Education Secretary Betsy DeVos appeared before Congress on Tuesday morning to review her agency’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year, and just like many of DeVos’s previous sit-downs with lawmakers, it was a disaster.
DeVos was hammered by lawmakers who grilled her over her request to eliminate 29 programs for an annual savings of $6.7 billion, with the Special Olympics among the groups that would see their funding dinged by millions. Unsurprisingly, lawmakers peppered DeVos with variations on How do you sleep at night? while she defended the proposed cuts by claiming the department “had to make some heavy decisions.”
Then today, she lashed out at the media for reporting the facts about her budget accurately describing what she said during her testimony. (and put in writing!) before noting that . . . they got everything right:
In a huffy, four-paragraph statement admonishing the media and certain congresspeople DeVos wrote:
“It is unacceptable, shameful and counterproductive that the media and some members of Congress have spun up falsehoods and fully misrepresented the facts. . . given our current budget realities, the federal government cannot fund every worthy program, particularly ones that enjoy robust support from private donations. They make me look like a monster!”
In other words, all those articles saying that DeVos was trying to cut $17.6 million from the Special Olympics’ funding were exactly correct. But in Trumpworld reality is apparently up for debate.
To be clear, as many have noted, Congress will likely never actually approve DeVos’s proposed budget.
