Tag Archive for: federal budget

‘Total Abomination’: $1.2 Trillion Bill Funds Teen Trans Programs, Abortion to 22 Weeks

A sprawling, $1.2 trillion government funding bill includes funding for abortion facilities, as well as LGBTQ activist centers that carry out transgender injections, target minors, hold drag shows, and help illegal immigrants who identify as gay or transgender gain U.S. citizenship — a bill one congressman calls “a total, total abomination.”

The “Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024” funds the Departments of Defense, Education, Health and Human Services (HHS), Homeland Security (DHS), Labor, and State until the end of the fiscal year, September 30. Congressional leadership released the text of the 1,012-page bill at 2:30 a.m. Thursday, giving members of Congress just hours to read before an anticipated vote to head off an impending government shutdown at midnight Saturday.

As of this writing, the bill contained the following earmarks:

  • $400,000 requested by Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) for Briarpatch Youth Services in Fitchburg, Wisconsin. The group promises to hide minors’ struggle with gender dysphoria from their parents while indoctrinating teens in extreme gender ideology. Its “Queer 101 Training” promises to teach “an intersectional understanding on queer oppression” and aims “to demonstrate how limiting the ‘male’ and ‘female’ binary is.” The organization offers “individual counseling services” for children “ages 12-17,” in which a “[c]ounselor can work with children on exploring identity, resiliency, and creating a Gender Support Plan for school support and advocacy.” The group’s website says, “Youth do NOT need parent/guardian permission to join Teens Like Us. We understand not all youth are at a point in their lives where they can safely and confidently ‘come out.’” (Emphasis in original.) The group’s “Queer 101 Training” aims “to demonstrate how limiting the ‘male’ and ‘female’ binary is.”
  • $400,000 requested by Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa.) for the Mazzoni Center in Philadelphia, which carries out transgender hormone shots, clears the way for transgender surgeries, advertises transgender services for minors, and holds drag show fundraisers. Mazzoni carries out cross-sex hormone injections and provides medical letters for transgender surgeries. The center begins targeting teens with its Pediatric & Adolescent Comprehensive Transgender Services (PACTS). Its “Youth Drop In,” which is held each Wednesday night, is aimed at teens “ages 14 to 24” and notes, “Patients under 18 can receive confidential care regarding sexual and mental health without parental permission.” The Mazzoni Center both contributes to and profits from the LGBT movement. Mazzoni invited donors to mingle with “a wide range of acts that include drag queens, drag kings, trans-identifying, bearlesque, and burlesque performers” at its December 3 Code Red fundraiser. “In December, fundraising for Mazzoni Center truly was a drag,” the center cracked. “Drag entertainer Cherry Pop and her fabulous friends united for the 10th annual Code Red fundraiser, a drag/variety show,” which it described as a “powerful night” for a “vital cause.”
  • $1,808,000 requested by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed (both D-R.I.) for Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, which carries out first- and second-term abortions at its Family Planning Clinic. “If you need to discuss abortion care for pregnancy, please feel free to contact the Family Planning Clinic,” states its website. Its “services” include “[s]urgical abortion under general anesthesia in the operating room for people up to 22 weeks pregnant” and “[m]edication abortion (the ‘abortion pill’) for people up to ten weeks pregnant.” The facility will also implant a potential abortifacient inside women after the abortion, advertising a “[p]ost-abortion IUD or contraceptive implant.”
  • $650,000 requested by Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) for Dartmouth Hitchcock Nashua in New Hampshire. “We routinely provide both medication and procedural abortion care up to 22 weeks of pregnancy,” the group declares. The facility describes surgical abortion as a procedure “ending a pregnancy by having the pregnancy removed by doctors.”
  • $780,000 requested by Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) for Amador Health Services in Las Cruces, New Mexico, which boasts that it “can provide transgender/gender non-conforming (GNC) health education, therapeutic counseling and referrals, and additional LGBTQ+ support that puts your safety and comfort first. If you’ve felt rejected by family and loved ones, isolated from your community, or are just in need of an ear to listen, we’re here.” It also decries the “social stigma” surrounding “undocumented immigration” (e.g., illegal immigration). “[W]e’re working every day to eliminate that stigma and make all feel like they belong.”
  • $146,000 requested by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) for Apicha Community Health Center, for facilities and equipment. Apicha’s two locations in Manhattan and Queens advertise “transgender and gender-affirming services” — specifically “initiation and maintenance of hormone replacement therapy,” “letters of support for gender-affirming surgeries” and “help with name change process.” They also distribute potential abortifacients Plan B and IUDs.
  • $706,000 requested by Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) for Entre Hermanos, an LGBT group that helps put illegal immigrants on a path to U.S. citizenship. It offers legal counseling and “free immigration clinics” to illegal immigrants who identify as LGBTQ to obtain U.S. citizenship and hosts workshops on “the many identities” under the transgender “umbrella” and strategies to minimize “transphobia.” The group’s website currently advertises the upcoming “Drag Brunch” on April 28.
  • $850,000 requested by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) for LGBTQ Senior Housing, Inc. (“The Pryde”), in Massachusetts, a controversial funding provision that House Republicans stripped out of a Transportation funding bill last year.

Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, also listed the following concerning earmarks:

  • “Sen. Bennet (D-CO), $845,000 – Envision: You, CO (SAMHSA) – LGBTQ advocacy.”
  • “Sen. Shatz (D-HI), $550,000 – Hawaii Health and Harm Reduction Center, HI (SAMHSA) – LGBTQ services and syringe exchange.”
  • “Sen. Schumer (D-NY), $1,000,000 — SAGE, NY (ACL) – LGBTQ advocacy.”

The “earmarks in it for abortion facilities” make the bill a “total, total abomination,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told Steve Bannon’s “War Room” on Thursday.

“We continue to fund abortion tourism, we continue to fund transgender surgeries at the Department of Defense,” Roy continued. “It busts the [spending] caps … funds the FBI headquarters, doesn’t secure the border, funds the World Health Organization.”

Even these dedicated funding streams do not cover the full extent of the bill’s harmful funding, say its critics. “I have multiple concerns, among them are the many new social services that this bill would create for the millions of illegal immigrants streaming across our border. Additionally, it would fund facilities providing routine abortion services, including late-term abortions,” said Aderholt.

Experts say the short time frame legislators have to review such massive legislation makes it more likely wasteful or immoral spending will find congressional approval. “Lawmakers are using arbitrary deadlines and shutdown politics to extort the American people and force lawmakers to vote for a bill they don’t have time to read,” said Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation. “Conservatives were told that the days of omnibus spending bills shrouded in secrecy were over. But this process and the bill it produced are indistinguishable from typical Swamp behavior that’s taken our economy and country to the brink of disaster.”

Principled lawmakers seem to agree. “This is not the bill that my subcommittee produced and supported,” the chairman added. “The Senate has taken liberties with their Congressionally Directed Spending requests that would never stand in the House.”

“Under no circumstances should [House Republicans] vote for this bill,” said Roy. “A vote for this bill is a vote against America.”

“In good conscience, I cannot and will not vote for these projects or this bill,” Aderholt concluded.

The bill is expected to pass Friday.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

How Biden’s 2025 Proposed Budget Impacts Values Issues

President Joe Biden released his proposed 2025 budget on Monday. “As the president is fond of saying, a budget is a reflection of our values,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) at Senate hearings on the multi-trillion-dollar proposal. But Biden’s proposed budget would:

  • Place transgender-identifying minors into the foster care facilities of the opposite sex, a policy that has led to sexual abuse and human trafficking;
  • Deny most Americans, especially Christians, the right to participate in foster care for certain children unless they agree to subject those minors to transgender medical interventions, such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone injections;
  • Seek to expand abortion;
  • Overturn laws that punish prostitutes for knowingly infecting others with HIV/AIDS;
  • Eliminate abstinence-based sex education;
  • Spike funding for Title X, a program that encourages doctors to give contraception to underage minors without parental knowledge and conceal children’s sexual activity from their parents;
  • Entrust government-funded workers with raising children beginning at the age of three; and
  • Increase funding for controversial, United Nations population programs.

Below is an overview of the budget’s most controversial features in his 2025 budget, which would raise taxes by more than $5 trillion, spend more than $8.6 trillion, enact a constitutionally-dubious wealth tax, implement a global minimum tax, and add $16.3 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.

Promoting Extreme Transgender Ideology

Joe Biden has repeatedly committed his administration to promoting the LGBTQ agenda. The Biden administration’s proposed 2025 budget intends to make the LGBTQ revolution permanent by placing children in sex-segregated group homes of the opposite sex, and by denying Christians the right to participate in aspects of foster care.

Buried in Table S-6, on page 153 of the budget (page 157 of the PDF), is a line item committing to “[p]revent and combat religious, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or sex discrimination in the child welfare system.”

That apparently refers to a proposed rule the Biden administration issued last September requiring the foster care system to place LGBTQ-identifying children with “safe and appropriate” homes — homes that agree to facilitate a child’s social and medical “gender transition.” The rule would “require specific steps before the placement of transgender, intersex, and gender non-conforming children in sex-segregated child-care institutions (CCIs),” specifically that they place children and teens in foster care facilities according to their gender identity. That is, the Biden administration intends to place children who say they identify as transgender into sex-segregated foster care facilities of the opposite sex. Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, pointed out this would open the beds and showers of female foster homes to teenage boys.

Such a policy has already led to tragic results. In Virginia, a 14-year-old girl named Sage began to identify as a boy. Police found the teen after she ran away and got sexually trafficked, but instead of returning her to her home, a judge accused her custodial grandparents of “emotional and physical abuse” by “misgendering” her. Sage was placed in the male section of a foster home, where she was beaten and given drugs. She then ran away again, where she was apprehended by a human trafficking ring in Texas, where she was “drugged, raped, beaten, and exploited.”

The definition of “safe and appropriate” also excludes anyone who expresses skepticism about exposing children to transgender procedures. Christians and anyone who shows “hostility” toward the LGBTQ agenda would be deemed unsafe to foster children who identify as transgender. Similar policies have already denied Christians the right to care for children in Oregon and Massachusetts. This issue stood at the heart of a 2021 Supreme Court ruling, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, which ruled the city’s policy against contracting with Catholic Social Services because of their religious beliefs “violates the First Amendment,” specifically the Free Exercise Clause. The rule attempts to sidestep this concern by saying Christians can still care for foster children, just not those who identify as LGBTQ.

Multiple U.S. senators expressed concerns with the language of the rule at the time. “We are fighting back against the Biden Administration’s woke gender ideology and pronoun politics,” said Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) “Their new proposed rule aims to exclude faith-based foster care providers from helping children in need.” A coalition of 19 state attorneys general also raised alarms about the policy’s unconstitutional, and religiously discriminatory, language.

To justify these policies, the Biden rule falsely asserts, “when a LGBTQI+ child has their identity respected and supported by the caregivers in their life, their risks of attempted suicide decrease dramatically.” Yet a host of studies, from around the world over multiple decades, have found that transgender procedures do not help, and may harm, those who undergo them. A 2021 study in the Journal of Urology found, “The overall rates of suicide attempts doubled” among trans-identifying men “after vaginoplasty,” commonly referred to as “bottom surgery.” The budget indicates Biden is doubling down on this rule and its flawed methodology.

Abortion

In releasing the 2025 proposed budget, the “Biden-Harris [a]dministration has taken action to protect and expand access to reproductive health care, including abortion and contraception,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, “in every way possible.”

The budget spreads misinformation while announcing the administration’s intention to expand abortion in all 50 states. “Twenty-seven million women of reproductive age — more than one in three — live in one of the 21 [s]tates with an abortion ban currently in effect. In the last year, women have been denied medical care needed to preserve their health and save their lives,” the budget asserts. In fact, no state bans abortion if the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother. Pro-life advocates say doctors may have been confused specifically because abortion industry lobbyists have repeatedly claimed “miscarriage care” is illegal.

After touting Biden’s actions on behalf of the abortion industry, the budget states, “The [a]dministration continues to call on the Congress to pass legislation restoring the protections of Roe v. Wade in [f]ederal law.” The Biden administration endorses the so-called Women’s Health Protection Act, which goes well beyond Roe.

In concrete terms, the budget proposes giving $390 million to the “family planning” services of Title X, a 36% hike. As this author exposed, training sessions funded by the Biden administration encourage Title X providers to talk about sex with minors behind parents’ backs, hide minor children’s sexual activity from parents both during live conversations and in medical records, and even to have vans roam neighborhoods giving minors federally funded contraceptives.

The budget also “provides $594 million, an increase of $37 million above the 2023 level, for USAID directed high-impact and lifesaving voluntary family planning and reproductive health programs and America’s voluntary contribution to the United Nations Population Fund,” the budget states. UNFPA was long complicit in forced abortions necessitated by China’s one-child policy and remains tied to controversial population control efforts worldwide.

The abortion lobby said the proposed budget proved the Democratic administration is enacting their values. “The Biden-Harris administration is fighting by our side,” said Mini Timmaraju, CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL). “[T]his budget is proof. We look forward to partnering with our allies in the White House and Congress to pass a budget where our values are reflected.” Planned Parenthood also greeted the budget as “an encouraging sign of their continued support for sexual and reproductive health care.”

Universal Pre-K

As he did in last year’s $6.9 trillion budget proposal, Joe Biden proposed offering “free” preschool to children beginning at age four and “charting a path” to expanding the program to three-year-olds. The program is a longstanding item on the Left’s wish list, constituting a part of Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, mentioned in Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address, and referenced in Obama’s 2010 report to the UN Human Rights Council. Yet children being raised by daycare are associated with a panoply of negative outcomes for children and, polls show, is unwanted by parents, especially mothers.

Fighting Laws against Spreading AIDS, Combatting ‘Hate Crimes’

The 2025 proposed budget continues President Joe Biden’s fixation on overturning state laws designed to prevent AIDS-infected prostitutes from spreading HIV. “The Budget further supports State and local efforts to promote equity and protect civil rights by including $10 million for a new initiative to modernize outdated criminal statutes with a discriminatory impact on HIV-positive individuals … and $50 million for programs to combat hate crimes.”

The Biden administration sued the state of Tennessee over its aggravated prostitution law (§ 39-13-516), which charges anyone who knowingly sells sex while HIV-positive with a felony. The lawsuit came as the administration is negotiating the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Agreement. In January, WHO Secretary-General Tedros Ghebreyesus instructed “[p]olitical leaders at all levels” to “counteract conservative opposition” and “enact progressive laws” championing “sexual rights.” Specifically, “Countries must repeal laws that criminalize homosexuality, sex work and HIV transmission.”

Ending Abstinence-Based Education

The Biden budget would end funding for the Sexual Risk Abstinence Education program. Instead, he would give $101 million for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, despite a 2015 survey which found 40% of teenagers said these classes made them feel pressured to have sex. The Department of Health and Human Services lists eight regional Planned Parenthood alliances among the current Teen Pregnancy Prevention grant recipients.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

America’s Economic Checkup Doesn’t Look Good

Military Bill Expands IVF Services to Gay and Transgender Servicemembers

Survey Shows Support for Same-Sex Marriage Declining

Kansas Judge Prohibits Sex-Changes on State IDs, Arkansas May Be Next

England Bans Puberty Blockers for Minors

Former Lance Armstrong Prosecutor Says Men in Girls’ Sports Offers 10 Times the Edge of Doping

Biden Giving Sanctuary New York City Over $100 Million in Aid for Migrants

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Budget Office’s 10-Year Forecast: Historic Deficits, Record Debt, Higher Taxes

America’s fiscal future is gloomy, according to the 10-year forecast released Wednesday by the economic meteorologists (accountants, really) at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO projected that by 2034 the U.S. federal government will run a $2.6 trillion deficit, equivalent to 6.1% of GDP, while public-held debt would nearly double from $26 trillion to $48 trillion, reaching a record 116% of GDP. These numbers are “mind boggling” and “absolutely astounding,” said Heritage Foundation research fellow Jeffrey Griffith on “Washington Watch.”

Indeed, the historic nature of America’s irresponsible borrowing binge is so unprecedented that it earned multiple mentions in the CBO’s report summary. The CBO noted that a debt equivalent to 116% of GDP represents “an amount greater than at any point in the nation’s history.” That’s more debt — both in absolute terms, and as a percentage of GDP — than the U.S. accumulated during any war, including the Revolutionary War and World War II, during any economic crisis or peacetime spending binge, or even during the century and a half that the government survived without an income tax.

Regarding the deficit reaching 6.1% of GDP (the 50-year average is 3.7%), the report noted that “deficits have exceeded that level” only three times since the Great Depression: “During and shortly after World War II, the 2007-2009 financial crisis, and the coronavirus pandemic.” In other words, soon the U.S. federal government will be running up the credit card as fast as it did during America’s largest international war and the two worst economic crises of this millennium — for no discernable reason at all.

The problem, fundamentally, is too much spending. The CBO estimated government revenues to average 17.8% of GDP over the next 10 years, slightly above the 50-year average of 17.3%. That estimate was based on the assumption that the 2017 tax cuts will be allowed to expire in 2025. By contrast, the CBO estimated that government spending will average 23.5% over the next decade, topping out at 24.1%, far higher than the 50-year average of 21%.

Although the CBO’s statistics might be useful for comparisons over time, they fail to communicate the gravity of America’s current economic peril. Griffith bridged the gap by converting the trillions into numbers that can be brought home to each family. “We owe $400,000 per family in federal debt,” he said. “We’re expected to add another quarter million dollars per family over the next 10 years.” Who’s ready for a third mortgage?

Two types of spending were leading culprits in the CBO’s growing deficit projection: “Growth in spending on programs that benefit elderly people and rising net interest costs” — in other words, mandatory entitlement spending and servicing the debt. The CBO projected that mandatory spending will increase steadily to 15.1% of GDP, net interest payments will increase to 3.9%, while discretionary spending (both military and domestic) will actually decrease to 5.1% by 2034 — if you can believe it.

Forecasters have known for decades about the fiscal turbulence catalyzed by the rising longevity of America’s aging population. The relatively new factors are the recent arrival of a high interest system and its costly interaction with mountains of recently accrued debt.

According to the Committee for Responsible Budget, for the first time, net interest payments exceeded Medicaid spending in 2023 and will exceed defense spending and Medicare spending in 2024. “Starting next year,” wrote CBO, “net interest costs are greater in relation to GDP than at any point since at least 1940, the first year for which the Office of Management and Budget reports such data.”

Griffith translated, “We’re already paying around $10,000 per family per year, just on the interest on the federal debt. And that is going to nearly double to close to $20,000 per family per year.” Sorry, Jimmy, I know you wanted to go to college. But now your Uncle Sam needs that money to pay off his gambling debts.

These factors, combined with sultry stagnation of Bidenomics, are cooking up the perfect fiscal storm. Americans can expect a “Poor Front” to follow. “Such soaring debt would slow economic growth, push up interest payments to foreign holders of U.S. debt, and pose significant risks to the fiscal and economic outlook,” analyzed the CBO. “It could also cause lawmakers to feel more constrained in their policy choices.” Coming from an agency that reports to Congress, that last sentence is the bureaucratic equivalent of, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, boss.”

Based on historical precedents, Griffith described “multiple ways this can pan out.” Through Door Number One, America could fully embrace European socialism. We already have most of the social programs; now we just need the taxes to match. This solution could avoid the fiscal crisis at the cost of “a long-term relative decline in our prosperity,” said Griffith. Through Door Number Two lies the fate of Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain, who nearly went bankrupt during the Great Recession through extreme profligacy. To obtain the foreign loans they needed to stay afloat, they were forced to make deep spending cuts dictated by outside countries — which naturally caused massive social unrest. Through Door Number Three, Griffith described “very extreme examples” of hyperinflation, such as Argentina and Venezuela. “None of the scenarios are good,” he warned.

Predicting the future is notoriously impossible, and CBO budget forecasters are usually no more successful than weather meteorologists. If anything, however, the CBO’s debt estimate is a conservative, even “optimistic” one, as The Wall Street Journal editorial board remarked skeptically. “They assume no recession and that the 2017 individual tax cuts and Inflation Reduction Act’s sweetened ObamaCare subsidies expire in 2025. Oh, and that Congress doesn’t lather on more spending, and more student debt isn’t canceled by executive decree.” That’s four unsafe assumptions that each lower the CBO’s 10-year debt estimate.

Undeterred by the glowering forecast, the Biden administration has planned a weekend cook-out. “Over the past three years, the Biden administration has driven an historic recovery,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen declared during Thursday testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, with all the cheeriness of a turnip. She later conceded under questioning that “we need to reduce deficits and to stay on a fiscally sustainable path,” an answer as effective as a clogged culvert. “By suggesting that we need to stay on a sustainable path, she’s saying we’re on one right now,” Griffith responded. “We are already on the path to unsustainability.”

Yellen further argued that America’s current debt burden is nothing to worry about. “Thus far, in real terms, the interest burden of the debt has remained within or below historical norms,” she said. According to the CBO, the 50-year average of net interest expenditures is 2.1% of GDP; the U.S. government spent 2.4% of GDP servicing the debt in 2023 and will spend 3.1% of GDP servicing the debt in 2024. Coming from a current Treasury Secretary and former Federal Reserve chair, Yellen’s remark is akin to an air traffic controller arguing, “Thus far, in real terms, that jet airliner accelerating down the runway has not yet become airborne.”

In response to a question from Senator Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Yellen said she had “seen no sign” of waning foreign interest in U.S. debt, an “absolutely ludicrous” remark in Griffith’s estimation. “Over the last two and a half years, foreign investors have only been willing to purchase about one penny of every new dollar of federal debt that we’ve taken on. In years past, foreign investors bought about one third of our federal debt,” Griffith explained. “With investor demand drying up for that debt, that means that the federal government has to pay more to those who will lend us money. … That trickles down directly to us as consumers.”

While the Biden administration may be unconcerned about the debt, at least some members of Congress have sought to restore sanity and accountability to the budgeting process. Thus far, their achievements have been flimsy at best. As a result of the spending cuts Republicans negotiated in the debt limit deal last summer, the CBO reduced their estimated deficit for 2024 by $0.1 trillion (4%) and their estimated cumulative deficit for 2024-2033 by $1.4 trillion (7%). You could as easily dig a trench with a teaspoon, or stop a locomotive’s momentum with a Q-tip, as resolve America’s budgetary crisis with such puny half-measures.

This situation illustrates the truth that elections have consequences. The reason why congressional budget hawks can’t achieve any significant savings is that there are too few of them, compared to their colleagues who want to keep spending money. At root, this is a problem that can only be solved when voters and candidates get serious about demanding and delivering fiscal sanity in Washington. America is barreling straight toward a fiscal cliff. Will anyone care enough to stop her?

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Econ Expert on the GOP’s Debt Ceiling Hand: ‘We’re Holding Four Aces’

When members of Congress started boarding their flights home Thursday, not one of them knew how long they’d be gone. The possibility of a shorter-than-usual Memorial Day recess looms large as negotiators desperately try to hammer out a deal on the debt ceiling before June 1. “Every hour matters,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told ABC. “That’s why the White House has to become very serious about this.” To the average observer, it sounds ominous. But as Americans prep for the long weekend, plenty are wondering, how does any of this affect me?

Former congressman Dave Brat, who has a Ph.D. in economics, gets that question a lot. But first, he told “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice, it’s important to understand one thing: “It’s impossible to default.” You’ll never hear that in the mainstream media, he explained, but “we have way more money [available]. A default means you default on the U.S. Treasury Bond. If we ever defaulted on the U.S. Treasury, we’d all be fishing under a bridge with Frodo,” the dean of Liberty University’s School of Business joked. “It would be the end of Western civilization. So that’s not even in play.”

All of this hysteria, Brat says, stems from the “word games” the Left and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen are playing. “What she’s talking about is paying all the bills for all Democratic spending. That may not happen, and that’s not a big deal. You just prioritize your spending in order. But we have plenty of money to pay off any interest on the debt in treasuries. And so, the American treasury holder doesn’t need to be worried about that.”

That doesn’t mean this isn’t a critical moment for our country, Brat explained. Right now, the Democratic-run Senate doesn’t have a budget plan. House Republicans do. “So all the leverage is on the Republican side right now.” And what does the GOP want? To cut spending. President Joe Biden and his party have, so far, flatly refused. But we’re on the verge of having $50 trillion dollars in debt to “hand off to the kids in 10 years,” Brat warns. With an interest rate of 5%, taxpayers are looking at $2.5 trillion a year just in interest payments. “That’s three times the U.S. military budget right now,” he emphasized, and none of it pays down the actual debt.

In other words, “there are $2 trillion deficits for the next 10 years around the necks of the kids. Everybody knows this, but the mainstream press will not cover any of [it],” Brat shook his head. To deal with that, “our friends [in the House] Freedom Caucus, who are being called every nasty word there is — ‘MAGA Republicans,’ ‘Republican extremists’ — they want to trim $4 trillion off of the $50 trillion in debt.” We’re not talking about a radical amount, he insisted. America would still be $46 trillion in debt in a decade. So it should be “an easy case to make to the American people” that we need to start trimming back.

As Hice pointed out, “We’re talking numbers that are astronomical that no one can even imagine [them].” And that’s part of the problem, Brat agreed. Another problem is that most people are too comfortable borrowing themselves. “The American consumer right now is $17 trillion in debt. Consumers have $1 trillion in credit card debt, $1.5 trillion in college loan debt. We’re in debt up to our eyeballs. And we’ve got a recession coming up, another financial crisis caused by the Federal Reserve for their mismanagement.”

By keeping the interest rate at 0% for a decade, the Fed has done the country a major disservice. [They’re] in a tough bind,” he explained, “[because] they basically want inflation, so they can pay the debt back with cheaper dollars. And so that’s where we stand.”

But this idea that we’re going to default on the total spending package, on $50 trillion, is baloney. “There’s no way,” Brat insisted. Even so, both sides need to come together on the debt ceiling, and Republicans “have the moral high ground for a change.” All they have to do is “tell the American people the basic facts, and you win.”

Changing America’s spending habits is “a hard, hard fight,” Brat agreed. “So you better fight now while we’ve got the leverage.” Remember, he went on, “Our team passed a bill. The Senate has not. Everything is on our side. Biden said. ‘I’m not going to negotiate. I don’t care’ and thumbed his nose at the whole thing. … But we need to hold strong. It’s time to take care of the American people and the kids. The liberals say they care about the kids. Fifty trillion dollars in debt means otherwise. They do not care about the kids.”

At least GOP leaders seem to understand the stakes, Hice said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a time where the Republicans [have appeared so] unified. … Literally in the hands of Republicans right now is the tool to roll back out-of-control spending.” But will Republicans hold together?

“Yeah,” Brat replied. “If they do not, they will cease to be a party,” he warned. “We’re holding four aces.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

McCarthy Proves What He’s Made Of with Gritty Budget Win

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) hasn’t had an easy path. After painstakingly working through conservatives’ gripes with House leadership this January, he finally squeaked out the votes he needed to assume the third most powerful job in Washington. But even after that chaos died down, questions loomed. Was he cut out to be speaker? Would he bring the fractious, competing corners of the GOP together? In a staring contest with Democrats, could he win? The answer, Americans learned from a hard-won victory on the budget bill, is a resounding yes.

With just two votes to spare, McCarthy accomplished something that seemed improbable even 48 hours ago: he held his fragile coalition together and passed a bill that all but forces Democrats to the negotiating table. Under the House proposal, America would not default on its loans. But there were strings attached. In exchange for raising the debt ceiling and protecting the country’s credit line, conservatives are demanding a massive overhaul of spending and deep cuts to bloated programs.

For starters, Republicans would set a $1.47 trillion limit on discretionary spending — with a 1% increase built in for each year. In a blow to the Democratic messaging machine, even the AP admits that the legislation poses no threat to Social Security and Medicare, which has been Joe Biden’s favorite scare tactic about the bill. To the cheers of most conservatives, the proposal also scoops up all of the unused COVID relief money from the series of bills passed between 2020-2022. Another way the GOP carved out savings was to roll back the $71 billion boost in IRS funding.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), all of this would make a huge difference in the country’s bleak financial picture, slashing the deficit by a whopping $4.8 trillion in a 10-year span.

Fueled by coffee and power naps, Republicans worked past 4 a.m. Wednesday to hammer out the deal. That all-nighter paid off. The bill eked through by a 217-215 margin that afternoon, putting Republicans in an unusual place — the driver’s seat.

In a triumphant press conference after the vote, McCarthy threw down the gauntlet. “We have lifted the debt ceiling, so nobody could worry about whether the debt ceiling is going to get lifted. We did it. The Democrats have not. [If] the president wants to make sure the debt ceiling is going to be lifted, sign this bill.”

Although Rules Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) made it clear that it’s “not the end of the road,” he insisted that “it’s a great personal and political victory for the speaker who got it done. He got a lot of people to vote for a debt ceiling increase who’ve never done that before.”

House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) was equally complimentary, telling Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” that the vote was “quite honestly, another historic moment in modern times here in Congress.” “For most people, this is just another day in the saga of Washington. But … as far as I know in modern times, this has never happened before.” And one of the reasons it was possible, he said, is because conservatives put specific conditions on the speaker in January — things like single-subject bills. More debate. Free-flowing amendments. In other words, Congress is back to operating how the Founders intended, not as a graveyard of ideas where decisions were predetermined by a powerful few.

Even if you go back to the 2011 days of Cut, Cap, and Balance, Republicans never insisted on “real cuts in that first year.” But this isn’t your 2011 GOP. And while the prevailing wisdom in Washington may be that the House has to cave to Joe Biden and Senate Democrats without demanding concessions like meaningful spending reform, Perry insists, “We’re not going to cave.”

“We have a narrow majority,” he conceded, but “we have worked for months — right up until about 4:00 in the morning last night to get this to where we can pass it. And, it is the beginning of the conversation, but what it does is … it shows [Biden] that we can pass something and he has no choice except to negotiate.”

For Republicans, who only control one part of the legislature, this is a “landmark occasion,” Perry says. “We’re supposed to be in a completely defensive posture. [But] we are on offense. And I will also take some pride in this: 90% of this bill has been written by the House Freedom Caucus — and we are driving and pulling our entire conferences … to the Right, to the side of principles that [say] we cannot keep spending and bankrupting our country.”

In a movement that’s watched Republicans snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Wednesday’s developments were groundbreaking. “I’ve watched this process for 20 years,” Perkins said. “I’ve even watched the Republicans when they were in the majority and they had the numbers. … But the reality is, even when Republicans had a large margin to work with, they never ever drove a stake in the ground and stood on principle. That is a sea change here in Washington, D.C.”

And McCarthy’s week-long speaker drama is a big reason why. Even then, FRC believed Republicans — and the speaker in particular — would emerge stronger from that emotional debate. It was there that the California leader proved he was willing to listen, to compromise, and to pursue the tough changes voters demanded. Now, Perkins insisted, we’ve had time to see that McCarthy was sincere. “We’ve seen a succession of decisions that the speaker has made. He’s stuck to his word. … And Republicans have [also] kept their word and done exactly what they said they were going to do when they elected this speaker.” So Democrats need to realize, he warned, “you guys aren’t going to cave.”

Already, that message seems to be sinking in. Far-left senators like Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) are calling on Biden to negotiate — and negotiate now. Moderate Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) agreed, pointing out, McCarthy’s bill is the “only bill actually moving through Congress that would prevent default.”

As NRO’s Noah Rothman explains, “The White House and Senate Democrats have so far operated on the assumption that Republicans were too disunited to be worth negotiating with.” Now, the script has flipped. “And with the Republican position strengthening and Democrats’ eroding, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before the White House consents to good-faith negotiations with their Republican counterparts. The sooner, the better.”

In the meantime, Perry has a message for those “weak-kneed senators over there that always work with the Democrats: … You need to stick with your Republican colleagues [and] do the work of the American people. … There’s a fighting spirit in this House of Representatives,” he insisted, “but … we do expect our senators to stand up and stand for us.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Biden Proposes Federally Regulated ‘Universal Pre-K’ for Children as Young as 3

President Joe Biden’s $6.9 trillion proposed budget would have the hand of the government rock the cradle by creating a federally regulated, universal pre-K program for children as young as three.

Altogether, President Biden would spend more than half-a-trillion dollars over the next 10 years to allow all American preschoolers to spend their formative years in a taxpayer-funded day care program. The president’s proposed 2024 budget includes billions of dollars to create “high-quality, universal, free preschool” for “all of the approximately four million four-year-old children in” the United States. Each of the 50 states may then “expand preschool to three-year-olds after preschool is available to all four-year-olds.”

The eventual program, which would see children raised anywhere “from public schools to child care providers to Head Start,” would be administered by the Department of Education in conjunction with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“The estimated cost of these child care and preschool investments is $600 billion over 10 years,” the budget proposal states.

Parents have already expressed concerns about the curriculum that might be taught in government-administered preschool programs.

“While the creation of universal pre-K may seem benevolent, the fact that so many schools now teach age-inappropriate lessons on race and sex raises red flags that such a program would simply allow administrators access to children at even younger and more vulnerable ages,” said Nicki Neily, the president of the education watchdog group Parents Defending Education. “It’s time to stop obsessing over ‘equity’ and ‘diversity’ in education and instead return to teaching students a solid core curriculum that will give them the skills they need to thrive later in life.”

These worries are amplified by the tender age of the children targeted by the Biden administration, which threatened to withhold federal funding from schools that do not allow males who identify as transgender to have access to female restrooms, bathrooms, and intimate areas.

“Between 15 to 18 months of age is when most children start forming their worldview,” explained George Barna, describing his research at Arizona Christian University’s Cultural Research Center, on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” in 2022. “By the age of 13, it’s almost completely in place.”

“A child needs a worldview, so if we don’t help them develop it,” said Barna, “somebody else will.”

Government agencies have quietly begun normalizing the notion of federal bureaucracies overseeing the childrearing of infants by changing the educational nomenclature from “k-12” (kindergarten through high school) to “p-12.”

The administration says it funds government-run childrearing programs so parents can “go to work or pursue training with the peace of mind that their children are being set up for a lifetime of success.” Yet decades of social science conclusively shows children raised by their own parents have the best life outcomes, while children raised in preschools suffer a variety of physical and emotional harms.

“In August 2013, Vanderbilt University released an evaluation demonstrating that children who went through Tennessee’s Voluntary Pre-K (TN-VPK) Program actually performed worse on cognitive tasks at the end of first grade than did the control group,” noted Lindsay Burke, an expert on the topic at the Heritage Foundation. Children who attended Quebec’s government-funded universal pre-K program were 4.6% more likely to be convicted of a crime, and 17% more likely to be convicted of a drug crime. Overall, these Canadian children experienced “worse health, lower life satisfaction and higher crime rates later in life.”

Nearly two-thirds of children who attended day care had higher cortisol levels than children at home. “For girls, the cortisol rise was associated with anxious, vigilant behavior, while for boys the rise was associated with angry, aggressive behavior,” researchers noted.

Biden’s proposed budget offers universal pre-K with the hope that children who take them will “enter kindergarten ready to succeed.” But a 2003 study found, “The more time children spent in any of a variety of nonmaternal care arrangements across the first 4.5 years of life, the more externalizing problems and conflict with adults they manifested at 54 months of age and in kindergarten, as reported by mothers, caregivers, and teachers.”

It is unclear there is burning desire for such programs. Over decades of conducing public polls, Gallup reports that it has “consistently found that the majority of working mothers would prefer to stay at home and take care of their house and family.” They work out of financial considerations, pollsters say.

Women are far more likely than men to say they want to work remotely from a home office. Women consistently say they place their highest value on flexible working conditions, which allow them to be home when their children are toddlers, or when they arrive home from school.

Nonetheless, Biden’s budget would boost Head Start funding by $1.1 billion to $13.1 billion. It also includes $500 million for the Education Department “to create or expand free, high-quality preschool in school or community-based settings” for children eligible to attend low-income schools.

Universal pre-K has remained a goal of the Democratic Party for at least a decade. President Barack Obama in his 2013 State of the Union address demanded Congress “do what works” by “working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every child in America.” Obama referred to universal pre-K in the nation’s first-ever report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2010, noting that he used stimulus funds to “promote high-quality early childhood education.” His Department of Education would “provide low-income students and students of color with increased access to early learning and education,” the report added.

However, a previous federal program known as Head Start, which was designed to improve the readiness of low-income children for kindergarten, was found to be a failure. A report from Obama’s own HHS noted that the program “had little to no positive effects for children who were granted access.”

More than a decade into the new millennium, Democratic bureaucrats still see value in having the government oversee the raising of young children. Universal pre-K will “pay dividends for generations to come,” said Cecilia Rouse, chair of the Biden’s White House Council of Economic Advisers this week.

The budget proposal stands little chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, where all spending bills must originate under the Constitution.

“President Biden’s newly unveiled budget would waste hard-earned taxpayer dollars on a radical leftist agenda, drive us deeper into debt, and raise taxes on a fragile economy,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.). “Right now, when Americans desperately need a return to economic stability, Biden’s budget proposal fails to recognize the nation’s fiscal crisis.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED TWEET:

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) Votes for the Boehner-Obama Budget Busting Deal

Florida District 16 U.S. Representative Vern Buchanan was one of 79 Republicans to vote for the Boehner-Obama budget busting deal. It is now the Buchanan-Boehner-Obama budget.

When Vern Buchanan first ran for Congress he vowed to reduce the federal budget deficits and called for a Constitutional balanced budget amendment. In a June 2015 press release Rep. Buchanan called balancing the budget “an urgent priority”. Buchanan stated:

[T]he United States can no longer afford to ignore its out-of-control spending problemWe’re going broke, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when, unless we change what we’re doing. We need a standard and I think that standard is a Constitutional Balanced Budget Amendment– Florida balances the budget every year, we make the tough choices…

It’s immoral what we’re passing on to our kids and grandkids. I have a granddaughter and a grandson on the way and I feel horrible about what’s taking place up here. “

[Emphasis added]

Given all of his rhetoric he still voted, in his own words “immorally” and against the best interests of his children grandchildren and ours, for Obama’s budget.

Melissa Quinn from the Daily Signal reports:

Despite overwhelming opposition from the majority of Republicans, the House of Representatives voted to pass a two-year budget deal today that raises spending caps by $80 billion and suspends the debt limit through March 2017.

The deal passed, 266-167, with support from moderate Republicans and all but one of the Democrats. Just 79 Republicans supported it, and all of those opposing the fiscal agreement were Republicans.

[Emphasis added]

To find out how your Congressman voted on this budget deal click here.

Stephen Moore, in his op-ed column titled “This Is the Worst Budget Deal GOP Has Negotiated Since George H.W. Bush Violated No New Taxes Pledge
writes:

Halloween is looking especially scary this year. On Monday, Republican leaders in Congress declared an unconditional fiscal surrender to President Barack Obama and the  left, negotiating a dangerous budget deal that eliminates all of the checks on Washington’s spend-and-borrow binge by breaking the budget caps, ending the sequester and raising the debt ceiling by over $1 trillion.

It’s the worst budget deal to be negotiated by the GOP since George H.W. Bush violated his no new taxes pledge in 1990 at Andrews Air Force Base.

The result of that capitulation was to make Bush a one-term president and to split the Republican party right down the middle. This deal has the same catastrophic potential.

Read more.

Citizens Against Government Waste reports:

Forty-six cents!  That’s how much of your individual income tax dollar the government squanders on wasteful spending programs.

donate

Another 31 cents goes to pay the $433 billion in annual interest on the national debt!

That leaves just 23 cents – or not quite one quarter of your tax dollar – to pay for the services that you expect from government!

 

RELATED VIDEO: Rep. Vern Buchanan on balancing the federal budget:

RELATED ARTICLES:

Lame Ducks, Lame Deal: The Boehner-Obama Budget Plan

Boehner-Obama Budget Deal Uses Same Accounting Gimmick as Obamacare

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of John Boehner and President Obama is by Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Newscom.