#TBT: President Jimmy Carter Creates The Department of Education

 

     A perfect example of the inability on the part of Republicans to keep their promises is the Department of Education, created on October 17th, 1979, by President Jimmy Carter. The agency is tasked with creating curriculum and distributing financial aid and student loans, among other things, all with a staff of less than 4,000 people (one of the smallest of any government department).

     Republicans opposed it from the start; they ran in 1980 on its abolition. By 1984, they had dropped this platform. Despite Newt Gingrich's promise to abolish it while calling it "meddling in local education," the Department of Education was one of many that received record spending on the part of Republicans during the Clinton administration, and George W. Bush and Barack Obama made expanding the department a priority.

     The platforms of both parties on the Department of Education, with the exception of nutcases like Marjorie Taylor Greene, are virtually the same. It is one of many examples, including Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, the Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, Work Study, the National Park System, Social Security, and Obamacare, of Republicans crying for systematic overhaul and failing to do so even when they have both house of Congress. And they wonder why their mainstream party is dying?