The Patriot Post® · Biden's $1.1 Trillion DEI Binge

Yesterday, we learned that the people who controlled Joe Biden’s autopen signature¹ also largely controlled his presidency. Today we learn the extent to which those puppeteers were invested in using our tax dollars to pit identity-based groups of Americans against each other. As the authors of a new report tell it, “The numbers are staggering.”

Conducted jointly by the Functional Government Initiative and the Center for Renewing America, the new in-depth analysis² of the Biden administration’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion spending across the federal government gives us a sobering look at taxpayer-funded DEI in a whopping 460 programs across 24 federal agencies. The budgetary damage? More than $1.1 trillion.

That number, though, doesn’t even encompass the entirety of Team Unity’s DEI largesse, nor does it cover every DEI program within those 24 agencies. Still, it gives the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency plenty to look at. Page 3 of the document provides a summary breakdown of expenditures by federal department, from Agriculture to Transportation, as well as the other cabinet-level agencies: Veterans Affairs, EPA, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, General Services Administration, NASA, National Science Foundation, Office of Personnel Management, Small Business Administration, Social Security, and the now-infamous USAID.

The worst offender? The Department of Housing and Urban Development — and it isn’t even close. According to the report, HUD spent more than $678 billion of our tax dollars on DEI-related endeavors, thereby dwarfing the pikers at the runner-up Department of Education, who could only manage to flush $135 billion down the toilet.

The total across all departments and agencies? $1,118,751,723,782.

As the 58-page report indicates: “Of the programs identified, 10 are exclusively dedicated to DEI and could be considered for quick elimination; 144 allocate significant resources to DEI initiatives and should be reviewed if those are to be ended; and 306 programs incorporate DEI to varying degrees, though the extent of their DEI focus is indeterminate based on the available documentation.”

The Biden administration’s Long DEI March through the institutions of government began in earnest on Joe Biden’s first day in office. That’s when he signed his infamous Executive Order 13985, otherwise known as “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.” As our Nate Jackson grimly noted³ at the time:

Systemic racism is now the policy of the federal government. Executive Order 13985⁴ disguises this as direction to “pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all,” but in practice this will mean counting by race in everything the federal government does. Biden’s order also rescinds President Donald Trump’s September order banning⁵ racist “diversity” training (known as critical race theory) in federal agencies.

Of course, as we’ve learned from Donald Trump’s experiences in the White House, merely signing an executive order isn’t enough. Action must follow. And action did indeed follow during the Biden years, in the form of an all-encompassing “Equity Agenda,” about which the administration bragged⁶ in April 2022: “Today, more than 90 federal agencies, including all Cabinet-level agencies, are releasing the first-ever Equity Action Plans that lay out more than 300 concrete strategies and commitments to address the systemic barriers in our nation’s policies and programs that hold too many underserved communities back from prosperity, dignity, and equality.”

Thus, during the Biden years, more than 90 federal agencies mapped out their strategies for burning more than $1.1 trillion in taxpayer funds on DEI. But always remember: Equity isn’t equality⁷. Whenever you hear the word “equity,” think racist and sexist and redistributionist.

Of course, much of the damage has already been done. Indeed, DEI actually long predates the Biden administration — just under different guises. For example, a Carter-era court order blocked federal agencies from testing job applicants to gauge their aptitude for specific roles, lest such testing result in a statistically significant change in the hiring rates of whites or Asians versus blacks or Hispanics. The Trump administration is, thankfully, trying to undo this 40-year ban⁸ on merit-based hiring.

In any case, on his first day back in office, President Trump issued his own anti-DEI executive order⁹, calling for the elimination of what the Biden administration had wrought. From the order itself:

The Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government. … Pursuant to Executive Order 13985 and follow-on orders, nearly every Federal agency and entity submitted “Equity Action Plans” to detail the ways that they have furthered DEIs infiltration of the Federal Government. The public release of these plans demonstrated immense public waste and shameful discrimination. That ends today. Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect, and to expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great.

Donald Trump’s executive action against DEI has, predictably, met with resistance across pockets of the federal government, which is overwhelmingly populated with Democrats and leftists. Thus, undoing the damage of the Biden years will be a long, hard slog. But at least DEI has been exposed for what it is, and its discriminatory brand has been so thoroughly tarnished that it won’t worm its way back into the federal government anytime soon.

Unfortunately, we taxpayers have already been fleeced for $1.1 trillion.