Where bold plans like this fall flat for me is the ‘how’, not the ‘what’. There are few if any on this forum who express any support for the department of education, but if you would kill it, what happens to all those programs currently in place for grants and financial aid? What of all the student loans underwritten and outstanding?
Let the looters swing? Yeah, that ain’t going to work when the looters can tie up any reforms with lawsuits and get voted into office the very next election, claiming the reformers are trying to destroy the nation or alternatively unable to prove any results from the ties up reforms.
Weaning the American populace off the government teat is not going to be easy, the judiciary is not on the side of strict constitutionalists, nor is academia, the media, or much of the business world which has developed a codependence to the stability a government ‘in’ gives then. Big reforms need to be done smartly and explained clearly (and often... and tenaciously) and they’ll need to be unwound in the same way they were wound in the first place: with support of congress and approval, sometimes haltingly, of the judical branch.
One of the constitution’s key benefits is that any one administration can’t drastically change the direction of the government quickly. This is also one of it’s key problems if you don’t like the way things are going. If you can claim the ability to enact big changes, so can your successor, in the opposite direction or further. A lot of people will be motivated to stop the unwinding of big government from the throat of liberty because they’d lose their sugar daddy. This has to be factored into whatever plan is ultimately put into place, and pursued more relentlessly than its attackers with a passion for justice and freedom, not punishment and retribution. Assuming a burst of constitional adherance will just wake America out of some sort of funk and everything will be peaches and cream from here on out is just circlejerk material.