House Republicans introduce 10 bills to make the Education Department's program transfers permanent

Republicans on the House Education and the Workforce Committee introduced 10 bills on July 9 that would write the Trump administration's transfer of Education Department programs into federal law, moving the authority to run those programs out of the department permanently rather than lending it out under an agreement.

Committee Chairman Tim Walberg of Michigan announced the package, which the committee calls "Less Bureaucracy, Better Education." Two of the bills would put most major K-12 programs, including Title I formula grants for disadvantaged students and career and technical education, under the Department of Labor. Another would move the federal student loan program to the Treasury Department. Another would send a set of competitive grants for family engagement and school-based social services to the Department of Health and Human Services. The rest cover workforce development, higher education, tribal education, international education oversight, foreign gift transparency, foreign medical accreditation, and child care for student parents.

"Rather than allowing unnecessary layers of Washington bureaucracy stand between families and the services they rely on, the bills would transfer key statutory authorities to agencies better equipped to carry them out while maintaining continuity for students and stakeholders," Walberg said in the committee's statement.

Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the committee's ranking Democrat, said the bills "would dismantle the Department of Education and offload critical offices to agencies that are ill-equipped to carry out core duties." He said Republicans "are blessing President Trump's scheme to dismantle it piece by piece."

What the bills change that the agreements do not

Since 2025 the Education Department has moved programs by signing interagency agreements with other Cabinet departments. Education Week counts 14 such agreements covering at least 148 programs and functions across six agencies: Labor, HHS, Justice, Interior, State, and the Treasury. Under those agreements, the secretary of education still holds final decision-making authority over the programs. Another department runs them day to day.

The bills remove that. If they became law, statutory authority would sit with the head of the receiving agency, and the Education Department would have no role in overseeing the programs or deciding how they are run. Only Congress can close a Cabinet department, and the package does not close this one. It moves the department's statutory work out from under it.

The bills also leave out the administration's two most recent moves, announced June 16: sending the Office for Civil Rights' complaint work to the Justice Department, and shifting administration of special education, including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, to HHS.

The bill numbers

Education Week reported that a committee markup is tentatively set for Wednesday, July 15, citing sources it did not name. Walberg's staff did not respond to Education Week's questions about the schedule. Even if the bills clear the House, they would need Democratic votes in the Senate to get past a filibuster, and no Senate Democrat has backed the transfers.

The special education fight running alongside it

The bills landed the same week Education Department officials held a private call with disability advocates about the separate plan to move special education staff to HHS. NPR, which obtained a recording, reported that Kelly Rogers, the acting assistant secretary overseeing special education, told the group, "The U.S. Health and Human Services is not taking over IDEA. Period." Rogers also said staff at the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, the office that supports states and schools in carrying out IDEA, would move to HHS while she continued to oversee them from the Education Department "with additional support by HHS." She gave no timeline.

Advocates on the call said they left without answers. "Today's briefing left more questions than answers for parents and educators," said Chad Rummel of the Council for Exceptional Children. Denise Marshall, chief executive of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, said the plan "appears to add another layer of bureaucracy while creating additional confusion and uncertainty for families, educators, and state agencies," and called on Congress to block it.

Education Department press secretary Savannah Newhouse told NPR that the special education community has "nothing to fear," and that the HHS partnership "places these important federal responsibilities in a better positioned agency." The department says special education money will keep flowing to states through its systems for now. Congress appropriated more than $15 billion for special education programs in February, and that funding is not cut by any of this.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who chairs the Senate education committee, has said he will hold a vote on Democratic legislation to block the special education transfer to HHS, and that if the programs must leave the Education Department he would rather they go to Labor. That is the only formal Republican opposition so far to any piece of the department's breakup.

Rachel Gittleman, president of the American Federation of Government Employees local representing Education Department staff, said the transfers already done have produced "funding delays, confusion and chaos for both employees and the public." Education Secretary Linda McMahon has described the moves as a proof of concept meant to show lawmakers the programs can run elsewhere.

What happens next

Watch July 15. If the committee marks the bills up, it is the first time Congress has voted on codifying any part of the Education Department's dismantling. Until then, the transfers rest on agreements a future secretary of education could cancel.