A Sensible Housecleaning

The Administration to Reclaim Idle Funds

There’s a great commotion in Nevada, and it ain’t due to a silver strike nor a sagebrush rebellion–but over Uncle Sam deciding to clean out the attic and reclaim a sack of dollars that had been gathering dust. It is the $29 million in pandemic relief funds that the Trump administration, under the steady hand of Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, has rightfully pulled back from the Nevada Department of Education.

The funds were not gifts from the clouds nor tokens from the government’s wishing well. They were tax dollars — yours, mine, and the grocer’s down the road — handed out in the darkest hours of a pandemic to help schools patch holes, build bridges, and get the young ones learning again.

The intention was clear–spend it intelligently–and do it soon.

And yet, here we sit in the year of our Lord 2025, and Nevada still has $29 million of those same dollars sitting around like fenceposts waiting for a barbed wire. The state’s top education official, Superintendent Jhone Ebert, laments the loss and calls the funds “definitely needed for student achievement.”

No doubt, she believes that, but one must ask — what of the past four years? If a man sets aside a pot of stew to feed his guests and brings it to the table, it ain’t the host’s fault when the guests don’t eat.

Secretary McMahon, no stranger to hard decisions, issued a clear letter on March 28, stating that the deadline for using these pandemic funds had come and gone, and so too must the funds. She reasoned — with more sense than poetry — that dragging out the deadline for years after the pandemic is inconsistent with the department’s priorities.

The federal government is not a barn filled with forgotten tools and half-used supplies. It is a place of sudden accountability, something missed during the Biden years.

The Clark County School District received a towering sum of $1.2 billion, and the state had $2.1 billion to work with. That is not pin money.

They used some of it to buy computers, staff mental health positions, and roll out curriculum. All good and necessary things — yet still they found themselves with millions unspent.

The money was for immediate relief, not a retirement plan for future projects.

Some folks are up in arms, claiming the move is illegal, heartless, or some other political epithet. But the administration is not pulling the rug—it’s merely folding up the one no one stepped on, meaning they’re not taking funds from the mouths of children—they’re retrieving leftovers from a table that’s already cleared.

So, if projects got started late or delayed by red tape, that is unfortunate, but it is not Washington’s fault. The bell rang, the funds offered, deadlines known, and extensions granted already. Indeed, Nevada had until March 2026—but plans delayed until the eleventh hour carry risk.

It ain’t a surprise quiz–it’s on the syllabus.

McMahon has left a door open as extensions may still be granted case by case. But even that is a courtesy, not a promise, as the business of government cannot forever run on what-ifs and maybes.

The lesson here is not of villainy but of vigilance. Funds, like time, must be used or lost. Nevada, and every other state, would do well to learn it.

So let the papers holler, and the officials wring their hands. The rest of us will tip our hats to the administration for putting a little backbone in bureaucracy, reminding the nation that money from the people needs respectful treatment, not delay.

And that is gospel enough for one day.