Two Republican senators joined a Democrat-led effort to stop the Trump administration from transferring key Education Department offices to other federal agencies, a move that puts part of the president's government-reform agenda in limbo.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved bill S. 5046 on a 13, 9 vote Thursday, barring the Department of Education from shifting four major offices out of the agency through interagency agreements. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska crossed party lines to back the measure, which was co-sponsored by Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat.
The bill targets the administration's strategy of using interagency agreements, at least a dozen so far, to move Education Department functions to other parts of the federal government. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has framed the transfers as a "proof of concept," arguing that if Congress sees major programs running smoothly under other agencies, lawmakers will eventually agree to shut the department down for good. S. 5046 would block that path for four offices: the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Office of Postsecondary Education, and the Office of Indian Education.
The administration did not take the vote quietly. ED spokeswoman Savannah Newhouse pushed back sharply:
"Secretary McMahon promised Congress a proof of concept that is currently underway and delivering results across our partner agencies, and it is entirely premature to sabotage this effort before it has the chance to eliminate bureaucratic barriers and fully deliver the results that our students, families, and educators deserve."
That word, "sabotage", is telling. The administration views these interagency agreements as the practical first step toward dismantling a department that Congress created 45 years ago under President Jimmy Carter. McMahon has said she hopes lawmakers will be more willing to end the department once they see its biggest functions operating successfully elsewhere. The bill's sponsors see it differently: Congress put those programs in the Education Department on purpose, and the executive branch has no business relocating them without legislation.
Collins described S. 5046 as "straightforward," saying it keeps the administration of certain education programs "where Congress specifically put them and where they belong." Murkowski framed the issue around the children the programs serve.
"We cannot lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day, we're talking about children, whether it's children with special needs, whether it's children in our elementary schools, whether it's our Native students, making sure that we don't lose that focus."
The argument has a surface appeal. Nobody wants special-education services disrupted. But the bill does more than protect children, it walls off a significant portion of the Education Department from any restructuring, regardless of whether the transfers would improve service delivery. That is a policy choice dressed up as a child-welfare concern.
This is not the first time lawmakers have tried to slow the administration's approach. Congress approved non-binding language in its most recent spending bill telling the Education Department it has no authority to transfer functions to other agencies. The administration moved forward with the interagency agreements anyway, treating the language as advisory rather than prohibitive. S. 5046 attempts to close that gap by making the prohibition statutory.
The pattern is familiar. When the executive branch pushes the boundaries of its authority, Congress responds with increasingly forceful legislative tools, and courts and legislators alike have shown a willingness to check Trump administration initiatives through formal mechanisms rather than political negotiation.
Kaine told Politico he hopes the bill will be folded into upcoming appropriations discussions, which would give it a vehicle to reach the Senate floor without a standalone vote. That strategy is shrewd, attaching the measure to must-pass spending legislation would force a direct confrontation between the administration's restructuring plans and Congress's power of the purse.
The bill's future is far from certain. The House Education and Workforce Committee voted last month on a separate measure that would permanently move certain Education Department functions to other agencies, a bill directly at odds with S. 5046. The two chambers are heading in opposite directions on the same question, which means any resolution will require either a conference negotiation or one side backing down.
Collins and Murkowski are no strangers to breaking with their party on high-profile votes. Their willingness to join Democrats on this issue fits a broader pattern in the current Senate, where a small group of Republican senators has repeatedly sided with the minority to constrain administration actions. Whether that reflects principled institutional concern or political positioning depends on whom you ask.
For the administration, the 13, 9 vote is a setback but not necessarily a fatal one. Officially ending the Department of Education requires an act of Congress, something that remains a heavy lift even with Republican majorities. McMahon's interagency-agreement strategy was designed to build momentum toward that goal by demonstrating that the department's functions could survive without the department itself. The bill, if it becomes law, would remove four of the largest offices from that demonstration project.
The administration has faced resistance on multiple fronts this session. Senate Democrats blocked a $1.15 trillion defense bill earlier this month, and the president has pressured Senate leadership to cancel recess to push through priority legislation. The Education Department fight adds another front to an already crowded battlefield.
The core tension here is not really about special education or Indian education. It is about whether the executive branch can restructure a cabinet department through administrative agreements, or whether every significant change requires new legislation. The administration argues it is simply improving service delivery within existing authority. The bill's sponsors argue the transfers amount to dismantling a department Congress created, and that only Congress can undo what Congress built.
Both sides have a point. But the practical effect of S. 5046 is clear: it would freeze a significant portion of the administration's education-reform effort in place, leaving the department's largest offices exactly where they have been for 45 years. That is not reform. It is preservation of the status quo by lawmakers who say they support accountability but vote to protect the bureaucracy the moment change arrives at their committee door.
The vote also raises a harder question for Republicans. The party has talked about eliminating the Education Department for decades. Now that an administration is actually trying to do it, not through a dramatic legislative showdown, but through a methodical transfer of functions, members of the president's own party are voting to stop it. If Republican senators keep joining Democrats to block the administration's agenda, the question stops being whether the Education Department can be reformed and starts being whether the GOP Senate caucus actually wants it reformed at all.
Promising to shrink government is easy. Voting to let it happen is apparently the hard part.