For the first time ever, the vice president was called to Capitol Hill to break a\u00a0tie on a vote to confirm a member of the Cabinet.<\/p>\n
Vice President Mike Pence presided over the Senate for the first time since being sworn in just more than two weeks ago, and cast the tiebreaking vote, 51-50, to confirm Betsy DeVos as the next Education secretary. A\u00a0vice president\u00a0had never done so before, according to the Senate Historical Office.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
That DeVos could not garner support from the Republican-led Senate underscored her weakness as a nominee, Democrats\u00a0argued.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/all4schools.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Copy-of-DeVos.png\")
<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019d come into the department as a very weak secretary of Education,\u201d said Connecticut Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, a member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. \u201cI think\u00a0to the extent she thought she was going to get major policy changes passed through Congress, that will be made much more difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Republicans\u00a0brushed off questions about whether it was problematic that DeVos barely passed the Senate.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot as long as we have the votes, it\u2019s not a cause for concern,\u201d Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn\u00a0said Monday as the chamber girded itself for an all-night talkathon on\u00a0the Devos nomination.<\/p>\n
GOP leaders stood behind DeVos. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell encouraged his colleagues to support her, saying\u00a0she \u201cwill be our students\u2019 foremost advocate, working to improve our education system so that every child has a brighter future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senate Democrats were unable to block DeVos because of their own actions in\u00a02013 when they altered the procedural rules for confirming executive and judicial nominees \u2014 except for the Supreme Court. This ultimately allowed DeVos\u2019 nomination to move forward by a simple majority vote to end debate.<\/p>\n
Republican leadership did have to carefully time DeVos\u2019 vote once it became clear that two GOP senators would oppose her nomination, leading to a 50-50 split. That pushed the\u00a0vote ahead of Alabama GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions\u2019\u00a0confirmation to become the next attorney general, since Republicans needed Sessions\u2019 vote to keep the yeas for DeVos at 50 and cue Pence to break the tie.<\/p>\n
GOP Sens. Susan Collins\u00a0of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska both said they would opposed DeVos due to her inexperience in education. They also raised concerns about whether DeVos\u2019 advocacy of\u00a0charter schools and vouchers would hamper her ability\u00a0to understand\u00a0and address the problems facing public schools.<\/p>\n
DeVos is a philanthropist who until\u00a0recently, had led the American Federation for Children, a group that advocates school choice. She garnered attention at her confirmation hearing for not recognizing\u00a0that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was a federal law; stumbling on a question about measuring growth versus productivity; and suggesting that guns should be allowed in schools to protect against grizzly bears.<\/p>\n
Murphy said\u00a0DeVos\u2019 performance and her close confirmation vote could signal that she may not have much support from Congress moving\u00a0forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t see Republicans rallying to her side as a political figure,\u201d the Connecticut Democrat said. \u201cSo if she\u2019s the face of any major changes in education\u00a0policy, I just don\u2019t think that she is likely to be persuasive with Republicans in the way that she might have been had her hearing gone differently.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senators said the uproar over DeVos\u2019 nomination overwhelmed\u00a0their office phone lines. Murkowski cited \u201cthousands\u201d of calls from Alaskans urging her to oppose the nomination.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Senate Sergeant-at-Arms does not release statistics on the number of phone calls to Senate offices, but a source with the office said the high volume\u00a0of calls caused some callers to experience delays or busy signals when being transferred\u00a0to voicemail.<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Betsy DeVos was confirmed by the Senate as the Secretary of Education today. Advocacy forced the vote to a historic 50-50 tie. Students need your voices now more than ever.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1","description-off"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n