Can you tell me what the Department of Education has measurably accomplished since its establishment in 1979? Inflation adjusted spending per student has increased by about 3X since then, and test scores have not improved, even falling in recent years. Financial aid for college has perversely led to vastly overinflated tuitions, while subsidizing many useless degrees.

These problems are not a simple matter of funding. One need only at California's High Speed Rail project. Costs have soared from early estimates of $15B to now more than $130B+, despite almost no track being laid over the last 15 years. This is in a one party state with complete Democrat control, so you can't blame Republicans.

Bureaucratic mismanagement and inefficiency are the overwhelming problems now.

I'm not even American, but if you think you can simply cut a budget to solve your problems, you're delusional. Americans are on average much more educated and skilled (in the labor market) than in 1979, obviously.

In my country, most colleges are state owned and free, I had an engineering degree for €600 per year. Skyrocketing tuitions in America is purely a result of profiteering, largely enabled by the republicans and not kept in check by the weak democrats.

But if you still think gutting your public services will improve anything, just look at what austerity did to the UK.