Trump education secretary pick testifies on plans to eliminate department

U.S. President Donald Trump's pick for education secretary, Linda McMahon, testified Thursday before a US Senate committee, decrying an "excessive consolidation of power" in the department she has been named to lead.

"Our wounds are caused by the excessive consolidation of power in our federal education establishment," said McMahon, a 76-year-old businesswoman, during her testimony before the committee tasked to overview education issues.

"So what's the remedy? Fund education freedom, not government," she said.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to shutter the federal education department, saying he would devolve its powers to state governments.

McMahon is the former head of the wildly popular WWE wrestling league and also served in Trump's first term government, that time as the chief of the Small Business Administration.

Trump's threat to shut down the education department has angered Democrats, teachers' unions and many parents, who see it as an attack on the public education system.

Underscoring his intention, the Republican president had earlier directed McMahon to "put herself out of a job."

Conservative groups, on the other hand, hail it as a long-overdue measure to reassert local control over American classrooms. But they acknowledge that the task of winding down the vast department will not be easy.

At the hearing, Senator Bernie Sanders said the department was "providing vital resources for 26 million children in this country who live in high-poverty school districts."

He asserted it was "the responsibility of the federal government to say that every kid in America, whether you're poor, middle class, rich, gets a quality education."

McMahon, a major donor to the Republican Party, has financially backed Trump's political career since 2016.

She is married to Vince McMahon, also a powerful figure at the WWE, a wrestling empire that was founded in the 1950s and combines scripted combat with stunning stunt work and soap-opera-esque storylines.

Linda McMahon became its president in 1993 and CEO in 1997, before resigning in 2009 to try her luck in politics.

© Agence France-Presse