Protecting Education for Children with Disabilities
Floor Speech
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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut for yielding. It is so good to be here with her.
I want to focus a little bit on the importance of bringing this to the floor and perhaps even entering into a sort of dialogue with Mrs. Hayes about it.
I am thinking that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act came around 50 years ago. Long before that time, people recognized that education was a game changer for anyone.
Frederick Douglass said that knowledge is the ``pathway from slavery to freedom,'' and, ``Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.''
We found that Brown v. Board of Education really challenged the Equal Protection Clause under the 14th Amendment and made sure that little Black children would be able to get an education. Even before the Department of Education was established, even before that, the IDEA was written into law.
I bring all of that background up to say that the Department of Education was critical because when you think of all the various laws that need to be administered to make sure that there is equal protection, the IDEA just being one of those laws, it is very disturbing to see that the Department of Education has been stripped down to its bare bones.
I would like the member of the Committee on Education and Workforce to help me walk through it.
Am I right about this, that the administration has tried to illegally move the IDEA office and funding from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services?
I yield to the gentlewoman for a colloquy.
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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. In the middle of the shutdown, was it true that the Trump administration tried to fire nearly everyone in the Department of Education's Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services?
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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. The Office of Civil Rights was put in there through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This office is responsible for investigating thousands of allegations of discrimination each year, which includes enforcing Federal laws, ensuring equal educational access, and preventing discrimination.
Gentlewoman from Connecticut, am I wrong about this? I think it is very important because what we have seen is that so-called disabled people or differently abled people have made such tremendous contributions to our culture and to our society. I am thinking of very famous people like Thomas Edison, Franklin Roosevelt, and Fannie Lou Hamer, people who have had polio, who have been in wheelchairs, and physicists who have contributed.
It is important to leave nobody behind because the education of everybody is important to our national security interests and our economic interests.
I am so happy that Mrs. Hayes has raised this in this Special Order hour, and I thank her for allowing me to participate.
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