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Floor Speech

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Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Maryland for his passionate advocacy for IDEA. IDEA is a critical program of the U.S. Department of Education.

Let me tell you what is happening to the U.S. Department of Education under President Trump.

We have a regime--that is what I call the Trump administration. It is a regime hell-bent on dismantling the Federal Government. From withholding billions in Federal funding to conducting mass firings of Federal workers and shuttering critical Agencies with hardly any notice at all, to implementing countless, harmful Executive actions, the Trump regime has sown chaos, corruption, and cruelty from day one. It is no wonder that there are now over 300 lawsuits to stop Trump's illegal actions.

It is clear Trump doesn't give a rip about our government or the millions of Americans who rely on the services it provides. That includes the U.S. Department of Education, which does critical work to ensure our country's more than 50 million--50 million--public school students can get a quality education.

Instead of trying to strengthen the Department of Education's support for our Nation's public schools, Trump and his allies are trying to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education completely. This has always been part of his plan. He began his second term by summarily firing nearly half of the Department's workforce. He did this in one fell swoop. These committed people at the Department of Education were told: You don't have to come to work tomorrow. So this followed the plan laid out, basically, for President Trump and Project 2025. Then, just this week, his Secretary of Education laid out plans to slash and dismantle the Department even further.

Education is foundational. It certainly was for me. As an immigrant, I came to this country not knowing any English. I didn't read or write English. It is the education system that this country afforded me that provided me the opportunities that resulted in my standing here, giving these remarks.

So, while we can all agree that there are ways we can improve our education system, we should also be able to agree that there is a role for the Federal Government in helping to ensure that all students--50 million--receive a quality education. For decades, the Department of Education has played that role of working to protect students against discrimination and ensure equal opportunities in our schools.

Of course, one of the ways it does this is by supporting students with disabilities. Signed into law in 1975, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, protects the rights of more than 7 million students with disabilities across the country--7 million. The IDEA helps to ensure these students receive free and appropriate public education that meets their needs. It also provides funding--yes, we need to fund the IDEA to the extent that is required--to help support these students and ensure the oversight of services for students with disabilities.

Before the IDEA was enacted, we did not have these kinds of Federal protections for students with disabilities. As a result, there was no way to ensure that students with disabilities were not denied access to education or were not neglected in our schools. As noted by my colleague from Maryland, many of these students didn't even get to go to school. They didn't have IDEA.

So, later this month, we will celebrate the 50th year of IDEA--the landmark law that has provided millions of young people with access to a free and appropriate public education.

Despite the success of the IDEA and programs like it, this regime is accelerating plans to dismantle the Department of Education and roll back the progress it has enabled by moving important programs to other Departments with no education expertise.

Recently, for example, Trump tried to take advantage of the shutdown to illegally fire hundreds more workers from the Education Department, including the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services and the Office for Civil Rights.

Education Secretary McMahon--herself one of Trump's billionaire buddies--has made the preposterous claim that the shutdown proved the Education Department is unnecessary. This is the kind of unsubstantiated--I can hardly believe that she would consider this proof of any kind, but this is the kind of stuff that the Trump administration always claims. The regime makes these kinds of unsubstantiated claims on a regular basis to justify its ill-conceived and often illegal acts.

In reality, I had constituents reaching out to my office during the shutdown to share concerns about how furloughs of the Department of Education were impacting Hawaii's public schools and the students they serve, including the students with disabilities.

I heard from the mother of a 4-year-old boy who attends a title I school in Hawaii. She was concerned about how the mass firings of special education staff threatened the services her child received.

Every public school child who receives special education must have, as mentioned, an individualized education program, or IEP--a plan to help meet the unique needs of each student. But without the necessary trained staff to support oversight of these programs, there is no one to help guide teachers or schools in developing these plans and ensuring that they are implemented or followed.

As mentioned, just yesterday, Secretary McMahon released a detailed plan for reorganizing the Department of Education by moving dozens of programs and services to other Agencies that do not have the necessary staffing, funding, or expertise to oversee these programs. We can expect that she will try to move IDEA too.

I heard from a middle school teacher on Hawaii island who emphasized just how unrealistic Trump's plan is to move oversight of IDEA to another Agency outside of the Education Department. He rightly pointed out that other Agencies have ``no expertise in the complex education law that is I-D-E-A.''

Education specialists, officers, and analysts within the Office of Special Education programs are trained to best support IDEA. It is not as though you can just move this program to Homeland Security or Human Services and expect them to be able to provide the kind of support that IDEA requires. Moving this program would mean a loss of expertise that will not be rebuilt quickly, leaving our most vulnerable students to pay the price.

As another example of moving programs out of the Department of Education as part of the dismantling of the Department--I could not resist this example--President Trump proposes to move the student loan portfolio to the Small Business Administration, which has neither the capacity nor the expertise needed to handle this massive program. The SBA is one of the smallest Federal Government Agencies. How is it supposed to handle a Department of Education program with over 40 million borrowers and over $1.5 trillion in loans? It can't.

Clearly, neither Trump nor Secretary McMahon see a Federal role in education because they are just moving programs without figuring out how these programs are even going to be continued. In fact, that is not their intention. Their intention is to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education, and they can't do that because only Congress can do that. So what do they come up with? These alternative ways to dismantle the Department.

Shouldn't supporting our public schools and our children's education be a national priority? I mean, obviously President Trump and Secretary McMahon don't think it is a national priority. Certainly, it is a national priority in other countries. Why? Because these other countries know, as I said earlier, that education is foundational and that an educated populous is an engaged populous.

By gutting staff and funding that students rely on and attempting to eliminate the Department altogether--a plan that will inevitably hurt our students, no question--this regime's actions make it abundantly clear that they don't want an engaged populous. One can't help but wonder why.

This regime is not committed to public education. They are not committed to public education. They don't see a Federal role for public education, and that is the long and short of it.

We can and must do better to support the education of 50-plus million children in our country.

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