The Mike Rounds plan to eliminate the US Department of Education would cost South Dakota $191 million a year, according to South Dakota political reporter Bob Mercer.
What would it take to make that up? Making up the lost funds is equivalent to a 37.5% sales tax increase! No wonder the Mitchell Daily Republic is hissing at Mike Rounds for continuing his call to eliminate the Department of Education.
South Dakota literally can’t afford to send Mike Rounds to the US Senate.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Mitchell Daily Republic
By Daily Republic Editorial Board on May 25, 2014
“HISSES to former governor and current U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rounds for repeating, during his Friday night visit to Mitchell, his earlier call to abolish the U.S. Department of Education. The same day we printed his comments about that, we also printed a separate story revealing that South Dakota is third-most dependent among all states on federal government aid for K-12 education, receiving 16.4 percent of its K-12 budget from the feds. A man who governed a state so dependent on federal education money lacks the credibility to claim the federal government should have no role in K-12 education. Change and improve the Department of Education? Fine. But calls to abolish it strike us as unrealistic political pandering.”