&Mary Beth Waddell and Chantel Hoyt | The Washington Stand
Most folks equate springtime in D.C. with the cherry blossoms around the tidal basin, but another staple of springtime in the nation’s capital is appropriations season. Congress ultimately controls government funding, and the House takes up the first appropriations bill this week, but the process starts with the release of the president’s budget in which the administration’s priorities and recommendations are laid out for Congress’s consideration.
President Trump recently released his budget, and we were grateful to see a strong emphasis on removing funding for the infiltration of gender ideology that we saw explode in the previous administration, as well as supporting unborn children. The president recognizes that American taxpayers should not be forced to fund radical ideologies and death.
Trump’s budget calls for language across all 12 appropriations bills that would prohibit the funding of gender transition procedures, calls out many of the problems we saw under the previous administration, and notes that these should not be funded in the future.
Specifically, the budget seeks to reverse the elevation of gender ideology over properly educating the next generation. For example, it calls out the Department of Education’s previous earmarking $1.2 million for San Diego Community College’s Pride Center and Head Start centers for indoctrination of children via promotion of picture books about gay penguins and lessons on how to grow children’s “gender identity.”
It also seeks to bring science, good medicine, and reality back to the center of the medical field. It specifically calls out the National Library of Medicine for previously funding a program for nurses to learn about “transgender and gender diverse” patient care in accordance with the World Professional Association of Transgender Health standards of care, undermining laws that are designed to protect individuals from the harms of gender transition procedures in America.
Furthermore, it calls out the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) because AHRQ has pushed radical gender ideology onto children, previously funding a project at the Seattle Children’s Hospital (“Using Telehealth to Improve Access to Gender-Affirming Care for BIPOC and Rural Gender-Diverse Youth”), and hosting an online tool designed to help females who identify as transgender choose a contraceptive.
The budget also calls on the Violence Against Women Act programs and grants to return to a focus of assisting women who have been victimized seek safety, healing, and justice. In recent years, battered women have been forced to share private spaces with biological men who claim to identify as women, and some have even been revictimized in the place that is supposed to be their safety net.
These are just a few examples beyond education, health care, and victims’ assistance that the president’s budget acknowledges where gender ideology indoctrination has previously been essentially a “whole of government” focus and calls on it to end.
In addition to addressing gender ideology, Trump’s budget contains several pro-life wins as well. The proposal maintains longstanding pro-life riders, such as the Hyde Amendment (prohibiting federal tax dollars from funding abortion), the Weldon Amendment (preventing discrimination against health care entities that refuse to participate in abortion), and the Helms Amendment (prohibiting foreign aid from being spent on abortion).
Notably, the budget calls for eliminating funding for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Program, which is one of Planned Parenthood’s major funding streams. This program has shown itself to be ineffective in accomplishing its purpose — reducing teen pregnancy. Additionally, concerns have been raised about the curriculum used by grantees, which may promote abortion and contraception for young people while undermining parental involvement.
The president’s budget also includes new provisions to stop federal funding for aborted fetal tissue research and to defund Planned Parenthood. The latter is especially important given that the current moratorium on Medicaid funding for the organization ends on July 4th, after which tax dollars will start flowing again if Congress doesn’t act. The budget also includes a new provision to prohibit federal funding for health training programs if they require abortion training (rather than allowing students to opt-in) or discriminate against students who do not want to undergo such training.
On foreign policy, Trump’s budget includes another new provision reinforcing the Protecting Life in Foreign Assistance Rule, which prevents foreign non-governmental organizations from receiving U.S. health assistance if they promote abortion. The new provision would cut off grant funds to international organizations that don’t comply with this rule. Additionally, the budget includes funds to “end the previous administration’s abuse” of certain global programs. This section makes specific reference to the abuse of PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan For Aids Relief) and notes the program’s funding of health workers who carried out abortions in Mozambique as an example of activities that should be eliminated.
There is one discordant note in the president’s budget: While it zeroes out the Teen Pregnancy Program (a slush fund for organizations like Planned Parenthood to bring sexually explicit classroom instruction to children, which we are glad to see removed), it inexplicably proposes defunding sexual risk-avoidance education. FRC and our pro-family allies have fought for years to set aside a relatively small amount of federal funding for abstinence education that teaches young adults the benefits of using the success sequence — graduate high school, get a full-time job, and marry before engaging in sexual activity. It would be sad if sexual risk-avoidance education became a casualty of the appropriations process.
The president’s budget is nevertheless full of very good proposals, and Congress would do well to take his pro-life and pro-family priorities to heart and include them in this year’s appropriations bills.
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON STAND
