbles in on Monday at 3 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| Senators will vote during the week to confirm Laurie Chavez Dereemer for Labor Secretary, as well as nominees for Deputy Transportation Secretary and Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust. | ||
| Lawmakers will spend most of the week working on legislation to permanently classify fentanyl with the highest control and penalties. | ||
| Its temporary classification is set to expire at the end of this month. | ||
| Watch live coverage of the House on C-SPAN, see the Senate on C-SPAN too, and of course all of our congressional coverage is available on our free video app C-SPAN Now and our website c-span.org. | ||
| Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. |