Section 3: The General Welfare
“HHS is home to Medicare and Medicaid, the principal drivers of our $31 trillion national debt.”
Are Medicare and Medicaid really the principal drivers of our national debt? Only when you combine them. Social Security by itself is the largest driver, followed by the interest on the national debt, followed by the military, health spending, and Medicare, who are all tied at around 13% of our total spending. (Social Security is 22%, net interest is 14%.) [Source] Veterans’ benefits and services account for 5%.
This statement is laying the groundwork for the writer to argue for cuts to these programs.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.
“All along, it was clear from randomized controlled trials – the gold standard of medical research – that masks provide little to no benefit in preventing the spread of viruses and might even be counterproductive.”
This is an outright lie. Study after study after credible study has proven that masks help control the spread of viruses. There’s a reason that surgeons and doctors have been wearing them for decades. But fair enough – if you refuse to believe the CDC or the NIH, here’s a Mayo Clinic Study9, a study from PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America10, an article from Yale Medicine that essentially says make your own choices, but wearing a mask in public indoor spaces is the smart thing to do11 if you’re at risk, an article from Johns Hopkins12, and an article from UCSF13, all in support of masking up. The UCSF article goes into the science behind it.
From the PNAS study:
“The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts. Public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high.”
I’m not sure what the endgame of lying about the efficacy of masks is, given the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, but I suspect something akin to “freedom.” To which I say, you’re being asked to wear a mask, not a Nickelback T-shirt. Suck it up and be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.
“Severino writes of the National Institutes of Health, “Despite its popular image as a benign science agency, NIH was responsible for paying for research in aborted baby body parts, human animal chimera experiments”—in which the genes of humans and animals are mixed, “and gain-of-function viral research that may have been responsible for COVID-19.”
Yes, the NIH has historically funded research involving fetal tissue from elective abortions (and with consent only after an abortion was already chosen – there are ethical constructs in place.) It’s a subject of debate, but it has also contributed to advances in vaccines, treatments for various diseases, and understanding human development. The Trump administration put restrictions on this in 2019, and the Biden administration lifted them again in 2021. Specific advancements we’ve made from the use of fetal tissue in research and development have included the polio vaccine, the rubella vaccine, and the hepatitis A vaccine, which was derived from a fetus aborted in the 1960’s, as was the rubella vaccine. Also Adenovirus, chicken pox, Ebola, rabies, and shingles vaccines. [Source] The rubella vaccine has prevented literal millions of birth defects and fetal deaths worldwide, and rubella is the leading vaccine-preventable cause of birth defects.
Additionally, fetal tissue has helped us study how congenital disabilities occur, given us insight into HIV/AIDS, and may eventually provide treatments for blindness, spinal cord injuries, neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Zika virus, and more. Fetal tissue has also been used as a source of stem cells, which can develop into a wide variety of tissues, which has broad implications for regenerative medicine and gene therapy, potentially treating osteoarthritis, heart disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. [Source]
The NIH has also funded some research involving the mixing of human cells with animals, typically to study diseases or develop therapies. They’re referred to as “chimera” experiments. A prominent example of these is the creation of “human-pig chimeras”, which involves injecting human cells into pig embryos, aiming to grow organs like hearts or kidneys that can be transplanted into humans without being rejected due to their partially human cell composition. This is focused on organ shortage issues – a truly pro-life policy.
We have no definitive proof yet of where COVID-19 originated (and how), so the author has no reason to speculate that it had something to do with gain-of-function research.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.
“What’s more, NIH has long “been at the forefront in pushing junk gender science.” The next HHS secretary should immediately put an end to the department’s foray into woke transgender activism.”
This is nothing more than transphobia/cheap pandering to transphobes.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.
“HHS also pushes abortion as a form of “health care,” skirting and sometimes blatantly defying the Hyde Amendment in the process.”
This is another blatant lie. First of all, abortion is part of reproductive health care, because it’s a medical procedure sometimes necessary to protect a woman’s health or life. Labeling abortion as health care is a widespread practice in the medical community, not specific to HHS or political advocacy.
The HHS is tasked with ensuring that people have access to a wide range of medical services, including reproductive health care. Abortion access, when legal, is well within their purview.
The Hyde Amendment, as a refresher, was passed in 1976 and prohibits using federal funds for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger. It applies specifically to federal funding programs like Medicaid. The HHS is bound by law to comply with the Hyde Amendment, and there is ZERO evidence suggesting that it “blatantly defies” it. In fact, federal funding for abortion services is still restricted under Medicaid, except under the aforementioned exceptions. If the HHS were to fund abortions in violation of the Hyde Amendment, there would be legal repercussions. Note that the author fails to give a single verified instance of this occurring.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.
“The next secretary should also reverse the Biden Administration’s focus on “‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage,” replacing such policies with those encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.”
By “subsidizing single motherhood”, the author means government assistance programs like TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), and SNAP (food stamps), and any other form of financial aid that helps single mothers support their children. They think that by taking these things away, they’ll be “encouraging nuclear families”, but the reality is that it plunges many single mothers into poverty, and incentivizes them to stay in abusive marriages or relationships because there is no help for them outside of that. Vice president-elect J.D. Vance has publicly suggested that kids suffer when marriages fail, even when those marriages are violent (if not explicitly saying women should stay in violent marriages for the sake of their children, as the left is fond of claiming):
“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is this idea that, ‘Well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term.’ And maybe it worked out for the moms and dad, though I’m skeptical. But it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages.” [Source]
Seems to me, however, that’s EXACTLY what he’s at least implying. And what of deadbeat dads who don’t want to be involved with their children? Why would you punish those mothers and children? Because punishing women is part of the appeal of these policies, for them. And has no needy family with a father figure ever existed? Has there never been a single father? Why are we singling out women when we’re deciding we’re denying needy people help?
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.
“[t]he next conservative Administration should eliminate any offices within the FBI that it has the power to eliminate without any action from Congress.”
This is an explicit argument for dismantling the FBI.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.
“…and restart the Trump Administration’s “China Initiative” (to address Chinese espionage and theft of trade secrets), which the Biden Administration “terminated…largely out of a concern for poor ‘optics.’”
The China initiative wasn’t terminated by Biden, it was refocused because Trump’s version of it resulted in disproportionately targeting Americans of Chinese descent for their race, and for leading to a number of cases dropped due to lack of evidence. In 2022, the DOJ refocused it on threats from nations, not individuals. So I guess this is a partially true statement, if you’re calling blatant racism merely “poor optics.”
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.
“For the sake of American children, Congress should shutter [the Department of Education] and return control of education to the states.”
That’s a radical change. Let’s examine what the results of that would likely be:
Republicans arguing to shut down the DoE isn’t a new thing. Republicans have been against it since the Reagan administration. Newt Gingrich argued for it in 1994. As did Bob Dole in 1996. So how worried should we be that this might actually happen? Hard to say.
Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next, dismisses talk of shuttering the Department as “hollow chatter.” [Source]
They’re also unclear on what they mean by “abolish the department.” I’ll explain.
- Does it mean completely eliminating all federal education programs and staff? (Difficult to do.)
- Does it mean just handing the programs to other agencies or cabinet departments?
- Does it mean turning all of these programs into block programs for the states? If so, how much federal direction and oversight would there be, and who would be charged with providing it?
- Does it mean cutting funding for Special Education, Title I, or Pell Grants along with it? (A complete elimination means yes.)
“Let’s shut down the head of the snake, the Department of Education,” Vivek Ramaswamy said. “Take that $80 billion, put it in the hands of parents across this country.” [Source]
If you think American parents will see a dime of that money, I have a bridge to sell you. If the money went anywhere at all, it would be to the individual states. That’s assuming they’re not going to force states to shoulder the costs themselves, like they proposed with disaster relief.
From linked article 21:
“On student loans, Butcher says the elimination could lead to the federal government getting “out of the business of awarding student loans, and then for what remains it would be moved to the Department of the Treasury.”
So, there is some evidence that they’re speaking of a total elimination, not a shuttering that preserves some programs. So what would a second Trump administration promise for K-12?
- Title I, the $18 billion federal fund that supports low-income students, would disappear in a decade.
- Federal special education funds would flow to school districts as block grants with no strings attached, or even to savings accounts for parents to use on private school or other education expenses.
- The U.S. Department of Education would be eliminated.
- The federal government’s ability to enforce civil rights laws in schools would be scaled back.
I’m sure there will be more details in the upcoming Department of Education section, so I’ll wait to get into absolute specifics of what they recommend.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.
“Short of this, the Secretary of Education should insist that the department serve parents and American ideals, not advocates whose message is that children can choose their own sex, that America is “systemically racist,” that math itself is racist, and that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ideal of a colorblind society should be rejected in favor of reinstating a color-conscious society.”
There are so many mischaracterizations, oversimplifications, and inflammatory language inherent to this statement that it’s difficult to know where to begin.
First, schools don’t “push the idea that children can choose their own sex.” The statement conflates sex (biological attributes) with gender (social and personal identity.) Schools support the idea that gender identity can sometimes differ from biological sex, and that children should be supported in expressing that if they so choose. It’s not “pushed.” One wonders how they intend to enforce such ideas. Teachers firmly saying “nuh-uh!” to non-gender-conforming children? What would the alternative be? Going back to hitting children’s knuckles with a cane[Source]24, as we used to do with left-handed children, when we thought there was something “wrong” with that? Where’s the line? Are we going to corporally punish tomboys, or boys who grow their hair long? Who determines what a boy is supposed to look like, and what a girl is supposed to look like? How far can one deviate before the way they look is an issue for the government? This is a ridiculous amount of government control over what amounts to nothing more than transphobia.
I touched on systemic racism and the “colorblind” ideal in previous sections. Absolutely nobody sane is claiming that “math itself is racist”, this is an insane statement. Efforts to reform math education focus on ensuring equitable access to high-quality math instruction for all students, which includes recognizing that students from underprivileged backgrounds may face barriers that are unrelated to their mathematical abilities.
As for Dr. King, they’re completely mischaracterizing his vision of a society where people are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin as a “colorblind ideal.” Dr. King strongly advocated for the dismantling of racist systems, addressing racial injustices, and acknowledged that color-conscious approaches were necessary to address inequality – basically the exact opposite of everything Project 2025 stands for. They’re bastardizing his legacy. King was 100% a radical in his time, as much as white people would like to believe that his “I have a dream” speech was the extent of his politics. Things MLK also said?
“However difficult it is to hear, however shocking it is to hear, we’ve got to face the fact that America is a racist country.”
“Large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility & the status quo than about justice and humanity.”
“America is going to hell if we don’t use her vast resources to end poverty and make it possible for all God’s children to have the basic necessities of life.”
“We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.”
“The trouble is that we live in a failed system. Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we’re going to have to change the system.”
I believe that proper respect for Dr. King does not exist in the absence of a commitment to change these things; to right these injustices. And that means supporting lawmakers who have made a commitment to right injustice, not perpetrate it.
Full contextual analysis of Section 3: The General Welfare here.