Under President Joe Biden, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has built a dizzyingly complex diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) infrastructure.
The agency's 2025 budget request includes the word “capital” 829 times, adding to a total that is already impossible to fully tally.
HHS hired at least 294 DEI staff last year at a cost of $38.7 million, according to a new report report From Open the Books. There were 247 people with salaries over $100,000.
It can be difficult to grasp just how bureaucratic HHS's DEI system really is. Agency-wide “EEO, Diversity & Inclusion Office” Number of employees: 92. Among them are seven additional DEI offices for specific health agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration. (Related: Biden's Health Department seeks to impose fairness requirements on transplant lists)
Some smaller offices have several additional departments. The National Institutes of Health's Division of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion includes a separate Division of Diversity and Inclusion, a marketing team, a customer support team, and more.
DEI costs don't stop there.
The agency has earmarked $5 million for the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity and the Office of Environmental Justice. Another $5 million will be dedicated to “diversifying the doula workforce.”
The Health Resources and Services Administration received $102 million this year for “diversity training.” One-third of this is to help universities “improve the academic performance of minorities.”
NIH plans to spend $241 million over nine years. beginning The program rewards universities for weighing a candidate's “commitment to diversity” against academic ability when hiring scientists.
Even the NIH's $1.2 billion “Brain Research Through Revolutionary Neurotechnological Advances” program According to the budget request, the organization is now “committed to diversity and inclusion in the research community.”
background: DEI also transformed HHS's seven Minority Health Offices have 207 employees and combined revenue of $29.4 million. Add to that the $38.7 million from HHS's general DEI staff, and you get a payroll of $68 million.
The Office of Minority Health has existed since 1985, but when Biden took office he directed it to focus on “addressing historical and contemporary injustices.”
Soon after, the Centers for Disease Control's Office of Minority Health changed its name to the Office of Health Equity. and “Racism has been declared a serious public health threat.”
Important quote: “In medical research, lives depend on putting excellence first. The NIH is distorting that value, subordinating it to political ideology, and endangering the people it is supposed to serve.” said John Thaler, Fellow of the Society of Scholars. I wrote In the Wall Street Journal.
There is no left or right political agenda in science or medicine.
This article was republished with permission through RealClearPolitics Wire.
Jeremy Portnoy is an investigative journalist at OpenTheBooks.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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