As a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump called for abolishing the U.S. Department of Education in at least one debate and several interviews.
But as President, Trump is not going to push for scrapping the 38-year-old Cabinet department but instead focus on giving states far greater control over public education.
At a White House briefing hours before President Trump's address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Newsmax the President spoke to several governors and said the administration's goal was to gradually "turn over" much more responsibility for education to the states than they have now.
When we asked if the process for transferring control of public education from the federal government would mean eventually phasing out the Department of Education, Sanders replied: "I didn't say that."
In an interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News on Oct. 17, 2015, Trump said "I may cut Department of Education. . . . I believe that we should be — you know, educating our children from Iowa, from New Hampshire, from South Carolina, from California, from New York. I think that it should be local education."
From 1980 until 1996, the quadrennial Republican party platform included a strong plank calling for abolishing the Department of Education. At the insistence of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the GOP's Platform Committee removed the plank calling for abolition of the Department of Education.
But the issue still resonates with many conservatives. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., recently introduced legislation to shut down the department (which had a $68 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2017) on Dec. 31, 2018.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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