America's Talking - Biden Requests Billions to Advance Gender Agenda Worldwide

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

President Joe Biden’s 2024 budget proposal requests billions of dollars to advance his gender and sexuality agenda around the world, allocating far more taxpayer dollars to that than dozens of other spending priorities, such as stopping fentanyl from being smuggled across the southern border. Biden’s budget request for this issue in particular has more than doubled in the last two years. In the past, that focus would have been almost entirely on women and young girls. In recent years, though, advancing women's rights across the globe is sharing the focus, and the funds, with the president's gender agenda. --- Listen to Other ATN Productions: America's Talking: An interview podcast hosted by Austin Berg. Guests include professors, journalists, artists, business and nonprofit leaders, authors, and more. Everyday Economics: Join economist Dr. Orphe Divounguy and Chris Krug as they discuss global markets, inflation, and everything else that will help you understand the economic world around you. Future of Freedom: Future of Freedom is a bi-weekly podcast highlighting the work of the non-profits which are shaping the future of the freedom movement. Listeners will hear civil, intellectual conversations about why the organizations exist, what their mission is, and how they work to achieve it. Hosted by Scot Bertram. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is Casey Harper, the Center Square is Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. We are recording this on Friday, March 17th. Let's get into it today. Got a lot to talk about. There has been a lot of talk in recent months about increased federal spending. Congress faces a looming debt limit cap wherein the federal government could default on its debt if the cap isn't raised. Federal debt is now approaching $32 trillion. President Joe Biden recently unveiled his budget proposal for the next fiscal year that includes more increased spending. This week, Casey, you took a deeper dive into Biden's spending proposal and uncovered what many fiscal hawks describe as questionable spending abroad. Tell us about your exclusive story.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, Biden's budget is bigger than ever, you know, especially, you know, compared to his requests in recent years. And of course, we have this new plateau of spending because of the pandemic. And as I dug through the budget, which is very long, there's, you know, kind of endless spending items when you have trillions and trillions of dollars. But one thing that's interested me for a while and that's included in this budget is $3 billion to push Biden's gender and sexuality agenda around the world. Now, this is questionable for a couple of reasons. One, just because that's, you know, $3 billion is a lot of money to spend in other countries on this kind of more ideological. issues versus money that could have been spent here in the U.S. we do have a lot of problems.

And then the second thing is some of that money goes to things like the LGBT agenda. And I'm not sure that our country has really agreed on that here domestically, especially not enough to be pushing things like transgenderism to other countries, especially when many of those countries are far less accepting of that kind of thing than we are. I mean, it's kind of interesting to imagine going to religiously Muslim country and trying to push the LGBT sound bites on them. when, you know, they are like Saudi Arabia just started letting women drive. So I'm not sure,

you know, kind of like the strategy there. But it's interesting nonetheless, and we kind of, we dove into it. And, you know, we can go back and forth on the stand. But the thing that's really interesting to me also is that this, this fund or this kind of spending has in the past been used to do things like help young girls and women in countries where they're oppressed, right? Which I think it's something most Americans really get behind, you know, supporting, you know, literacy and helping in countries where women really don't have many rights at all are impressed, you know, get on their feet and that kind of thing. But now a greater and greater percentage of that money is going to help, you know, gay and transgender people, right? And so that's obviously a much more

controversial issue than helping like eight-year-old girls starting to read. So, and also the fact that a percentage of the money that would have been going to help these kind of girls is now going to the more controversial LGBT agenda. It's definitely something that I haven't heard anyone talking about and I wanted to bring it to the light. And with, you know, all the domestic issues we have in this country right now. And we'll get into a couple of those in just a second here. With the Ukraine war and the federal government, federal taxpayers, I should say, sending tens and tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine, U.S. taxpayer dollars being spent overseas has been, you know, in the spotlight lately, particularly because of the Ukraine war. Now President Biden wants to send

more than $3 billion overseas to promote his gender agenda. And it's understandable why that that spending would come under scrutiny. Let's just bring out a couple of those domestic issues. We have a border crisis at the southern border, right? Opioid deaths, deaths from fentanyl poisonings have been just skyrocketing in recent years. You pointed out in your story that just $40 million in Biden's proposed budget goes towards the fentanyl crisis and fighting the fentanyl crisis. More than $3 billion going overseas for gender identity issues, $40 million, just a for the fentanyl crisis? What did what did what did critics tell you about that? Yeah, you're right. This is a matter of priority. The criticism was not kind. I mean, different people just pointed out

sort of similar along the lines of things we've hinted at, which is why are we prioritizing overseas issues. I mean, of course, Ukraine funding in its own right has become increasingly controversial, especially when we have things like the the opioid crisis, fentanyl and the southern border. And it's really reflected in the budget that priority. So, when you just do a keyword search of the budget, the word equity is mentioned 62 times. You know, inflation is mentioned 56 times, but if you don't account where it says the inflation Reduction Act did this and it's, you know, not actually related to something inflation related, it's actually far less. So inflation is mentioned far less than equity.

The borders mentioned half as much as equity. Poverty isn't mentioned a third as much as equity. Ukraine's even is only mentioned 13 times. Opioid and fentanyl combined is only mentioned six times. One-tenth of the amount of times that equity is mentioned. And so that's, you know, I'm really not trying to just pick on one issue. I think with this $3 billion funding and, you know, several trillion dollar budget. But I think it highlights a real pattern and a focus for the Biden administration. It's interesting because when Biden speaks about the budget and gives his public address, he does not, his speech does not reflect that what I just said to you, you know, the speech talks up more about certain issues that you might expect from Biden. When you actually read the budget,

it's all about equity and very little about some of these other topics are important to Americans. So I want to, I think this story is important because it highlights that shifting focus for the Biden administration onto equity and away from some of these other issues. Right. And with, as we mentioned up top, with U.S. debt soon to be hit $32 trillion dollar mark with U.S. taxpayers funding more and more interest payments on that debt, that means less money for spending on certain domestic issues. So every line item of President Biden's, and when Congress starts to weigh in, Congress's budget should be scrutinized by journalists, by taxpayers, because we're spending this country into a crisis. Right. And it's just interesting that I try to give us a little plug every podcast

at the Soonersquare.com, but we really are writing about things that the mainstream media is just not even talking about. I mean, you're not going to really find that story in the mainstream media at all. And so it's, especially when it comes to these taxpayers' issues, we're going to pull it out and say, hey, you may be okay with this, but you should at least know about it. Thank you for digging into those details. I look forward to you further scrutiny of President Biden's budget and later when Congress gets involved, the congressional budget. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com. Or Casey Harper, I'm Dan McKalib. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.