WASHINGTON – Education Secretary Betsy DeVos found herself back in the hot seat before a Democrat-led congressional committee on Wednesday, at one point defending a proposal to cut $200 million for literacy efforts across the U.S.

DeVos told the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee that while Congress was free to fund the programs, they are largely ineffective and state and local governments should take the lead in funding efforts to combat illiteracy.

"Continued federal funding to try to fix problems has not yielded the results we've all hoped for," DeVos said in response to a question from U.S. Rep. Josh Harder, D-Calif., who said it was hypocritical for DeVos to present herself as a champion of reading at the same time she was proposing slashing programs.

"You've gone around the country reading books to kids, talking about the importance of literacy ... (then) you cut every program," Harder said.

Their back-and-forth was just one during a hearing full of them that lasted more than five hours on Wednesday, as Democrats now in charge of the committee got their first chance to question DeVos, a wealthy former school choice advocate in Michigan, since taking majority control of the U.S. House in January.

Two weeks ago, DeVos was widely criticized for proposing to slash $18 million from the Special Olympics in a cut she and President Donald Trump quickly reversed.

Throughout Wednesday's hearing, DeVos and Democratic members battled back and forth over questions regarding the department's budget plans, proposals to aid charter schools and private schools, and whether she and other education officials are adequately processing claims against for-profit institutions whose students say they were misled or defrauded.

At one point, U.S. Rep. Andy Levin, D-Bloomfield Township, said that nearly 160,000 claims against for-profit schools remain pending and said DeVos and her department are "giving cover to profit-driven actors." She responded that they are still in the process of responding to a court order and coming up with a process by which the department can better decide between legitimate and illegitimate claims.

At numerous times during the hearing, Devos struggled to respond as Democrats insisted that she refused to give a yes-or-no answer and talked over her. At other times, she declined to give specifics — such as on what is being proposed regarding how and when student claims brought against for-profit institutions can move forward — insisting they are still being drafted.

By the end of the hearing, Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, the ranking Republican on the committee, was chastising Democratic colleagues for their behavior, suggesting they shouldn't tell DeVos how to do her job.

Foxx said of Democrats that their "arrogance was breathtaking."

Democrats, however, pressed DeVos on topics from racial disparities in discipline and admissions to her push to pump $60 million more into charter schools, as well as to create a federal tax credit for businesses and individuals who donate funds for scholarships at private or parochial schools in states that already have similar tax credits of their own.

While DeVos has defended that scholarship credit as a matter of giving parents and students a choice in selecting their school — and saying it won't cost the federal government anything — critics noted it could cost billions in lost revenue to federal coffers.

"It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. … It’s a voucher and it’s something to benefit the rich," said Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio. "Indeed, it does hurt (public school) students."

Meanwhile, as Harder noted, the proposed Trump administration budget calls for — as it did in the current year — cutting $190 million in comprehensive literacy development grants and $27 million in funding for projects that "develop the literacy skills of children and adolescents in low-income communities."

In budget documents, the Education Department said those grants have had "limited impact" and duplicate other programs. DeVos, in responding to Harder, said Congress could restore the funding, just as it did last year.

She said her department was required — under statutory funding levels set previously by Congress — to cut 10% of its current year budget. But U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Rochester Hills, noted that in the budget proposal, DeVos found money to add to charter schools.

Read more:

Trump reverses course on Special Olympics, says it will be funded

Betsy DeVos flubs question on Michigan schools on '60 Minutes'

And while rules put in place by Congress some years ago do theoretically require cuts overall to both defense and non-defense spending each year, the administration has wide latitude in deciding where those cuts will occur and hasn't allowed those restrictions to keep it from proposing increases where it has considered them necessary, such as for a southern border wall.

Both Congress and the president have also agreed to suspend those spending limits in recent years as well — with Congress restoring deep cuts to programs suggested by the Trump administration.

Stevens said using lagging achievement in some places shouldn't lead to proposals to cut programs. "We don't cut fire departments or police departments just because crime is going up," Stevens said.

In another key moment, U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., questioned DeVos over a request to allow federal funds to be used by an Oklahoma school district to purchase firearms for school personnel and train them to use them as a security measure.

DeVos has maintained that she has remained neutral on whether a school district uses those specific federal funds for such purposes, saying it is up to the district under the way Congress wrote the law. But Hayes produced a document that she said indicates advisers in DeVos' own office disagreed, saying that she had the right to interpret the law as allowing or prohibiting their use in that way as she saw fit.

“You have the ability to make a decision," she said. "Your silence is a decision."

DeVos insisted that she did not have the ability to tell the district how to use those funds.

Contact Todd Spangler:tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler. Read more onMichigan politics and sign up for ourelections newsletter.