{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.murray.senate.gov/at-hearing-on-career-and-technical-education-senator-murray-calls-out-trump-admins-illegal-scheme-to-transfer-key-education-responsibilities-to-other-agencies-jeopardizing-support-students/", "At Hearing on Career and Technical Education, Senator Murray Calls Out Trump Admin\u2019s Illegal Scheme to Transfer Key Education Responsibilities to Other Agencies, Jeopardizing Support Students Count On", "2025-12-09", "2025", "2025-12", "Democrat", "Senate", "WA", "Patty Murray", "M001111", "www.murray.senate.gov", "murray", "https://www.murray.senate.gov/category/press-releases/", "scraper", "ICYMI from Politico: The Education Department gave another agency power to distribute its money. It hasn\u2019t gone well.\n\nICYMI from Gov Exec: Trump admin acknowledges difficulties in transferring Education programs to other agencies, internal documents show\n\n***WATCH: Senator Murray questions witnesses on how the Trump administration has increased bureaucratic hurdles for educators and harmed career and technical education***\n\nWashington, D.C. \u2014 Today, at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) subcommittee hearing on career and technical education (CTE), U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA)\u2014a former chair and senior member of the HELP Committee\u2014questioned witnesses on how the Trump administration\u2019s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education (ED) by spinning off critical education responsibilities to other agencies are harming students and threatening education programs across the nation.\n\nPresident Trump signed an executive order in March seeking to eliminate the Department of Education. Federal law requires an act of Congress to close the department, and Secretary McMahon has repeatedly affirmed that only Congress can shut down the department. Knowing that Congress will not pass a law to abolish the Department of Education, she has nonetheless worked hard to dismantle the department from within. In July, Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced that she planned to illegally transfer responsibility of CTE and adult education programs to the Department of Labor\u2013leading to technical problems, communications breakdowns, bureaucratic hurdles, and logistical issues at the agency. Despite these problems, last month, the Trump administration announced that it would double down on this failure and attempt to illegally shutter even more of the Department of Education by moving significant responsibilities of almost all K-12 education programs and the majority of higher education grantmaking to other agencies with little to no education expertise\u2014causing early literacy programs, preschool programs, and college access programs to be administered out of an agency whose primary task is to implement workforce training and labor protections. Now, K-12 and higher education grantees will need to work with multiple federal agencies, instead of one, in the administration of these programs, creating new bureaucratic hurdles for states and school districts in the process. Senator Murray hosted a roundtable last month with parents, educators, and advocates in Seattle decrying the administration\u2019 latest actions to dismantle ED.\n\nIn opening comments, Senator Murray said:\n\n\u201cThank you, Chair Tuberville. I\u2019m really glad that we are having this important conversation.\n\n\u201cI want to take this opportunity to say how outraged I am by how callously the Trump Administration has mishandled our education programs, as it is taking a wrecking ball to the Department of Education.\n\n\u201cEarlier this year, Secretary McMahon cast off much of her Department\u2019s responsibility for career and technical education and adult education programs to the Labor Department, with basically no notice, no planning\u2014which has resulted in funding delays and other problems.\n\n\u201cUnfortunately, that was just a preview of what was to come.\n\n\u201cThree weeks ago, President Trump and Secretary McMahon announced they are moving almost all K-12 education programs, and many higher education programs, to DOL, and they are moving others to HHS, Interior, State.\n\n\u201cAnd they also promised to keep moving more programs\u2014including Special Education\u2014to other agencies, all without consulting Congress. That should be unacceptable to every one of us.\n\n\u201cCongress has repeatedly and clearly authorized those programs at the Department of Education and provided funding to the Department of Education to carry them out. Moving programs to agencies without the experience nor the capacity to administer them is really a disservice to our students and to our schools.\n\n\u201cThe Department of Labor is not used to administering the number of programs administered by the Department of Education. We saw chaos earlier this year when the CTE and Adult Education programs were moved from the Department of Education to DOL.\n\n\u201cHow much worse is it going to be when DOL is saddled with thousands of education grants, like TRIO, when they have never administered anything near that scale? How are they going to administer Impact Aid programs with zero experience doing that? Why is the Department of Labor administering programs for preschoolers and elementary school students at all?\n\n\u201cThe Trump administration has not answered those questions or even consulted Congress. The Secretary of Labor has never testified to how she would administer any of these new programs\u2014and she even failed to explain how she\u2019s meeting her existing responsibilities.\n\n\u201cThis is not saving money. It is not reducing bureaucracy. It is increasing chaos. DOL is already charging McMahon over a million additional dollars to now do the CTE work her employees were doing.\n\n\u201cTaking over significantly larger and complex programs will surely cost significantly more\u2014but of course, the administration hasn\u2019t told us how much it\u2019s going to be. And now we will have two separate Departments \u2018co-managing\u2019 all of these programs.\n\n\u201cHow is that going to reduce bureaucracy? States, school districts, and families are going to have to deal with multiple federal agencies now when they used to deal with one.\n\n\u201cSo I want to make clear: I am always ready for a conversation about how we improve these federal programs. But that couldn\u2019t be further from what is happening with this administration.\n\n\u201cAnd again, they aren\u2019t even bothering to talk to Congress about it and how they can pursue these ideas legally\u2014by passing a law to do it. They\u2019re just doing it, which tells you pretty much how serious they are about doing anything.\n\n\u201cSo I appreciate this hearing, but I needed this opportunity to express my dismay at what is happening in this administration to our schools, to our students, and really, to the future of our country with all this mismanaging going on.\u201d\n\nWitnesses at the hearing included: Mr. Luke Rhine, Vice President, Rodel Foundation; Chris Cox, Deputy Chancellor for Instruction, Research, and Development, Alabama Community College System; Ms. Chelle Travis, Executive Director, SkillsUSA; and Mr. Joel Stadtlander, Director of Human Resources, ArcelorMittal Calvert.\n\n[TRUMP ADMIN UNDERMINING EDUCATION]\n\nSenator Murray began by asking Mr. Rhine about the inter-agency agreements Secretary McMahon announced last month, which are intended to further dismantle the Department without any concern for how to best manage these programs and help students, \u201cBut Mr. Rhine, let me ask you, and I wanted to ask you given your expertise: can Education and DOL collaborate on these programs without an inter-agency agreement, and have they collaborated on CTE before?\u201d\n\n\u201cSo, there is a long history of collaboration between the Department of Education and the Department of Labor. And what that history tells us is that it does not require major structural realignment. Where states have partnered, where federal agencies have partnered, is essentially through a number of instances. So, the implementation of WIOA, Titles I and III exist at the U.S. Department of Labor. Titles II and IV, which are inherently education programs, exist at the Department of Education\u2014used to exist at the Department of Education. There was an inter-agency working group that worked directly with states and across federal agencies to manage the implementation of WIOA and ensure that our nation\u2019s adult education and workforce system was responsive to states. There are also examples where the Departments of Education and Labor have partnered to offer and support things like career and technical education. When I worked federally, we offered a number of joint issue, we jointly issued a number of guidance documents to states that help them think about the integration of CTE, the expansion of post-secondary CTE to include registered apprenticeship as well as short term credential programs. How states could modify their post-secondary funding formula, which states are given the authority to do under the Act to include at the time programs that were not Pell-eligible. So, there are many instances where the Departments of Education and Labor have cooperatively worked together, but in past instances, they\u2019ve essentially centered states\u2019 needs as part of their joint collaboration. And I think that\u2019s one thing that we\u2019re missing right now, is really working hand in glove with states to make sure that they have the information that they need to lead effectively,\u201d answered Mr. Rhine.\n\n\u201cThank you. I\u2019m over my time, but Mr. Chairman, I really think Congress needs to look at what is happening here, what\u2019s happening to our programs, what\u2019s happening to families\u2019 access, whether there\u2019s any collaboration, how they\u2019re putting this together. And clearly, again, it\u2019s up to Congress to pass the law. The administration cannot do this without Congress having their input,\u201d Senator Murray concluded.\n\nA senior member and former chair of the HELP Committee, Senator Murray has championed students and families at every stage of her career\u2014fighting to help ensure every child in America can get a high-quality public education. Among other things, Senator Murray negotiated the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), landmark legislation that she got signed into law, replacing the broken No Child Left Behind Act. In June, she wrote a letter to Department of Education (ED) Secretary Linda McMahon with Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D, CT-03), Congressman Robert C. \u201cBobby\u201d Scott (D, VA-03), and Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), calling out the Department\u2019s illegal efforts to attempt to transfer responsibility over CTE programs to the Department of Labor (DOL). The lawmakers also called out the moves in a July statement, and Senator Murray joined Congresswoman DeLauro and Senator Baldwin to condemn the Department of Education\u2019s continued attempts to illegally transfer CTE responsibility to the DOL in September. Last week, Senator Murray led her colleagues in sending a letter to Secretary McMahon slamming ED\u2019s recent announcement that it has signed interagency agreements (IAAs) to illegally outsource core functions that students and their families rely on\u2014and calling on her to reverse these latest steps to dismantle ED.\n\nSenator Murray also helped pass the bipartisan Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act in 2018, which updated and reauthorized the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education (CTE) Act to update job training and CTE programs to meet the needs of local economies in the 21st century.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.murray.senate.gov/at-hearing-on-career-and-technical-education-senator-murray-calls-out-trump-admins-illegal-scheme-to-transfer-key-education-responsibilities-to-other-agencies-jeopardizing-support-students/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.669716089963913, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}