The Patriot Post® · Long-Overdue Scrutiny of Federal Grants on the Agenda

With up to a trillion dollars being sent out the door each year via federal grants, one would have believed before now that there would be tremendous oversight and care taken to guarantee the money advances the proper agenda. Sadly, one would be wrong, but at least the Trump administration is addressing the problem through new proposed rules from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Last week, Josh Christenson of the New York Post broke the story. “The Trump White House’s budget office is tightening a rule for the distribution of up to $1 trillion in federal grant-making authority,” he explained, “ensuring taxpayer dollars are better protected from use by non-citizens and speeding up the process by which wasteful spending can be canceled.”

Among the proposed changes are mandatory E-verify for award recipients, an English language requirement for grant announcements, stricter safeguards for handling valid accusations of fraud, and, most importantly, being “paid for performance” as grant holders will be asked to quantify their progress. “In the past, you got yourself a nice grant that might last three or four or five years for a certain amount every quarter or every year, and that’s just an invitation for underperformance and under-delivery,” explained an unnamed OMB official to the Post. “So we’ll wipe those out and, instead, you’re going to get paid for performance. You get a grant awarded with the policy shared from the president, signed off by a political appointee, and it damn well better produce, otherwise it could be canceled for cause.”

The targeted grants include some 190,000 given out during Joe Biden’s final year in office, a segment targeted by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). “The reforms will prohibit federal grants that advocate ‘woke’ causes, such as discriminatory event services that promote certain groups over others; so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion; and transgender ideology and controversial experimental transgender medical interventions,” added Tyler O'Neil at The Daily Signal. “The reforms will prohibit agencies from excluding otherwise eligible faith-based organizations from grants. They will also remove climate alarmist requirements regarding human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.”

Needless to say, not everyone in the field is happy about the proposed changes. A sampling of these complaints can be found in a piece at Inside Higher Ed by Ryan Quinn, who warned:

The more than 400-page document, which research and higher ed advocacy groups say they are currently combing through, goes further than just implementing the August executive order, which raised alarms about political interference in science. The White House Office of Management and Budget [said] the changes would allow the administration to curtail grants unaligned with Trump’s EOs and policies, adding that “grantees out of alignment may now be suspended or terminated.” Those grantees include universities whose researchers receive National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and other federal agency grants.

Recipients and other critics of the changes charged that these would “replace merit with loyalty to a political leader” and “run counter to the scientific peer-review process that’s traditionally been used to decide which research projects to fund.” The only thing they liked was that the proposed 15% cap on indirect research costs was not placed into the rules; as OMB noted in its announcement, “As no changes are proposed on that topic, OMB does not intend to consider or respond to any such comments in the final rule.” Regardless, several of the affected groups vowed to submit their criticism during the 45-day public comment period.

However, if the administration can stay strong and weather what will likely be a series of legal challenges to the new rules prior to their adoption, the revisions promise to allow more bang for the federal bucks that are being distributed for these purposes.