Betsy DeVos

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/01/18/daily-202-lamar-alexander-is-dragging-betsy-devos-across-the-finish-line-to-become-secretary-of-education/587e5785e9b69b36fcfeafd7/?utm_term=.9392ba2a5f3f

Lamar Alexander is dragging Betsy DeVos across the finish line to become secretary of education
By James Hohmann January 18 at 10:43 AM

THE BIG IDEA: No senator has done more to shield a Donald Trump cabinet pick from scrutiny and tough questions than Lamar Alexander has for Betsy DeVos.

After postponing the secretary of education nominee’s hearing for a week, the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (known as HELP) rescheduled it for last night at the very unusual time of 5 p.m. (It then started 15 minutes late.)

The obvious goal was to minimize how many people would watch. The late start meant that cable news could not cover the proceedings live unless TV executives preempted lucrative primetime programming (which they didn’t do), and it made it harder for print reporters to make early newspaper deadlines – which forced some outlets to run shorter stories than they might have otherwise.

Despite howls of protest from every Democrat on the committee, Alexander allowed each member to ask five minutes of questions. He permitted just one round of questioning, compared to the three rounds that Rex Tillerson and Jeff Sessions faced last week. Most committees also give members 10 minutes per round, not five.

Alexander offered a tortured explanation for the abbreviated questioning, suggesting it was a “precedent” because the last few Education secretaries only underwent one round of questions. But he admitted that he let Elizabeth Warren ask a second round of the current Education secretary during his confirmation hearing less than a year ago.

Furthermore, Alexander scheduled DeVos’s grilling before the U.S. Office of Government Ethics has even completed a review of her potential conflicts of interest. Eight years ago, Republicans insisted that every Barack Obama nominee be cleared by the OGE before a hearing was held.

The billionaire dilettante became wealthy by marrying into the Amway fortune, and her vast financial holdings are extraordinarily complex. She’s poured millions into the charter school movement for decades, but she has no professional experience in public schools, never attended public schools nor sent her own children to public schools. She has also never taken out a federal student loan for herself or her children. And, like the president she will serve, she’s never held public office.

— DeVos’s subsequently spotty performance showed why Republicans were so eager to make the hearing so late in the day and to keep it so short. Take this back-and-forth with Tim Kaine:

Kaine: “If confirmed, will you insist upon equal accountability in any K-12 school or educational program that receives taxpayer funding whether public, public charter or private?”
DeVos: “I support accountability.”
Kaine: “Equal accountability?”
DeVos: “I support accountability.”
Kaine: “Is that a yes or a no?”
DeVos: “I support accountability.”
Kaine: “Do you not want to answer my question?”
DeVos: “I support accountability.”
Kaine: “Let me ask you this. I think all schools that receive taxpayer funding should be equally accountable. Do you agree?”
DeVos: “Well they don’t, they are not today.”
Kaine: “Well, I think they should. Do you agree with me?”
DeVos: “Well, no.”
After she ducked other questions, the Virginia senator told her that if they were in a courtroom he’d tell the judge to make her answer. “But you’re not here under subpoena,” the 2016 Democratic vice-presidential nominee lamented.

— DeVos was unpersuasive when she insisted that Trump might have chosen her for this post even if she was not a mega-donor to GOP causes. Bernie Sanders drilled down:

Sanders: “Would you be so kind as to tell us how much your family has contributed to the Republican Party over the years?”
DeVos: “I wish I could give you that number. I don’t know.”
Sanders: “I have heard the number was $200 million! Does that sound in the ballpark?”
DeVos: “Collectively? Between my entire family?”
Sanders: “Yeah, over the years.”
DeVos: “That’s possible.”
During just the 2014 and 2016 election cycles, Emma Brown calculated that DeVos and her relatives gave at least $818,000 in hard dollars to 20 current Republican senators, including more than $250,000 to five members of the committee who questioned her last night.

— DeVos was evasive every time she was pressed for specifics, and she was out of her depth on several big issues that will soon fall under her jurisdiction. Here are some of the newsiest exchanges, via WaPo education beat reporters Emma Brown, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel and Moriah Balingit:

“She seemed to demonstrate a lack of understanding of one of education’s major federal civil rights laws, which requires states that take federal funding to provide children with disabilities the services they need to benefit from a public education. DeVos said states should decide whether schools should be required to meet those special-education requirements. ‘So some states might be good to kids with disabilities, and other states might not be so good, and then what, people can just move around the country if they don’t like how their kids are being treated?’ Kaine said. When Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) — who has a son with a disability — challenged DeVos to explain whether she understood that the law was a federal civil rights law, DeVos said she ‘may have confused it.’
“She also declined to say whether such schools should be required to report suspensions and expulsions, and incidents of bullying and harassment, to the federal government…
“She declined, under questioning from Patty Murray, to say whether she plans to rein in the Office for Civil Rights, which investigates allegations of discrimination in schools…
When Bob Casey asked if she’ll enforce recently-enacted guidelines to tackle sexual assault on college campuses, she refused to say. “I guess you’re not going to give me a yes or no on committing to upholding that guidance,” Casey said. After a long pause, DeVos replied carefully: “I think it would be premature for me to do that today.”

“Elizabeth Warren asked questions about DeVos’s qualifications to run the trillion-dollar federal student loan program, with DeVos acknowledging that she has no experience running or managing anything near the size and complexity of the program.
“DeVos said that she would not coerce states to expand vouchers or charters. But in an exchange with Murray, she also refused to say that she would not work to privatize schools.”
— “DeVos even appeared to have no idea what Al Franken was talking about when he referred to the accountability debate about whether to use test scores to measure student proficiency or student growth,” Valerie Strauss writes in a separate story. “Franken noted that the subject had been debated in the education community for years, and said, when she didn’t weigh in and just looked at him without much of an expression on her face, ‘It surprises me that you don’t know this issue.’”

— The most memorable moment, though, came when DeVos said local officials should decide whether to allow guns in schools. Mentioning rural Wyoming, she said: “I would imagine there’s probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies.” An incredulous Chris Murphy, the Connecticut senator who represents parents that lost children at Newtown’s Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, asked whether she will support Trump if he follow through on his promise to ban gun-free school zones. “I will support what the president-elect does,” she replied.

— The left is having a field day with the grizzlies gaffe:

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Adrienne Watson @Adrienne_DNC
#DumpDeVos
6:20 PM – 17 Jan 2017
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Martin O’Malley ✔ @MartinOMalley
There have been 210 school shootings in 3 years (not 1 involving a grizzly) yet @BetsyDevos thinks ok to allow guns in schools #DumpDevos
5:10 PM – 17 Jan 2017
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Laurence Tribe ✔ @tribelaw
DeVos says guns in schools could protect our kids from grizzlies. And she’s Trump’s choice to head Department of Education. No kidding.
6:35 PM – 17 Jan 2017
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Tom McKay ✔ @thetomzone
UPDATE: Teacher at Wyoming school Betsy DeVos said needed guns to shoot “grizzlies” says that’s “absolutely” untruehttps://mic.com/articles/165777/betsy-devos-grizzlies-guns-in-schools-donald-trump-education-secretary …
8:32 PM – 17 Jan 2017
1,467 1,467 Retweets 1,376 1,376 likes
— The hearing itself, though, was largely characterized by a messy and, at times, absurd argument over process and precedent. Before any Democrat had even spoken, Alexander devoted his opening statement to admonishing the other side to show courtesy and to preemptively refute what he predicted would be their three biggest lines of attack. “I believe she’s in the mainstream of public opinion, and her critics are not,” the onetime presidential candidate said.

Alexander’s desire to ram through DeVos as quickly as possible is driven by his personal experience. When he was nominated for Education secretary by George H.W. Bush, the late Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) put a hold on his nomination because of unanswered questions about Alexander’s personal finances. Alexander is still peeved about this and happy that the rules no longer allow for such a maneuver.

Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the committee, complained about the lack of paperwork and DeVos’s refusal to share her tax returns. “It is not a law she provide her tax returns,” Alexander replied.

Throughout the hearing, various Democrats kept reminding Alexander of examples when he broke with what he now claims is a sacrosanct “precedent” to allow for more than one round of questions, including with Republican nominees like Rod Paige and Democrats like Tom Daschle. When Warren noted that she had been allowed to ask a second round of questions of the current education secretary during his hearing last year, Alexander said that’s because the Massachusetts liberal is “a very exceptional law professor,” and he didn’t want to argue with her. She wondered what changed and did not get a direct answer.

Chris Murphy asked DeVos if she had any other plans or arrangements later in the evening that would prevent her from staying for more questions. She paused and looked uncomfortable, like a deer in the headlights. “I defer to the chairman,” she said finally.

Alexander told the senators that they already had a chance to meet with DeVos privately in their offices before the hearing. “Our constituents weren’t there for half an hour,” said Pennsylvania’s Casey.

He then told the Democrats that they can submit written questions until Thursday at 5 p.m. Franken asked if he’d commit to not having a vote until DeVos had provided answers to whatever questions they send in writing. Alexander refused to agree. “The number of questions need to be reasonable,” he said. “I won’t say there’s a certain number that’s reasonable.” “So the answer is no,” Franken said. “We won’t be assured she’ll answer our questions!”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) jumped in to call the Democrats whiners. “Mr. Chairman, I cannot help but think that if my friends on the other side of the aisle had used their time to ask questions rather than complaining about the lack of a second round, they each would have been able to get in a second question,” she told Alexander.

Lamar! confers with an aide as DeVos testifies. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
— Alexander noted that some of DeVos’s predecessors as secretary have sailed through on voice voices. “What you are asking me to do is to treat Mrs. DeVos differently than we treated President Obama’s two education secretaries, and I’m not gonna do that,” he said, noting that Arne Duncan’s hearing was two hours and two minutes while current secretary John King’s was two hours and 10 minutes. (The DeVos hearing wound up being close to three-and-a-half hours.)

Democrats replied that this was because they were known commodities and uncontroversial to the educational establishment. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) pointed out how past Education secretaries had extensive experience in the field. “When you were the nominee, you had been a governor and the president of a university,” he told Alexander. “King had been a school principal, commissioner of education in New York and worked in the department. … Duncan had been superintendent of Chicago public schools.” DeVos has no real record to speak of, he added. “There’s no way we can get at her background with the time we have.”

Bennet then noted that the rules of the Senate technically allow Democrats to call minority witnesses. “That request has been made earlier, and I’ve denied it,” Alexander said. “I appreciate your request, but I’m not going to agree to it. The committee is adjourned.”

With that, he banged his gavel. And the microphones were turned off.

Betsy DeVos’s confirmation hearing, in three minutes Play Video2:57
Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary, appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for her confirmation hearing Jan. 17. (Video: Bastien Inzaurralde/Photo: Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
— What’s so crazy about last night’s donnybrook is that it was wholly unnecessary. DeVos will get confirmed either way. All she had to do was not give any Republican member a reason to vote against her. Now, however, it appears that the Republicans think she’s in over her head and that they’re scared of what she might say if she was allowed to keep talking.

Because the committee is stocked with liberal celebrities like Sanders, Warren and Franken, the GOP stonewalling will go viral on YouTube. This will make it harder for DeVos to build bipartisan support for any of her initiatives after she’s sworn in.

In the long term, though, Alexander might have hurt his own reputation more than he helped DeVos’s confirmation prospects. He has always prided himself on being one of the adults in the room. He put the kibosh on an effort by his GOP colleagues a few years back to invoke the nuclear option, for example. Democratic members of the committee said last night after the hearing that they’ve begun to lose respect for Alexander. That could come back to haunt the chairman during future negotiations, markups, etc.

• This topic was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Zooey.