Schumer to oppose DeVos for Education secretary

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday said he will oppose President Trump’s pick for Education secretary, writing in a biting statement that Betsy DeVos would “single-handedly decimate our public education system.”

“Her plan to privatize education would deprive students from a good public education, while helping students from wealthy families get another leg up,” Schumer said in his Thursday statement, the Huffington Post reported.

{mosads}“The president’s decision to ask Betsy DeVos to run the Department of Education should offend every single American man, woman, and child who has benefitted from the public education system in this country,” Schumer added. “Public education has lifted millions out of poverty, has put millions in good paying jobs, and has been the launching pad for people who went on to cure disease and to create inventions that have changed our society for the better.”

During DeVos’s confirmation hearing last week, Schumer said Democrats wanted a second hearing to question her.

“We feel very strongly there ought to be another hearing, and this will affect how the rest of the nominees will go forward because we need time on them,” he said at the time. “I’ve never heard anything like this.”

But the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions rejected the request Monday.  

The committee plans to hold an executive session on Jan. 31 to vote on DeVos’s nomination.

In his statement Thursday, Schumer cited DeVos’s refusal to divest from her companies as “all the proof one needs to know that she is in this for herself, and not for students.”

“I will vote no, and I will do it proudly.”