WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – The Biden White House has released its proposed budget priorities for fiscal year 2024, which as expected contains several provisions calling for expanded federal funding of abortion on demand.
The budget, which also calls for funding gender transitions for veterans and putting more than $1 billion toward the next pandemic response, calls for repealing the longstanding Hyde Amendment, which forbids most taxpayer dollars from funding abortions except for rape, incest, or threats to a mother’s life; the Dornan Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding for abortions in the District of Columbia; and the Aderholt Amendment, which prohibits the creation of gene-edited embryos for medical experimentation, such as three-parent embryos.
It also calls for $512 million for the Title X family planning program, $57.5 million the United Nations Population Fund, and increased spending for other programs used to direct taxpayer dollars to the abortion industry at home and abroad – a fact that Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) is celebrating.
“Amid the abortion access crisis, we need our budgets to reflect our values and support sexual and reproductive health care,” PPFA president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said. “While we await more details, President Biden’s proposed budget is an encouraging sign of the Biden-Harris administration’s continued support.”
President Joe Biden’s proposal is thought to be a nonstarter in its current form, given that control of Congress is divided between a Democrat Senate and Republican House of Representatives, in which Speaker Kevin McCarthy has pledged to take a hardline stance on federal spending. It remains to be seen if he can live up to that promise, particularly with his Senate counterpart Mitch McConnell historically taking a more accommodating approach to liberal budgets.
“The president’s budget took my breath away. His numbers are extraordinary. We’re going to run out of digits here,” Republican U.S. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said. “The only way I know how to improve the president’s budget is with a shredder.”
Regardless, the White House budget is as much a declaration of political priorities as a blueprint for Congress’s final product, an affirmation of Biden’s commitment to effectively unlimited abortion on demand and at taxpayers’ expense.
Biden has also called on Congress to codify a “right” to abortion in federal law, which would not only restore but expand upon the 50-year status quo of Roe v. Wade by making it illegal for states to pass virtually any pro-life laws. Democrats do not currently have the votes to pass that legislation either, but are signaling to their allies in the abortion lobby what they would do if they are allowed to keep the White House and given additional legislative seats in the 2024 elections.