Rick Perry: ‘I Don’t Think The Federal Government Has A Role’ In Education

By Ian Millhiser and Scott Keyes/Think Progress

At a campaign stop in Iowa yesterday, Perry added something else to the long list of things he insists are beyond the federal government’s power — any involvement whatsoever in education:

QUESTION: I would like to know your position on the federal government’s role in my children’s education.

PERRY: I don’t think the federal government has a role in your children’s education. . . . I know there’s probably a few of you in here who have not read my book “Fed Up.” But I talk about the intrusion into our lives by the federal government in a host of different areas. Education is one of them.

Watch it:

Of course, this is hardly the first time time that Perry took a constitutional swipe at federal education programs. In a recent interview with Glenn Beck, Perry suggested that Texas should not have to comply with any of the conditions associated with the billions of dollars of federal education funds it gladly accepts.

But Perry’s blanket statement that the federal government doesn’t have any role in education whatsoever goes much further than his previous position that Texas should simply be able to suckle at the federal Department of Education’s teat. If the federal government truly has no role in education, that means millions of college students must lose their Pell Grants and federal student loans overnight, depriving many of them of their ability to pay for higher education altogether. And that’s just the lucky students who are still able to get accepted into college after their public schools lose all federal funding — funding that disproportionately benefits the most needy schools.

Sadly, federal education programs are hardly the only thing Perry wants to eliminate. For those of you keeping track at home, Perry has also called Social Security, Medicare, the Clean Air Act,Medicaid, SCHIP, federal bank regulation and federal consumer financial protectionsunconstitutional.

‘Tenther’ Activists Add The Federal Highway System To List Of Programs To Kill

By Ian Millhiser In a recent radio interview, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) made the seemingly-innocuous statement that the federal highway system, as well as federal laws ensuring safe drugs and safe airplanes, are constitutional. Nevertheless, Shea-Porter is now under attack by “tenther” activists who believe that virtually everything the federal government does is unconstitutional:

Author and historian David Barton, the president of WallBbuilders, [sic] says Shea-Porter’s comments reflect her view that Washington government should run everything. He notes that both the Ninth and Tenth Amendments say anything that is not explicitly covered in the Constitution belongs to the states and to the people.

“All of those issues belong to the states and the people. Healthcare is not a federal issue. It is a state and people issue — the same with transportation. The Constitution does say that the federal government can take care of what are called the post roads — those on which the mail travels — but outside of that, states are responsible for their own highways, their own roads, their own county, local, state roads,” he notes. “And her comment about, ‘Well, the Constitution doesn’t cover drug use and drug abuse’ — yes it does, and that is under the criminal justice issues that belong to the

As ThinkProgress previously reported, conservatives are increasingly enraptured with tentherism, which claims that landmark federal programs such as Medicare, Social Security, the VA health system and the G.I. Bill are violations of the 10th Amendment — and many leading conservative officials are determined to impose the tentherism on the country. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) is a tenther, as are Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas embraces tenther claims that the federal minimum wage and the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters, among other things, are unconstitutional.

Indeed, even federal highways opponent Barton is no small figure in conservative politics; Barton is one of six “experts” tasked with rewriting Texas’ public school textbooks to teach a right-wing alternative history to Texan children. Apparently, Barton and his fellow tenthers also want to rewrite the Constitution.

M.C.L. Comment:

This is what I don't get about right wingers they hate the government yet the want to run the government, cons believe that everything should be for profit that's why they don't want the federal government to be around. They believe private corporations should be allow to make much money off the average person no matter how little the service they provide.