The Department of Education

Trump and his cronies want to eliminate the Department of Education. Much of what the DOE does is to fund special education programs in the states. About 60% of this money flows to red states.

So basically it takes blue state tax dollars and gives them to red states because the red states want to keep their taxes low rather than support education for their own children. Did I get that right?

OK, that was a bit snarky, but I live in New Jersey and, according to the Rockefeller Institute, New Jersey sends $3,100 more per year, per person to the federal government than it gets back. That translates to $9,300 for my household alone. It sure would be nice if a couple of thousand of that would go toward reducing my property taxes instead.

My town has an education budget of $27 million and it gets $162 thousand from the federal government for special education programs. That’s about 0.6%. Given that the town has a population of about 10,000 that’s a pretty bad exchange for the approximately $31 million extra that we’re providing to the federal government per year.

If I’m supposed to be voting for my best interests, then perhaps I should be cheering Trump on as he shuts down the DOE.

I didn’t vote for Trump because I think he’s going to do a lot of damage to a lot of innocent people and perhaps closing the DOE would be part of that damage. But there is a degree of frustration here as blue state tax dollars continue to get shuffled to red states for things those states should be paying for themselves.