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It’s Joe Biden, Not Tommy Tuberville, Who Brought The ‘Culture War’ To The Military


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | JULY 17, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/17/its-joe-biden-not-tommy-tuberville-who-brought-the-culture-war-to-the-military/

Tommy Tuberville and Joe Biden

Since February, Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville has been using a “senatorial hold” to block personnel moves by the U.S. military that require Senate confirmation. The media and Democrats are very upset that Tuberville is “waging an unprecedented campaign” and embroiling our vital national defense policy in the culture war.

Joe Biden claims that Republicans are “injecting into fundamental foreign policy decisions what in fact is a domestic social debate on social issues is bizarre,” which is “totally irresponsible.” While I don’t know much about Tommy Tuberville, the president has it backward. It was Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, not any Republican, who broke with 45 years of policy last year by instituting effective reimbursements for elective abortions by military and dependents. It is just as true to say, probably truer, that the president is the one holding up military promotions by unilaterally trashing policy that has been in place since 1980.

One of the implications of most stories covering the military hold debate illustrates the radically rightward shift and unprecedented fanaticism of Republican politics. This, too, is backward. Biden, who supported the Hyde Amendment, a law banning federal funds to pay for abortion, from 1976-2019, is an exemplar of the hard-left cultural lurch of the modern left. Biden had not merely gone along with the Hyde Amendment as a means of compromising with Republicans back in the ’80s and ’90s. Until the past couple of decades, the abortion debate wasn’t neatly divided by party, and Biden, purportedly a devout Catholic, had to keep conservative working-class Delawarean voters happy. In 1994, the future president wrote a letter to a constituent bragging that he had voted against abortion funding on 50 occasions.

Like most things Biden says, this was probably untrue. But he did vote to save the Hyde Amendment repeatedly over the decades. Biden also voted against allowing Medicaid to fund abortions, even for victims of rape and incest. He supported a Jesse Helms amendment that would have prohibited using federal funds for abortions and abortion research or training. Biden voted numerous times to prohibit the Federal Employees Health Benefits program from funding abortions for government workers.

Indeed, Biden was constantly “injecting into fundamental foreign policy decisions what in fact is a domestic social debate on social issues.” He didn’t merely support banning public funding for abortion in the United States; he wrote an amendment to Foreign Assistance Act — for years, referred to as the “Biden amendment” — that barred U.S. foreign aid from being used in any research related to abortions. In 1984, Biden supported the “Mexico City policy,” banning federal funding for private organizations that provide abortion, advocate to decriminalize abortion, or expand abortion services.

Even on June 5, 2019, not long after his 2020 presidential campaign kickoff, Biden publicly reaffirmed his support for the Hyde Amendment. The very next day, after some criticism from primary opponents, the spineless candidate changed his position and “denounce[d]” the Hyde Amendment. For what it’s worth, virtually every poll on the question of public funding for abortion, even ones that offer a misleading framing of the issue, find most Americans support banning taxpayer funding for abortions. Poll support doesn’t mean much in my book, but it does put to rest the idea that Tuberville is taking on some kind of fanatical position outside the mainstream.

Then again, today, Biden, the man who twice voted for partial-birth abortion bans and once supported overturning Roe v. Wade, backs state-funded abortions on demand from conception to crowning for any reason, including eugenics and sex-selective abortion. And, for the first time in history, he wants to implement that policy in the military. Bizarre, indeed.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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Sunsetting Federal Spending Programs Is A Fantastic Idea


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | FEBRUARY 09, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/09/sunsetting-federal-spending-programs-is-a-fantastic-idea/

Rick Scott
Why do Americans have to live with legislative decisions made nearly 90 years ago?

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When Joe Biden accused Republicans of planning to “cut” Social Security and Medicare during his State of the Union address, it was — like virtually all the other things he said — a lie. His claim was tantamount to accusing Democrats of supporting a “plan” to shut down air travel because Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once proposed it.

The president was referring to Rick Scott’s ill-timed “12 Point Plan to Rescue America,” which included, among numerous other nonstarters, a proposal to sunset all federal spending programs every five years. The proposal, contra Biden’s contention, had no support from Republicans and nothing to do with the debt ceiling fight.

None of that means that asking Congress to reauthorize federal spending bills every few years isn’t a great idea. Why would stalwarts of “democracy” oppose revisiting spending decisions made by legislators nearly 90 years ago? No living person has ever voted on them. And though “liberals” are generally more protective of Social Security than the Bill of Rights, entitlement programs aren’t foundational governing ideas, they do not protect our natural rights, nor are they at the heart of the American project. Government dependency is, in fact, at odds with all of it.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of private-sector establishments go out of business, and yet not a single federal government program ever does. While nearly every facet of society embraces cost-saving efficiencies, the federal government perpetually grows. It is madness. Simply as a function of good governance, it would be reasonable for Congress to review the efficacy and cost of existing federal programs, and then make suggestions for reforms or elimination or — yikes — privatization. Forget entitlements. Is there any reason we shouldn’t revisit the billions spent on the obsolete Natural Resource Conservation Service (created in 1935 to help farmers deal with soil corrosion) or the Rural Electrification Administration (created in the same year, when large swaths of rural Americans did not have electricity) or the counterproductive Small Business Administration or the subsidy sucking Amtrak corporation?

Indeed, there is widespread support for Social Security — a Bismarckian import, first championed nationally by corrupt populists like Huey Long to augment retirement. One suspects this is largely because Americans have been compelled by the state to pay into the pyramid scheme. Many people build their retirements around the program. They have no choice. Compulsion is a hallmark of leftist policy, from entitlements to Obamacare to unionization to public school systems. And by forcing participation, we’ve created a generational trap. Voters have been fearmongered into believing that any reform means something is being stolen from them, when no serious proposal has ever cut existing benefits.

In the 1970s, Biden supported re-upping federal spending authorization every four years and requiring Congress to “make a detailed study of the program before renewing it.” Obviously, Biden hasn’t stuck to a single principled position in his entire career. But it is worth noting there was plenty of bipartisan support for sunsetting bills from 1970 through the 2000s — including from Ed Muskie, Jesse Helms, liberal “lion” Ted Kennedy, and George W. Bush.

Until very recently the center of both parties also agreed entitlement reform would be necessary to keep Medicare and Social Security solvent. In today’s Idiocracy, we have a president who argues that a $5 trillion spending bill costs “zero” dollars, so we’re about a zillion lightyears away from responsible governance.

If Social Security is so deeply popular — and everyone saw cowardly Republicans promise Biden they wouldn’t do anything to fix these programs that are bankrupting the country — what’s the problem? Even with the highly remote chance of a sunset law, the chances of reform would be still more remote. Look at how Washington almost perfunctorily lifts the debt ceiling. The only shared principle in D.C. is risk aversion.

Still, if Congress were automatically impelled to vote on existing law, it would create more political space to at least suggest changes and perhaps revisit mistakes. If nothing else, Congress would be marginally more “productive” if it was forced to occasionally deal with existing problems rather than concocting new ways to create them.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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