Betsy DeVos nomination clears committee
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s nomination of Betsy DeVos to become his education secretary was sent Tuesday morning to the full U.S. Senate for confirmation on a tight 12-11 party-line vote in committee after a fractious debate over her qualifications.
The vote on the nomination of DeVos, a controversial figure in Michigan politics and education, raised hackles among Democrats, who argued throughout a contentious hearing two weeks ago and Tuesday’s voting session that she knows too little about federal education policy and would undermine public schools.
Republicans, in the majority in both the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and the full Senate, defended her as being committed to children even if she has been a key supporter of school choice and vouchers — though two GOP members signaled that their votes in the committee Tuesday did not necessarily guarantee support on the Senate floor.
A vote for final confirmation in the Senate has not yet been scheduled. Immediately after the vote, Democrats moved to overturn the vote because a proxy vote in favor was made for U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who was not in the committee room. A vote to overturn the vote was rejected after Hatch showed up in the committee room to effectively confirm the vote.
As debate on her nomination got underway, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who chairs the committee, said the vote would occur over Democratic objections and complaints that her nomination had been rushed through. Alexander said she has answered dozens of times more questions — some 1,400 sent her by Democrats — and spent more time before the committee than any other recent nominee for education secretary.
“I don’t think it’s fair to treat Ms. DeVos any differently than we did (former) President Obama’s secretaries,” said Alexander. “The objec- tion is she supports charter schools. ... The objection is she supports school choice.”
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., however, said that her and other Democrats’ opposition to DeVos is not about school choice or charter schools that she supported in Michigan but their belief that she has worked to drain funding from public schools to the benefit of private and for-profit schools.
Warren said there has never been an education secretary nominee “less qualified or more dangerous” than DeVos, who was widely criticized for her lack of institutional experience at a confirmation hearing two weeks ago in which it appeared she was initially unfamiliar with some federal policies like those regarding protections for disabled students.