Today, Education and Labor Committee Republican Leader Virginia Foxx (R-NC) delivered the following opening statement, as prepared for delivery, at a full committee hearing on HHS’ budget and priorities:
“Secretary Becerra, President Biden’s HHS budget for Fiscal Year 2023 is full of misplaced priorities and reckless spending.
“If this budget passes, $127.3 billion in discretionary spending would be allocated to HHS—meaning taxpayers would be forced to give your agency an additional $13 billion. This staggering price tag doesn’t even include your request for $22 billion for so-called COVID-19 funding.
“States are awash with federal dollars and your administration has still not provided Congress with adequate accounting of where past COVID-19 dollars have gone.
“HHS has delivered nothing but mixed messages over the past year, from masking and vaccinations to school reopenings and the risk COVID poses to children.
“Nobody knows where the so-called 'guidance' begins and the contradictions end.
“Your agency is leading the charge to: expand the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid—dismantling employer-sponsored health insurance in the process; expand access to abortions and force taxpayers to fund them; impose socialist drug-pricing controls; encourage minors to receive permanent gender-reassignment surgery and hormone treatments; and stop the faith community from maintaining its identity while continuing to participate in programs to help those in need.
“This insanity makes it clear that HHS is more interested in serving a splinter group who identify as the progressive left than the American people.
"Today, our colleagues across the aisle will sing your praises and act as if HHS is doing an excellent job.
They'll also conveniently gloss over the fact that HHS has demonstrated, over and over again, that its true North Star is a radical progressive ideology, devoid of reason and commonsense.
“Mr. Secretary, HHS is a federal agency, funded by hardworking taxpayers, not a social science experiment. You would do well to remember that.”
Original source can be found here.
