“Effective on the date that is 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Department of Education is abolished.”

Those are the first words in a bill Senator Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota) has introduced. Anyone who knows just how much damage the Education Department has done to America will be thrilled to read those words. But while Senator Rounds’ bill is well-intentioned, I fear it is unlikely to pass. Even if it were to pass, it would leave too much of what the Department of Education actually does untouched. Education reformers should take heart from this bill—and work for detailed and thorough reform that actually will dismantle the labyrinth of programs nesting within the Education Department.

Senator Rounds’ bill is marvelously bold—but it is bold in ways that have not achieved majority support in the past, much less the supermajority support needed to get 60 votes in the Senate to end filibustering debate. Although Abolish the Education Department! has been a popular conservative slogan, Congressional Republicans since 1980 appear to contain a large faction that is happier to reform the Education Department than to abolish it. Senator Rounds’ preferred solution of transforming a large number of Education Department formula grants into block grants to the states has been proposed for many years now, without achieving universal support among Congressional Republicans. President Trump’s new political coalition, moreover, appears to include a number of moderate voters, including former Democrats, who prefer reforming government to eliminating it. Education reformers may wish Senator Rounds’ new bill godspeed, but still expect that these obstacles will likely prevent its passage.

Nor does Senator Rounds’ fairly brief bill directly address the mountain of legislation that authorizes different components of Education Department spending. Full-Service Community Schools, for example, are at best a waste of taxpayer money—but they are authorized by specific legislation. So too are Promise Neighborhoods. Even an extraordinarily specific expenditure such as the support for the “teaching hospital facilities at Howard University” has its own legislative authorization. Senator Rounds’ bill mostly does not address this heap of legislation—much less the significant popular support for these expenditures embodied in such legislation. Education reformers will not be able truly to eliminate the Education Department’s myriad programs unless they explicitly rescind or reform every part of their authorizing legislation.