Cartoon for cutting

U.S. Senator Mike Rounds, representing the state of South Dakota, wants to abolish the U.S. Department of Education. In November, Rounds introduced a bill to do just that. If passed it would redistribute existing Department programs and budgets among other federal agencies. Future education funding would be distributed to states in the form of block grants with few, if any, constraints.

The bill will go nowhere as the 118th Congress ends in early January. However, since abolishing the Department is also a stated goal of Project 2025, a GOP-governing playbook for Donald Trump’s administration, I’ve no doubt such a bill will be introduced during the 119th Congress.

The bill, coupled with the slate of disrupter Cabinet secretaries Trump has nominated, got me thinking about the Department of Education and federal agencies in general.

Do we really need an education department at the federal level? For that matter, do we need any federal Cabinet departments? Couldn’t existing Cabinet departments, except maybe Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Treasury, which act in the interest of America as a nation-state, just be devolved to the states? Mirroring federal departments, the State of Oregon already has its own education, health, housing, and transportation departments. Can’t state-level government agencies suffice?

America’s constitutional framers asked related questions and answered in 1777 with the nation’s first constitution: the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. The Articles governed the nation during the Revolutionary War until the problem of overly-strong sovereign states combined with a weak central government compelled the framers to rethink perpetuity and jettison the confederation framework. America’s second attempt at a constitution established a federation, a governing structure with a strong central government plus self-governing but non-sovereign states. The union, the nation, and Americanism needed to be superior.

Moving forward to the present, one reason why 40% of humanity currently reside within a federation is that a federation respects the complex connections and loyalties humans develop among their layered political communities. For example, many proud Americans also prize their status as an Oregonian. And because these same happy Oregonians also make social, emotional, and economic investments in their respective municipalities, governing power is available at the local level.

What the framers realized and these Oregonians illustrate is that governing power in republican and democratic forms of government should be distributed along a vertical political continuum linking nation to municipality, allowing representative bodies of Americans opportunities to influence policy at multiple governing levels.

Additionally, that proud and politically-engaged American who’d live nowhere else but Oregon, wants to see their fundamental social values and needs reflected along that vertical political continuum. A properly representative government, that is, one “by, for, and of the people,” would establish high-level government agencies that explicitly reflect the peoples’ basic social values and needs. What are those basic social values? You’ll find a thorough list by reviewing the names of cabinet departments. Accompanying the five named above you’ll find health and human services, labor, justice, agriculture, and others. Those sound fundamental to me. Their status as fundamental is confirmed by similarly-named agencies at the state and local levels.

So, what does all this suggest for the U.S. Department of Education? It suggests the department should remain. Americans want, first, the opportunity to influence policy along the entire political continuum, influencing policy that impacts them independently as American, as Oregonian, and as Bendite. And second, government agencies should reflect and reinforce Americans’ basic social values, which include personal growth (education).

Lastly, my institutionalist support for retaining the department doesn’t mean I support the status quo. I support cooperative and iterative reform. I support appropriate budget cuts. I’m even OK with disrupter cabinet secretaries. What I won’t support, however, is a bureaucratic leader who disrespects American values, who sows distrust and division, and who’s ultimately most interested in earning personal political points via an institutional slash and impair strategy. America needs institutional builders not destroyers.

Editor’s Note

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