President Donald Trump is not a small government guy. But, he has declared during his 2024 presidential campaign and since his intention to drastically reduce or even eliminate a Cabinet department — the Department of Education.
A December report from the Bipartisan Policy Center notes that, while the Trump administration has appeared to reduce roughly by half the number of employees at the Education Department, the Cabinet department remains a big spender. The report explains:
With a discretionary budget of $79.6 in Fiscal Year 2025, the Department of Education has a larger budget than all agencies except Defense, Health and Human Services, and Veterans Affairs. This funding includes grants from the federal government to states and school districts. The discretionary budget does not include its federal student aid spending, which is mandatory spending that does not have to be appropriated by Congress each year.
It would make sense that Trump and Congress, both houses of which are under the control of the president’s party, would slash Education Department funding for the next fiscal year — 2026 — in line with employment cuts already implemented at the Cabinet department. However, that does not seem to be happening.
The American Council on Education related in a Monday post at its website that the House of Representatives last week approved legislation providing appropriations for the Education Department for fiscal year 2026 at about the same amount provided the year before, despite Trump’s call for a roughly 12 billion dollars reduction. Notably, even Trump’s called for reduction in spending was far short of a 50 percent cut that would match the employment reduction at the Education Department. Keeping spending the same can be seen as a small cut measured in inflation-adjusted dollars given the continuing devaluing of the US dollar. The legislation containing the Education Department spending for fiscal year 2026 is the Consolidated Appropriations Act (HR 7148) that was approved Thursday on the House floor by a vote of 341 to 88.
The Education Department appropriations amount the House approved last week is also roughly the same as what, two years back, Trump’s predecessor President Joe Biden signed into law for fiscal year 2024. As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
