Many Americans who don’t follow politics closely have a sense that the status quo of the federal government, built up over time by both parties, is “neutral” and doesn’t heavily favor one side or the other.
However, the Left has either created or captured vast swathes of the federal government over the years, meaning that dumping untold billions more dollars into the agencies and programs it has created or taken over further empowers the Left’s all-encompassing social and economic agenda.
That’s why House Republicans must take advantage of their constitutionally appointed congressional power of the purse and cut off the gravy train.
On Thursday, June 1, the Senate passed a
legislative package
passed by the House the day before that may lead to some modest
spending reductions
but, more significantly, features a temporary suspension of the federal debt limit that will likely increase the debt by close to
$4 trillion
over the next 19 months.
Now that the drama about passing
the debt deal
is over, Congress will move on to writing legislation that funds the federal government in fiscal year 2024.
While
House Republican leadership touted
the debt deal as historic deficit reduction, it remains to be seen what (if anything) will actually be cut. That’s because the deal includes a variety of
budget gimmicks
that could add over $50 billion in spending above the supposed budget caps. And remember, even if Congress reduces the annual budget deficit, it will still spend far more than it takes in and continue to grow the national debt.
At a time when
excessive spending
is driving much of
the inflation
plaguing families across the country, House Republicans have an obligation to seek real cuts in this year’s appropriations process.
Fortunately, there are
many ways
to drain the federal swamp. In addition to getting
rid of waste
, Congress should also cut or eliminate programs that fund the infrastructure of the political Left.
The Axis of Big Education and Big Science
To say that the federal Department of Education’s enormous budget helps the Left should not be a surprise to anyone by now.
Funding for public K-12 schools favors the
monopolistic government-run
educational status quo and provides an opening for the Biden administration to promote
welfare dependence
and counterproductive
racial essentialism
across the country. Moreover, subsidies for higher education serve to empower institutions that have been almost entirely captured by the Left for decades.
In addition to hosting race- and gender-studies departments whose de facto purpose is producing
radical activists
, universities also use their
massive endowments
to hire legions of
diversity bureaucrats
that seek to force ideological conformity on students and faculty alike.
There is also increasing awareness that federally funded science agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and more provide the political Left with enormous amounts of power and resources.
That power was on full display during the COVID-19 pandemic as the CDC promoted disastrous
school closures
, extremely
costly lockdowns
, and
ineffective mandates.
The NIH, where Anthony Fauci held court, doubled down on an approach that elevated faulty science over
fundamental freedoms
(and also awarded grants for infectious disease
research in China
).
There is also an alarming leftist intersection between Big Education and Big Science. For example, the
CDC colluded
with national teachers unions to leverage school closures as part of a push for
unnecessary “reopening”
funds in early 2021. The CDC is also helping to promote the
LGBTQ agenda
in K-12 schools.
Perhaps the most insidious crossover involves the numerous multi-billion-dollar federal grant programs for scientific research. A substantial portion of these grants go toward universities, for understandable reasons.
However, federal agencies also give universities generous premiums to cover supposed
overhead costs
, far above what private grant-writing organizations provide. This amounts to a stealth subsidy worth billions of dollars per year. Given the Left’s stranglehold over academia, this means that Big Science provides even more resources for ideological crusades.
While it’s vital for conservatives to reform federal education and science policy, the first step should be reining in their budgets.
Radical Foreign Policy Agenda
The same goes for foreign policy, which has increasingly become a political instrument
for Democrats
. Examples include:
- Using
foreign aid
to promote “climate change” activism, race and gender-identity ideology, and
abortion overseas
. - Warping diplomatic work into becoming an extension of
left-wing domestic policy
obsessions. - Promoting dependence on ineffective foreign aid in places
like Afghanistan
.
While foreign policy is a necessary function of the federal government (unlike most other programs), Congress must dislodge the Left’s grip from the foreign policy apparatus.
Action Needed Now
The Left has secured other funding streams throughout the federal budget, ranging from subsidies for mass transit (benefitting
government labor unions
), to pointless
subsidies for “green” energy
, to woke arts organizations such as the
Kennedy Center
and the
National Endowment for the Arts
.
With every year that these programs and agencies continue to reap tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, the political Left gets stronger: more university-trained activists, more biased bureaucrats, and more control over our everyday lives.
Our sky-high
national debt
makes it even more urgent for House Republicans to put an end to the madness and cut off the Left’s relentless power grab.
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This article originally appeared in the Daily Signal and is reprinted with kind permission from the Heritage Foundation.
