McMahon Plans to Spend $43K on Office Furniture

Education Secretary Linda McMahon plans to spend just over $43,000 in taxpayer dollars to furnish her new office, and Democrats aren’t happy about it. 

The redesign budget covers a new desk, conference table, chairs and other items, The New York Times reported, citing department records and a senior official. McMahon’s team explained in a document reviewed by the Times that the furnishings in her current office “cannot be configurationally or aesthetically integrated into the agency’s new office space.” 

Democratic Sens. Patty Murray of Washington and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, key leaders on the Senate Appropriations Committee, argue the purchase is frivolous. In a Wednesday letter, they urged the secretary to scrap her spending plans.

“It is unjustifiable to buy new furniture while students lose access to education services you are illegally dismantling and suffer from painful funding cuts that were not authorized by Congress,” they wrote. “The American people are sick of the corruption, sick of the waste, and sick of the hypocrisy coming out of all corners of this administration.”

McMahon announced earlier this year that the Education Department would be downsizing its offices, arguing that the agency had “successfully decreased the scope of the federal education bureaucracy, so much that the headquarters building [was] no longer needed.” Nearly half of the department’s staff were fired in March 2025. The Energy Department is planning to take over the vacated building.

McMahon and others have argued that moving ED would save taxpayers nearly $5 million in operating costs.

The department did not respond to the Times’ request for a more detailed breakdown of the expenses, though officials defended the planned purchases.

“Believe it or not, just like in the private sector, new federal offices need places to sit, write and meet,” a department spokesperson told the Times.