h/t Instapundit
Remember the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as education secretary? It feels kind of quaint now, because congressional Democrats have so completely outdone their hysterics in the time since.
For the first time, a vice president had to break the tie in favor of confirmation, all because liberals didn’t like that DeVos was wealthy and unlikely to devote her energy as secretary to ensuring that the department worked for teachers unions rather than students.
If Democrats and the national media weren’t in a sticky mess right now over impeachment, they might notice that DeVos has done some things that might concern them. And she still has at least a year left to do more.
The Washington Examiner's editorial board recently checked in with DeVos for her thoughts on her tenure as secretary.
She said in an interview that she’s most proud of introducing a major bill that would make $5 billion available to parents of K-12 students so that they can choose where their child attends school.
She also noted her rollback of the Obama-era guidelines on adjudicating sexual misconduct claims in higher education. DeVos’s new regulations on the subject are set to go into effect soon and ensure all students have the right to due process ‐ a nice change from the current standard, which basically offers prayer as the only defense for male students accused of sexual misconduct.
But something DeVos has consistently said since the start was that her primary goal is to shrink the department all around, reducing its power as much as possible.
She’s had some success there. Under her watch, the department has eliminated 600 staff positions, bringing the total from 4,300 to 3,700.
| I wonder how that compares to how much President Obama expanded it... |
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Great job Betsy, and thanks for passing along my thoughts on Gallagher.