McMahon Testifies at the House Education and Workforce FY27 Priorities Hearing, May 14, 2026
May 14, 2026 · PBS NewsHour · 3:52:21
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What happened
Education Secretary Linda McMahon testified before the House Committee on Education and Workforce on May 14, 2026, at the committee’s hearing titled “Examining the Policies and Priorities of the Department of Education,” in PBS NewsHour’s live carry of the session. McMahon opened with the second-year version of her mandate statement, as she stated it: Americans re-elected President Trump to sunset a 46-year-old, $3 trillion failed education bureaucracy and return authority to parents, teachers, and local leaders, and she reported travel to over 36 states in the past year and a department that had scrutinized every dollar of taxpayer investment to ensure it supports clear pathways to success for students and families.
Questioning turned to the cost of college and the new loan law. McMahon told Chairman Tim Walberg that college costs are exorbitant and students are burdened with debt — $1.7 trillion held by 43 million borrowers, only about 25 percent of them repaying, as she stated the figures — and described the reforms the department is implementing: the Grad PLUS program removed, caps placed on other graduate and undergraduate borrowing, and repayment simplified toward, eventually, only two tracks. Democratic members answered with the record of the department itself, charging, as they stated it, that under her leadership the department has lost half its workforce through forced retirements or firings and has entered into 10 interagency agreements transferring over 100 programs to other agencies without congressional approval.
Why it matters
The FY27 priorities hearing closes the committee record of McMahon’s first full cycle: the same room that heard the wind-down proposed in June 2025 heard it defended a year later as a going concern — loan limits in implementation, programs in transfer, and a Secretary measuring her department by what it has handed away. The student-loan figures she put on the record are the administration’s core justification for the new borrowing caps, stated by the official implementing them.
Scoreboard watch
Scoreboard watch: Secretary McMahon’s statements to the House Education and Workforce Committee on May 14, 2026 — $1.7 trillion in federal student loan debt across 43 million borrowers with about 25 percent repaying, and the Grad PLUS elimination and new borrowing caps in implementation, all as she stated them. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.
Sources: PBS NewsHour, “WATCH LIVE: Education Secretary Linda McMahon testifies on budget in House hearing” (live carry, embedded above; testimony as delivered by Secretary McMahon and members of the committee; hearing title and date per the committee’s listing as carried by The Union Herald).
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