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David Ditch is a senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation’s Hermann Center for the Federal Budget. This column was distributed by the Tribune Content Agency.
The latest inflation numbers show a 3.5 percent annual growth for consumer prices, still well above pre-pandemic levels. That means millions of families are struggling to get back to where they were in 2021.
This should come as no surprise, since excessive deficit spending from Washington remains much too high. In 2023, the federal government spent $6.1 trillion (roughly $47,000 per household) and ran a staggering $1.7 trillion deficit.
Yet the Biden administration seems determined to make this worse, consistently choosing policies that increase deficits in pursuit of its ideological agenda. The country can’t afford such reckless spending. The economy would run smoother with lower deficits.
Too many elected officials, however, either don’t know this — or apparently don’t care. They view the federal government as an enormous piggy bank.
The Biden administration has aggressively used the swamp’s enormous budgets to fund left-leaning causes through grants.
Here are a few examples of such grants that the administration has approved since December 2022:
$45 million for a “diversity and inclusion” scholarship in Burma. Apparently not content with pushing the DEI fad in America, the administration is also subsidizing it globally. Burma (also known as Myanmar) has serious problems, including a badly flawed judicial system, rampant corruption, and high poverty due to a lack of property rights and heavy government interference in the economy. A $45 million DEI scholarship will do nothing to address those problems.
$3 million for “girl-centered climate action” in Brazil. Not content with creating a “climate corps” in America, the administration gave a grant to an organization based in the Netherlands to promote DEI-infused environmental activism in Brazil. As with Burma, this grant focuses on niche far-left concerns rather than the genuine problems facing South America’s largest country.
$125 million to racialize public health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has faced growing criticism in recent years for its politicized and unconstitutional response to the COVID-19 pandemic, its promotion of gender ideology, and more. Its $124.9 million grant to the National Network of Public Health Institutes threatens to further damage the already frayed relationship between public health groups and the American people.
The group’s “racial justice competency model” is rooted in critical race theory, which claims that any outcome gaps between racial groups must be caused by systemic racism. A fixation on addressing “inequities” likely means forcing CRT ideology on the medical system, which is the last thing America needs.
$573,000 to anti-Israel groups for fighting “disinformation.” The Biden administration has embraced a crusade against “disinformation,” which is often code for censoring contrary opinions.
This approach also applies to foreign policy, as the State Department has provided grants to many organizations working abroad. A problematic example of this is two grants worth over $573,000 to Virginia-based MENAACTION. Key members of the group have parroted disinformation themselves, repeating false claims made about Israel’s fight against Hamas. So not only are anti-disinformation grants of dubious value to begin with, but these grants seem likely to spread rather than restrain disinformation.
$288,563 for “diverse” bird watcher groups. Proving that nothing is safe from the reach of DEI-mania, the National Science Foundation approved a grant for having ornithological societies (bird aficionados) create “affinity groups” based on identity characteristics.
Rather than being based on serious evidence of bigotry or discrimination — as though bird watching groups are nests of racists — it’s instead predicated on some members “[lacking] a sense of community or feel[ing] their voices are not being heard.”
Such vibes-based concerns might be worth addressing with internal meetings. However, the federal government has absolutely no business getting involved, especially when the gross national debt is $34.6 trillion.
Wasteful grants are impossible to avoid when the federal government has grown to such a bloated mess. However, the Biden administration has made this worse by green-lighting absurd projects such as these.
As Congress starts work on legislation to fund the federal government in 2025, legislators should examine the agencies and programs funding these grants when they look for places to find savings for taxpayers.
