Lawmakers call on Education Secretary to scrap plans to refurnish her office

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, joined Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee in calling on Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon to scrap her plans to spend over $43,000 in taxpayer dollars on new furniture for her office.

“It has come to our attention that as you cut off funding for students, push out staff, and do all you can to illegally dismantle the very Department you lead, you plan to spend $43,278.64 on new furniture for your own office,” wrote Baldwin and Murray in a letter to Secretary McMahon. “You vowed to put yourself out of a job; now you expect American taxpayers to pick up the tab to refurnish your own office.”

“Secretary McMahon, you have asked students, families, and teachers across the country to endure extraordinarily painful cuts in the name of ‘fiscal responsibility,’ and you have pushed out nearly half of the staff at the Department… This year, you have asked Congress to slash funding for important K-12 programs and to cut funding for higher education programs by nearly $5 billion,” they continued. “But it is clear that you do not think that you should have to abide by the same rules you want to apply to others.”

Senators Baldwin and Murray conclude by calling on Secretary McMahon to scrap the planned purchases, which the Department claimed were necessary in part because the Secretary’s existing furniture “cannot be … aesthetically integrated into the agency’s new office space.”

“The American people are sick of the corruption, sick of the waste, and sick of the hypocrisy coming out of all corners of this administration,” concluded the Senators.

Full text of the letter is available here and below.

Secretary McMahon:

It has come to our attention that as you cut off funding for students, push out staff, and do all you can to illegally dismantle the very Department you lead, you plan to spend $43,278.64 on new furniture for your own office. While schools nationwide lose out on funding Congress provided for everything from literacy programs to student mental health because of actions taken by your Department, you are wasting tax dollars on frivolous furniture purchases. You vowed to put yourself out of a job; now you expect American taxpayers to pick up the tab to refurnish your own office.

Secretary McMahon, you have asked students, families, and teachers across the country to endure extraordinarily painful cuts in the name of “fiscal responsibility,” and you have pushed out nearly half of the staff at the Department in a chaotic, illegal campaign to fire employees tasked with protecting students with disabilities in the classroom and going after predatory student lenders. This year, you have asked Congress to slash funding for important K-12 programs and to cut funding for higher education programs by nearly $5 billion—including by destroying programs like TRIO and Federal Work Study.

But it is clear that you do not think that you should have to abide by the same rules you want to apply to others. As you illegally spin off the Department’s core functions to other agencies and are forcing hundreds of your employees to move to agencies across government, apparently your old furniture cannot be moved to your new office.

We want the Department of Education to have a safe and professional office space to work from—but that must mean a safe and professional office space for every employee, not merely the Secretary. While you use Americans’ tax dollars to refurnish your own new office, you have forced your own employees to go work in offices that “are unsafe and in disrepair, with water leaking from ceilings, mold in kitchens, extreme temperatures from a failing HVAC system, insect traps filled with dead bugs and live insects in lactation rooms and work areas.” Your Department claims that the existing furniture in your office “cannot be … aesthetically integrated into the agency’s new office space.” It is unjustifiable to buy new furniture while students lose access to education services you are illegally dismantling and suffer from painful funding cuts that were not authorized by Congress.

The American people are sick of the corruption, sick of the waste, and sick of the hypocrisy coming out of all corners of this administration. They deserve a full accounting of how and why their tax dollars are being used to buy new office furniture for a secretary whose stated mission is to put themselves out of a job. We urge you to reconsider this wasteful purchase, restore Congressionally mandated funding families are counting on, and refocus your Department’s time on helping students get ahead.

Sincerely,

An online version of this release is available here.