When U.S. Rep. Rick Allen, R-Georgia 12th District, visited Statesboro City Hall last week for another purpose, the Statesboro Herald's reporter asked him about three controversial moves of President Donald Trump's second administration: abolition of the U.S. Department of Education, imposition of tariffs on imports and (less directly) the layoff or firing of numerous government workers.

There to present children's books he had obtained from the Library of Congress to the Bulloch County Literacy Council for the Reading Nook outside his Statesboro office, Allen made some brief comments about literacy, education and the workforce. So, when he asked "Any questions?" a starting point was the president's action to abolish the Education Department, at least "to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law," as stated in a March 20 executive order. Completely abolishing it would require action by Congress.

REPORTER: How about the administration's move to abolish the (U.S.) Department of Education: Is that going to benefit schools and students in some way, or is it just going to create confusion?

ALLEN: "Our problem is this: We are spending more than $12,000 per student for an education in our country. Other nations are spending half that. Yet, when you look at the results, we're at the bottom compared to other nations. Now, granted, we have some outstanding students, but somehow we've got to bring all of them to the top, and frankly the Department of Education has kind of gotten outside the guardrails. They're more interested in social behavior and all of these other things.

"Let me just say this: We've made a commitment to give education back to the parents, to put the parents back in charge — and how do you do that? You get rid of the bureaucracy; you get the parents involved in the schools. … The teachers are great. We've got great teachers, and if the parents will get engaged, and of course the parents have seen some things in education that they really have some problems with, some things that the Department of Education was pushing under the previous administration.

(Background note: The U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, or H.E.W., existed from 1953 until 1979 when, under President Carter's administration, it was split into the Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.

ALLEN: "So, there's nothing in the Constitution on it, Number 1. Jimmy Carter established the Department of Education to get the teachers' union vote. The teachers' union wants the Department of Education."

REPORTER: Well, before that there was H.E.W., right? What's there going to be after this?

ALLEN: "Well, there will be block grants to the states, but it won't be with all these, like, 'You've got to comply to this,' … 'You've got to comply to that.' We're going to leave that up to the states."

That, he said, will allow the states to compete, adding that businesses will not locate in states with poor school performance, that "Workforce is key." Georgia, he said, gets just 11% of its (primary and secondary) education funds from the federal government, "yet the federal government dictates to our teachers. ...." 

ALLEN: "We need to run this country from the bottom-up, the people-power, and that's what we're trying to do."

From other sources: As for the claim that U.S. schools are "at the bottom," Trump has repeatedly said that U.S. schools "ranked 40 out of 40" compared to other countries. A FactCheck.org article on Feb. 7 stated that this was an apparent reference to the 37 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries participating in the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA. But FactCheck observed that the United States scored above average in reading (ranking sixth) and science (ranking 12th) and did not rank last in any category on the 2022 PISA.

That article can be found here.

REPORTER: On jobs and the economy, is there anything that Republicans in the House, yourself, disagree with the administration on, on what's happening currently, particularly the tariffs, and this kind of on-again, off-again situation?

ALLEN: "Remember, just six years ago, Congress and this president created the greatest economy in our lifetime. You don't think we can do that again? We're putting in place the exact same thing we put in place then, OK? And we believe the American people — hey, you ask any business, America's open for business again. There's no war on fossil fuels, we're 'all of the above' energy. Have your energy prices come down? I believe gasoline has come down."

(Note: In continuing his response, the congressman refers first to the annual federal spending deficits, observing that deficit spending is "good" for putting money into the economy, but "bad" in terms of a ballooning the national debt. He then relates this to a different "deficit," the trade deficit, or amount that U.S. imports exceed exports in dollar value.)

ALLEN: "And guess what? We cannot continue to run $2.2 trillion (federal spending) deficits. Now, is it good for the economy? Yeah. You put all that money in the economy, you're going to grow GDP (gross domestic product). But the problem is, you've got to borrow the money. If people aren't buying bonds, you've got to monetize it, then you've got to securitize it. That's more money supply, and guess what? If you're not making something, these other people across the world (will). …"

"We had a $1.2 trillion trade deficit, and we've got about $200 trillion in personal net worth in this country. It is flying out of here, OK? Because every time we buy something made overseas, that money that we had in our pocket goes over there. …

"We've got companies dumping agricultural products in this country. Our farmers can't do that in other countries, and we for the first time in our history imported more food than we exported. … That is not a good sign." 

He has long asserted that it is a matter of national security not to be dependent on other countries for food.

From other sources: To consider just one factor in whether "the greatest economy" existed six years ago, reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the U.S. civilian unemployment rate, already trending downward, dropped in the first half of the first Trump administration to 3.5%, then the lowest rate in decades, in February 2020, before spiking upward with the COVID pandemic shutdown to a high of 14.8% in April 2020. But first with a steep improvement as businesses reopened and then with a slower continued recovery, unemployment moderated again to a new low point of 3.4% in April 2023, during the Biden administration, before gradually increasing again to around 4.2% in March 2025.

See the chart here.

In his first term, Trump did impose fairly high tariffs on particular items, such as 20–50% on washing machines and 30% on solar panels, as well as on most items imported from China. But this year's tariff announcements have targeted a much larger group of nations, and while the president has postponed many of the tariffs on other countries, those on non-exempt items imported from China reached 125% as of April 9, the Associated Press reported.

REPORTER: Are they (the federal government) going to be able to collect all the regular income tax after laying off people from the IRS?

ALLEN: "… Here's the deal: We are reducing. The Biden administration added over 700,000 government jobs, employees. I don't know why, other than it was a lot of climate, you name it, all of the programs that they were supporting. Elon Musk is running algorithms on every department. He has no authority to hire and fire, OK? Zero. The president hasn't fired one person in those government agencies.

"It is the very people in the government agencies who are re-evaluating the information that we're providing to them, both through our oversight in Congress and through what we're asking DOGE to do, in saying look, if you're producing this, you've got a hundred people and it takes 20 to do it. Can you explain what the other 80 are doing? … The problem is, they don't know."

(This was part of a longer response in which he first asserted that Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency are attempting to use technology to improve efficiency but that government agencies have not wanted to use technology, as businesses would, to make themselves more efficient.)