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CV NEWS FEED // President Joe Biden has said: “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” The president’s new budget, published this week, shows exactly what he values, says CatholicVote Director of Government Affairs Tom McClusky.
“President Biden’s FY23 budget has once again made the radical proposal to eliminate the Hyde amendment, a life-saving law that has saved more than 2.4 million lives and is supported by 54% of the public, in order to allow taxpayer-funding for abortions-on-demand,” McClusky said.
Below is an outline McClusky compiled of that and other life-related features in Biden’s budget:
- Eliminates the Hyde amendment (pg. 797) – which would allow taxpayer funding for abortions-on-demand through Medicaid, Medicare disability, and other programs funded under the Labor / Health and Human Services appropriations bill.
- Eliminates the Dornan amendment (pg. 1244), which would allow the District of Columbia to fund abortions through its Medicaid program. When the Dornan amendment was last gutted in fiscal year 2010, D.C. funded 300 abortions through Medicaid.
- Eliminates the Aderholt amendment (pg. 189), which would lift the federal ban on gestating gene-edited embryos, such as three-parent embryos.
- A 40% increase in funding for the Title X “family planning” program by $113.521 million, bringing the total to $400 million from $286.479 million (pg. 429). This funding will serve as a slush fund for Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry.
- A 10% increase in funding for the teen pregnancy prevention program (TPP) by $10 million for a total of $111 million, up from $101 million (pg. 479). These funds subsidize Planned Parenthood.
- Eliminates funding for sexual risk avoidance education ($35 million in FY22-enacted) (pg. 479).
- $5 million for “implicit bias” training grants for healthcare providers, which could be used to target pro-life providers (pg. 31 of HHS request).
- A 72% increase in funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) by $23.5 million to $56 million from $32.5 million (pg. 138 of State Dept request). The UNFPA promotes abortions around the world and supports China’s forced abortion and sterilization regime.
- Eliminates the application of the Helms amendment to the Complex Crises Fund (pg. 821), which could allow those funds to pay for abortions.
- Adds a sweeping authority for funds “to promote gender equality” overseas, including by “protecting the rights of women and girls worldwide” (pg. 882). This would bypass the Helms amendment and Siljander amendments to allow taxpayer-funding for abortions or abortion lobbying overseas.
- Decreases the funding floor earmark for international family planning / reproductive health (FP/RH) by $3 million (0.5%) to $572 million from $575 million (pg. 916). This would be a welcome development on its own. The earmark is a slush fund for international pro-abortion organizations including International Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes International. However, USAID is requesting that all of these funds be provided through the Global Health Programs (GHP) account – a $48.05 million increase over the $523.950 million provided in that account for FP/RH in FY22 – instead of allowing some of these funds to be awarded through the Economic Support Fund (ESF) account (pg. 84 of State Dept. request). Pro-abortion groups have sought to shift the annual $51.05 million allocation of the FP/RH earmark within the ESF account over to the GHP account in order to allow USAID bureaucrats more flexibility to give funds directly to NGO’s in the abortion industry, since the ESF allocations are typically given to the governments of U.S. friends and allies.
- Expands the HIV/AIDS Working Capital Fund (WCF) to include pharmaceuticals and other products for global health activities broadly, including contraceptive commodities and, via funds from non-U.S. Government donors, potentially abortion-related commodities (pg. 877).
- Expands the authority for bypassing country prohibitions for child survival / disease programs to include global health activities more broadly, which could also cover contraceptives (pg. 882).
- Expands taxpayer-funded in-vitro fertilization (IVF) (and other assisted reproductive technologies that destroy human embryos and disregard human dignity) at the VA, to unmarried, single veterans. The expansion will add gestational surrogacy services and the use of third-party gametes (VA request pg. 313).
- Increases taxpayer-funding for contraceptives at the VA, including emergency contraceptives and other forms of birth control that can destroy human embryos, by eliminating copays (VA request pg. 314).
- Eliminates provisions removing time limitations on embryo storage for IVF procedures funded by the Department of Defense (pg. 325).
“The Democrats are trying to sell this budget as a return to the middle,” McClusky concluded. “But any analysis of this budget that is even remotely sympathetic to preborn Americans, Catholic values, and fiscal responsibility for that matter, shows just how radical it is.”
