Senate Dems Thwart Education Agency

The Weekly Standard

Acrimony and spite are nothing new in Washington, but we don’t know if we’ve ever seen anything like sheer visceral animosity many left-liberal commentators and Congressional Democrats have for Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Perhaps they view her as a stand-in for her boss, or perhaps they bear a special loathing for her policy views. Whatever the reason, Senate Democrats have taken obstructionism to a new and unlovely level: They’re now deliberately thwarting the Department of Education from functioning.

A year and a half into the Trump administration, the Cabinet agency still can’t get confirmation votes on a number of high-level appointees—making it nigh impossible to perform some of the department’s basic functions.

The qualifications of the nominees isn’t in question. Here are three:

Mick Zais is the secretary’s pick for deputy secretary of Education. He’s a former college president and was South Carolina’s education superintendent for a four-year term. He’s also a West Point graduate and a former brigadier general in the U.S. Army. Zais was nominated in October of 2017.

Kenneth Marcus was nominated to head the agency’s Office of Civil Rights in October of 2017. He held the same job under George W. Bush, so it’s reasonable to assume knows how to do the job. Marcus, a Berkeley law graduate, has also been staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and held an endowed chair at CUNY’s Baruch College School of Public Affairs.

Just as impressive is Frank Brogan, nominated in December of 2017 to be Assistant Secretary of Education for Elementary and Secondary Education. Brogan was most recently chancellor of Pennsylvania’s public universities. Among the highlights of his remarkable career as a teacher and administrator: In 1985, as an assistant principal of Murray Middle School in Orlando, Brogan risked his life to stop a student from firing a handgun at police officers—hence almost certainly saving the young man’s life.

None of these offices should need Senate confirmation, but the lawmakers who wrote the legislation creating the Department in 1978 foolishly included confirmation requirements for a host of non-secretary positions. In the past, the Senate education committee simply passed these nominations to the full Senate, and the Senate confirmed by unanimous consent.

No longer. Democratic members of the Senate HELP committee (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) now require votes on every one of the appointees—committee hearings being valuable opportunities to exhibit one’s disapproval for President Trump and his administration. Since the committee’s Democrats all vote “no,” chairman Lamar Alexander can’t schedule a vote until every Republican member can be present. After that, Senate Democratic leaders won’t agree to unanimous consent votes—with the result that Messrs. Zais, Marcus, Brogan, and others can’t start work at the department. Indeed, they don’t even know if they should move their families to Washington.

Except in extraordinary circumstances, Cabinet agency nominations should not be controversial. The president, or the Cabinet secretary, should be permitted to assemble his or her own team. Increasingly, however, Democratic senators are using uncontroversial nominations as excuses to fulminate against the president and stymie the administration.

Having so far deprived the Department of Education of its leadership, congressional Democrats will no doubt criticize the agency for the failures that result from their obstructionism. We hope Democratic donors are impressed by their nastiness.