At a House Education & Workforce Committee hearing last week, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) questioned Education Sec. Linda McMahon about promoting freedom and democracy at US schools.
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00:00General ladies, time has expired. I now recognize the gentleman from South
00:05Carolina, Mr. Wilson. Thank you very much, Chairman Tim Wahlberg, for your great
00:10leadership on behalf of the American people. And gosh, thank you, Madam Secretary,
00:15for your vision and courage to promote local school control of education for
00:20parents, for students, for teachers. And Washington is not all wise. And the
00:26local elected school boards should be where power is exhibited and where
00:32people know better about the local communities and it should be devolved to
00:35them. Additionally, I want to thank you and President Trump, you're successfully
00:41empowering American citizens, not big government. And you're actually doing the
00:47exact opposite of any dictatorship and that power is being returned to the
00:51people, the local elected school boards that so well reflect the citizens who
00:58have elected them. And then I believe you are the right person for the job.
01:03Additionally, I believe, too, that it's so clear that education is a state issue and
01:10it should remain as a state issue. It should not be a federal issue. And with
01:15that in mind, I recently led a letter along with 27 of my colleagues to call for an
01:21increase in funding for the federal charter schools program, CSP. Across the
01:26country, the charter school community is committed to providing families with high
01:31quality public education options voluntarily choice of the parents. And I am
01:37grateful to see that President Trump's budget would increase the charter school
01:41program by 14 percent. Furthermore, last month during National Charter Schools
01:46Week, you announced an additional 60 million dollars in funding for the CSP this
01:51year to help meet the needs of families across the country. The for the American
01:55people and particularly for the media, if you will explain what the success is of the
02:02voluntary school choice programs are and how is this money going to be spent around
02:09the country? Well, thank you very much, Congressman Milton, for for a for your kind
02:15words about me. But also, I have visited many schools, many charter schools throughout
02:21the country already. And what I have seen with those charter schools is the
02:24innovation that they are allowed to use that you don't see in a lot of our public
02:29schools. And so I'm very pleased to see that the president is also supporting
02:34school choice. The president wants to make sure that the best education is that
02:40that's closest to the child, whether that's homeschooling, charter schools, public
02:45schools, private schools, religious schools. He wants to make every opportunity
02:49available to all the children in the country. So I am pleased that we did increase
02:54the budget requests for charter schools. And I too have visited the schools and I visit
03:02all the schools that I can in the district. I represent every type that you just identified.
03:08And I hope the media will go by and visit a charter school and see how positive they
03:13are and find out how the students are doing so well. And they're voluntary. It's what it may
03:19not. It's not for everyone. But where it is, the media, it would be nice for them as they're
03:25doing investigative reporting to look into truly not just the viewpoint of the teachers union,
03:34but what's really happening in America. Along with that, Secretary McMahon, I'm really concerned
03:39that we have adversaries, war criminal Putin. We have the Chinese Communist Party. We have the
03:45dictatorship in Tehran, are targeting our universities and colleges. What can we do, again, to stop
03:53this, their inroads? And it's already been successful, removing Confucius Institutes, which are a branch
03:59of the Communist Party, Chinese Communist Party. So what more can be done to promote freedom and democracy
04:07instead of totalitarianism? Well, I think we've certainly seen, in fact, one of the requirements
04:14we had of Harvard was that they, or one of the questions we had of Harvard is, how are they
04:18vetting their students that come internationally? How are they vetting their teachers, their professors
04:23who come internationally? Do they have ideological backgrounds that are contrary to the United
04:31States government? We also, I mean, I heard this morning on the news that there was a student
04:36from China, I think it was discovered in July, that had fungus spores in a backpack from China
04:45that he brought to the University of Michigan. Now, we have to make sure that we stop that
04:50because this can be an attack on our food supply, an attack on our, you know, our total population.
04:57So these are incredibly important things, and the State Department is looking at visas, canceling
05:03them, making sure that the students who are here are here in the best interest of the United
05:08States. And thank you for promoting free speech, and also international students who want to
05:13come and learn and be positive, but also understand that there may be agents of foreign countries
05:19coming to our country. I yield back.