This is the Cato Daily podcast for Thursday, March 27th, 2025. I'm Caleb Brown. It's long past time to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education, but the how of getting rid of it matters. Following up on a fairly vague executive order from the White House, Cato's Neil McCluskey and Tommy Barry,

discuss what that wind down of the department should look like as a matter of policy

and scrupulous adherence to the Constitution.

Neil, you have long said, for as long as I've known you, and longer, I think, that the U.S. Department of Education,

if you take the Constitution seriously, probably shouldn't exist.

Yeah.

It's not even really probably.

It just shouldn't.

So the Constitution gives the federal government-specific enumerated powers.

You don't see anything about education in there.

For most of our history, it was recognized that education was something that remained with the people or the states.

And then what we've added on top of that is we did eventually create a U.S. Department of Education,

and it's unconstitutional, and there's no evidence that it's helped anybody.

So if education is about helping kids and getting better education for kids or for college

students, it's totally failed at that.

We have flat scores.

The programs that runs in higher ed are hyperinflationary. You know, that's why tuition or a major reason tuition is able to go up as it does. So by all measures, it should not exist.

The president of the United States has made it very clear that he would like to end the U.S. Department of Education. This has been a popular

cause among Republicans with essentially zero follow through until very recently. So what might

that look like? Or what do we know for either of you? What do we know about the plans for that

process, at least via executive order so far? We don't know very much. The text of the order itself

says that the department should be closed, quote, to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted

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