By Joy Resmovits:
Phone calls jammed congressional switchboards. Two Republican senators defected. Democrats held a last-ditch, 24-hour Senate debate in hope of shaking loose one additional vote.
But the effort was not enough to prevent Betsy DeVos from becoming U.S. secretary of Education.
DeVos squeaked through the confirmation process Tuesday with the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Mike Pence and the participation of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), whose confirmation vote for attorney general was scheduled after DeVos’ so he could vote for her.
It was the first time a vice president’s tie-breaking vote was needed to confirm a presidential Cabinet appointment.
DeVos, a Michigan-based Republican activist, former state party chairwoman and fundraiser, spent her career campaigning for school vouchers, which send tax money to families to help them pay for private and often religious schools. As the wife of the billionaire heir to the Amway fortune, she contributed millions of dollars to candidates who supported vouchers, including several of the senators who voted to confirm her.
She is the first secretary of Education since the department was created in 1979 to have neither attended nor sent her children to public school, the Education Week Research Center found.
The Full Story (February 7, 2017)
No comments:
Post a Comment