Video: Kaine Speaks on Senate Floor Regarding Trump’s Dismantling of Department of Education and Impact on Students with Disabilities

FULL VIDEO OF KAINE’S REMARKS IS AVAILABLE HERE.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, spoke on the Senate floor regarding President Donald Trump’s attempts to gut the Department of Education and illegally shutter or move vital programming to other federal departments. During the speech, Kaine discussed the threats this would pose to students’ education, educators, and the economy, as well as the negative impacts for students with disabilities. Today marks 50 years since the Senate overwhelmingly passed the bipartisan Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)—known then as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act—landmark legislation that has guaranteed equal opportunities and protections for students with disabilities in education. Trump has threatened to shut down the Department’s administration and enforcement of IDEA as part of his efforts to gut the Department.

“I want to spend my time more focused on the celebration of what this 50 years of the IDEA has done,” said Kaine. “Guess what the vote was in Congress around the passage of this law? In the Senate, the vote to pass this landmark civil rights and education law was 87 to seven, and in the House, the vote was 404 to seven. For a big landmark civil rights and education law to pass with that kind of a margin is really near miraculous. But the reason it passed so overwhelmingly is because society realized that we had been treating kids with disabilities in a very, very tragic and unforgivable way.”

“In 1975, more than a million school-aged children in this country were essentially locked out of public education because of the fact that they had a disability,” Kaine said. “Think about that million, who has grown to seven million – nearly one in seven students in our public school system receive special education services – what the trajectory of their lives was like before the IDEA passed and after the IDEA passed.”

Kaine continued, “Students with a designated disability under the IDEA receive an individualized education plan so that their particular disability can be focused in a meaningful way to enable them to be all that they can be. Isn’t that what we want for all children?”

“Students who receive these services early in their educational careers often don’t need them for more than a couple of preschool years or early grades, and then they’re perfectly successful. The IDEA works,” Kaine said. “It works to enable these students who had been consigned to the shadows of life for generations to be able to achieve all that they can.”

“There is uniform recognition in this country that the passage of IDEA and the 50 years of a commitment by this society that every child should be all that they can be is a good thing,” continued Kaine. “Can we make it better? Of course we can. But that bedrock promise made in 1975 is a good thing, and it has worked to enrich the lives now of tens of millions of people to make them as productive adults just like any of us aspire to be.”

“I am very, very troubled by the underfunding,” said Kaine. “But I’m also very troubled by the actions of this Administration to shed the staff who are needed to work with states and work with local governments to make sure that services are being appropriately provided.”

Kaine then told a story about how, at a hearing during the first Trump Administration, he asked then-nominee for Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos about IDEA, and she acknowledged that there was a federal commitment that any child with a disability – whatever ZIP code they live in – should be entitled to receive basic services.

“That promise is being threatened by the firings and by the underfunding,” concluded Kaine. “So while I join with my colleagues in committing to continue to improve it, I don’t want this moment to be lost without acknowledging the tremendous good that has been done by this most bipartisan law to enrich the lives of tens of millions of children and their families.”

As a member of HELP, Kaine has strongly pushed back against the Trump Administration’s efforts to gut the Department of Education. Earlier this month, Kaine and 29 of his colleagues pressed the Trump Administration to undo its efforts to shut down the Department’s administration and enforcement of IDEA. In September, Kaine and colleagues introduced the Protecting Students with Disabilities Act to ensure that special education programs remain within the federal Department of Education. In April, Kaine and colleagues wrote a letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon emphasizing the immense harm shuttering the Department of Education would have on the millions of students with disabilities across the United States, and he cosponsored the IDEA Full Funding Act, legislation that would ensure Congress fulfills its commitment to fully fund the IDEA.

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