If Trump is reelected, one goal is to abolish the US Department of Education (“DOE”). Why? Because it usurps the Constitution when the federal government takes over a state’s right and because its mere existence is outside of the federal government’s constitutional authority. Thus, nowhere in the Constitution does it say that an education agency can be implemented at the Federal level to control via mandates and the purse education within the states. Because the Constitution doesn’t authorize this control over education, the entire issue falls under the power of the states. Everybody knows this yet the federal government ignored this principle to create the DOE.

But why should we bother with what is a relatively small government agency, one that received only $79 billion in funding? We should bother because, if the DOE falls, a number of other agencies could be abolished under the same argument.

Image of the DOE building (edited) by Coolcaesar. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Obtrusive regulation and taxes could be reduced substantially much to the benefit of America. DC would no longer be in total control of almost everything in our lives. Striking down the DOE would have precedent implications not unlike Roe v. Wade being overturned as un-constitutional. That decision opens the door for overturning homosexual marriage and the horrible trans decision approving legal status (and dismemberment of children) for a made-up condition that only has existed in reality in a few hundred cases throughout all of medical history.

What should the Supreme Court’s (“SCOTUS’s”) role be in abolishing the DOE? SCOTUS should rule that education is under state authority because it was purely a states’ rights matter when the Constitution was ratified, bringing it under the Tenth Amendment’s purview. (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”) This is a slam dunk on an eight-foot goal. The Feds have no standing in this regard.

How do you get a case before the SCOTUS? Ordinarily, it takes years and is not guaranteed. But in this case, if Trump withheld funding and has closed access to the department offices, such a case would find its way to SCOTUS quickly, for it would be a so-called Constitutional crisis.

All good and fine. You could eliminate 4,400 Education employees at something over half a billion dollars a year savings—a pittance in Federal dollars. (The real dollars, still very small by federal levels, are locked up in diversity grants such as Pell, disability, schools and so forth.) Should you feel sorry for these people? Maybe. But taxpayers have been footing their illegal salaries for decades. These people may suffer for a while but if they are so valuable in a federal job, they should easily find a good private sector job. Of course, pensions would kick in as well.

While Senator Joni Ernst has called for eliminating the DOE, she has done so in a weak-kneed fashion. She says the government should fire the employees but transfer the Pell/Other programs to Treasury. However, this does not remove the feds from education.

What is needed is to discontinue all the education grants (phase them out) and cut taxes with the savings. Then individual taxpayers at the state level could create education programs however they think best. They could most likely find a better way especially if the states were competing to discover the best approach. Or they could just put the savings in their pocket.