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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, well, last night, reports came out that President Trump is preparing to sign an Executive order to abolish-- end--the Department of Education as soon as today. If this report is true, this would be one of the most destructive and devastating steps Donald Trump has ever taken--and the main victims of this decision: American children.

This right here is why every single Democrat said ``hell no'' to the nomination of Linda McMahon. This is why we did it. Linda McMahon is an Education Secretary who personifies nails on the chalkboard. I have never heard before of a Secretary who wanted a Cabinet job solely for the purpose of detonating the very Agency she seeks to lead. I have never heard of an Education Secretary who wants to give every teacher in America a rotten apple. But this is where we are.

These are not just metaphors of the moment. They are the perils of the present. This would be horrible for our schools, our school leaders, our families, and the children Secretary McMahon is supposed to serve. The blast radius of this order will harm nearly every child, every teacher, every family, and every community in the country.

Don't forget: Defunding education means property taxes will go up to make up the funding gap. Homeowners are about to get blindsided by the toxic brew of seeing their property taxes go up while seeing the quality of many schools that depend on funding go down.

But nobody--nobody--will suffer more from Donald Trump's decision than our kids. Almost 90 percent of the students in America attend public schools, and they will suffer because of what Donald Trump is doing. Why?

The Department of Education is a lifeline for public schools across the country. It is particularly strong in rural areas because there is not much choice. There is one school in the town.

With Federal funding, many rural schools will vanish and some schools will crumble at the foundation, literally. Education is the best investment for turning a struggling community around. With good schools and without the funding to support these schools, our children will be hurt, our country will be worse, and the notion of the American dream will fall by the wayside.

Rural schools will be particularly hard-hit because rural communities often only have one school in the area, and if that disappears, the communities will deteriorate. Kids with special education needs will be left out in the cold. Public schoolteachers already worked to the bone will be thrown into chaos; class sizes will explode; job training programs will vanish; school districts will be at the mercy of State budgets that are already struggling to fund education; and the albatross of student debt will become insurmountable for tens of millions of Americans, many of whom come from working families.

Every single one of us wants our schools to do better, our students to perform better, and eliminate wasteful spending. Education reform is necessary, but to make things better--to improve education--you do not use a chain saw. Using a chain saw will make things worse because it doesn't discriminate between the funds that are needed and the funds that may be necessary or should be redirected.

Erasing the Department of Education in the blink of an eye is not what education reform looks like. Donald Trump should immediately reverse course before he causes irreparable harm to our students and our classrooms.

Again, let me just repeat that you do not--you do not--hire a Secretary whose purpose--whose very purpose is detonating the very Agency she seeks to lead. That makes no sense.

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