The new Republican House majority would like to change the priorities in military spending, with so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives soon on the chopping block.
In President Joe Biden‘s most recent defense budget, he requested roughly $150 million for diversity and inclusion programs, according to Thomas Spoehr, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense.
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“So, we just did a little exercise like this, and I could find maybe $100-$150 million dollars in the [defense] budget that I could take it and be relatively confident that these are associated with woke programs. The diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy and training programs and the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute in Florida,” he told the Washington Examiner. “There are extremist activity, training, counter-training programs, those types of things. So, about $150 million, perhaps maybe a little more.”
The sentiment has been shared by influential Republican leaders, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL), among many others.
“We’re going to cut money that’s being spent on wokeism. We’re going to cut legacy programs. We’re going to cut a lot of waste,” Rogers told the Hill last week.
There is, however, some disagreement in the Republican Party about whether the overall top line should be lowered by reducing spending in places other than the diversity and inclusion area.
“There’s at least three different factions” within the GOP, Spoehr added. “There’s fiscal hawks, there’s defense hawks, and there’s social/cultural hawks. Sometimes, you find that those characteristics are the same people, and sometimes not. So, it’s kind of what they value, and so, to be successful, the Republicans will attempt to fashion a program that appeals to all three of those types of folk.”
The House Freedom Caucus, at large, initially held up McCarthy’s bid for speaker, which he ultimately won, but not after making concessions to the group, which reportedly included going back to the fiscal 2022 budget, which could be a cut worth as much as $75 billion. Freedom Caucus leader Scott Perry (R-PA) previously told the Washington Examiner that he doesn’t “have a numeric goal” in mind, while he also referenced “the Green New Deal ” and “woke culturalization” as areas they could target for cuts.
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Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Tuesday that such a proposal would most likely not be met with bipartisan support.
“I don’t think that would be an appropriate number, and I don’t think it will receive a lot of bipartisan support during the Senate,” he told reporters during a Defense Writers Group event.
Retired GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe, formerly the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement last February that according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military had dedicated nearly 6 million hours since the start of the Biden administration on “developing, preparing, delivering, attending or assessing” new plans to address climate change, diversity, and extremism.
