Trump education pick wants guns
in schools to fight off grizzlies. NOT making this up.
Really
As she attempted to
avoid the line of questioning, at one point DeVos refused to
say whether or not she'd defund public schools.
Watch NBC
News' footage of DeVos refusing to answer a series of questions about her
donations to the Republican party, her privatization agenda, and her total lack
of government and policy experience.
DeVos was also the
first of President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks to sit for a hearing without completing
a full ethics review, a fact not lost on Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who
noted that without that review, the senators are unable to question the
billionaire about how she stands to personally profit from education policy.
Democrats were also dismayed when Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, announced that he was limiting the questioning to "one round of five minutes for each senator," the New York Times writes, noting that the questioning in previous hearings had included two rounds.
During the hearing,
Warren pointed out that DeVos has no experience at all with managing loans or
grants—particularly on the scale of the federal loan and grant system, a system
upon which poor, working- and middle-class students depend to pursue higher
education.
And DeVos faced many
pointed questions about her myriad conflicts of interest, such as when Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked DeVos if her family's contributions of hundreds of
millions of dollars to the Republican Party perhaps played a role in her
nomination for education secretary.
When Sanders went on
to ask if DeVos would work with him to push for free college tuition, DeVos,
who personally inherited billions, said, "I think that's a really
interesting idea, and it's really great to consider and think about, but I
think we also have to consider the fact that nothing in life is really
free."
DeVos also refused to
answer Sanders' questions about to how she plans to help people paid less than
$15/hour—and the Republican Party is against raising the minimum wage, he
points out—as they struggle to pay for the skyrocketing costs higher education
and childcare.
At times DeVos even appeared entirely unfamiliar with major
education laws, such as when Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) asked DeVos whether
her plan to decrease federal funds for schools meant she wouldn't enforce the
federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. DeVos had apparently never
heard of it.
That was far from the
most absurd moment of the hearing, observers noted: at one point, DeVos argued
in favor of allowing guns in schools—citing the necessity of defending
schools from grizzly bears.
She mentioned a school in Wyoming that
had a fence to protect it from wildlife, and said, "I think probably
there, I would imagine that there's probably a gun in the school to protect
from potential grizzlies."
"It's hard to
imagine someone less qualified to oversee the nation's schools than Betsy
DeVos," argued public
education advocate Diane Ravitch earlier this month. "DeVos did not attend
public schools, nor did her children. She has never been a teacher,
administrator, practitioner or scholar of education. In fact, one wonders
whether she has ever actually set foot in a public school."
"Betsy DeVos is a
dedicated enemy of public education," Ravitch said on MSNBC Tuesday,
"and 85 percent of this country's children are in public schools."
"Reason,
knowledge, ethics—none of that matters here," wrote teacher
and advocate Steven Singer after the hearing. "We are truly in
the age of the plutocrats where money has arrogantly attempted
to buy governmental power outright. Right in front of our noses."