(The Center Square)
President Joe Biden’s 2024 budget proposal calls for billions of dollars to advance his global gender and sexuality agenda, allocating far more taxpayer dollars to it than dozens of other spending priorities, like preventing fentanyl from being smuggled across the southern border.
Biden’s budget request for this particular issue has more than doubled in the past two years. In the past, this focus would have been almost entirely on women and girls. In recent years, however, the promotion of women’s rights around the world has shared attention and funding with the president’s gender agenda.
While Biden says he will cut $3 trillion from the deficit over the next decade, his budget plan would increase funding to promote “global equity and gender equality.”
From the budget :
The Administration remains steadfast in its commitment to investing in opportunities for women and girls and addressing the needs of marginalized communities, including the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex community. Reflecting this commitment, the budget calls for more than $3 billion to advance gender equity and equality across a wide range of sectors.
Last year, the U.S. Agency for International Development touted Biden’s $2.6 billion budget request to promote “global equity and gender equality,” saying it ” had more than doubled the amount requested for gender programs the previous year,” calling it the “largest gender budget request ever.”
This funding will encourage USAID and the Department of State to pay special attention to “those who face multiple forms of discrimination, such as adolescent girls and young women, Indigenous women, lesbian women and girls, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+), women with disabilities, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities.
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Biden’s demand to advance this type of equity this year has increased by an additional $400 million from the previous doubling, a new record.
Federal spending, particularly debt-related spending, is coming under increased scrutiny as inflation remains elevated.
“In an era of dangerous deficits and painful inflation caused by too much federal spending, the Biden administration is constantly looking for ways to waste even more taxpayer resources on ideological crusades,” said David Ditch, budget expert at the Heritage Foundation, at The Center Square. . “The obsession with ‘fairness’ pervades the entire Biden agenda, often at the expense of core federal duties and functions. Biden is regularly portrayed as a “moderate” by the press, but he hasn’t been shy about allowing radical activists in his administration to control the agenda and routinely flout the rule of law.
Biden caught fire after the budget was released for mentioning “fairness” 62 times when other major issues received less attention. “Inflation” is mentioned 56 times, although that number is much lower if you omit references to the Inflation Reduction Act, which has nothing to do with higher prices. “Border” is mentioned 33 times. “Poverty” is mentioned 21 times. “Ukraine” is mentioned 13 times. “Opioid” is mentioned four times and “fentanyl” is mentioned twice.
For comparison, the budget proposal includes $25 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, but specifies that only $40 million is intended to “combat fentanyl trafficking and disrupt transnational criminal organizations.” “. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, more than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021.
Opioid spending receives only a fraction of the attention that equity receives in the budget.
The proposed budget seeks to spend “$715 million on programs for the prevention and treatment of opioid use disorders such as VA’s Opioid Risk Mitigation Stratification Tool, the VA’s Opioid Overdose and Naloxone Dispensing Education and Programs Authorized in Jason Simcakoski’s PROMISE Act”.
While the opioid issue may receive federal assistance directly or indirectly from other established health and drug grants and programs, the gender issue would also benefit from the same type of additional assistance.
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A litany of domestic crime problems also receives less funding than the $3 billion in overseas investments.
From the budget :
The budget makes strong investments to strengthen federal law enforcement capacity. The budget includes $17.8 billion, an increase of $1.2 billion from the level enacted in 2023, for DOJ enforcement, including a total of nearly $2 billion for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to expand the multijurisdictional firearms trafficking strike force with additional forces. personnel, strengthen regulation of the gun industry, and implement the bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The budget includes $1.9 billion for the US Marshals Service to support personnel dedicated to fighting violent crime, including through fugitive arrest and execution operations. The budget also provides $51 million to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to support the continued implementation of enhanced background checks required by the bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Additionally, the budget provides a total of $2.9 billion for US prosecutors, which includes 130 new positions to support the prosecution of violent crimes.
Some federal government overseas grant funding opportunities prioritize LGBT issues. The Department of State’s “Global Fund for Equality” is a public-private partnership that channels federal funds abroad to “provide critical resources to civil society organizations (CSOs) and human rights defenders , including those working to increase the visibility and empowerment of queer, transgender women and other people of diverse gender identities, intersex people and members of other marginalized LGBTQI+ communities…”
Syndicated with permission from The central square.
