by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News November 13, 2024
Looks like a job for DOGE.
President-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency might want to take a look at a new report by OpenTheBooks which found that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has 294 diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staffers soaking up taxpayer-funded salaries.
The majority of those staffers, 182 workers, are paid six-figure salaries. The top diversity job earner, who works at the Food and Drug Administration, collected $221,000 in 2023, OpenTheBooks said in its report on Tuesday.
The watchdog group’s report said spending on the diversity, equity and inclusion agenda “permeated” HHS, appearing 829 times in its 2025 budget, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars in direct spending.
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The Biden-Harris administration demanded a “whole of government” effort to advance the DEI issue.
“DEI at HHS is concierge Marxism,” said John Hart, head of OpenTheBooks. “Academia is delivering a boutique and racially charged permission structure that helps bureaucrats feel morally innocent about imposing top-down, command and control policies that can disproportionately harm low-income Americans.”
In its investigation, OpenTheBooks found vaccine programs explicitly aimed at gay Black men; money earmarked for opioid programs that vowed to tackle “systemic racism”; a $5 million proposal to “diversify the doula workforce”; and $5,000 to pay for an appearance by Ibram X. Kendi, a leading “antiracism” voice. A doula is a person who provides support for people undergoing significant health-related experiences such as childbirth.
OpenTheBooks found that 92 DEI employees are working under HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.
More than 200 DEI staffers were spread among various agencies. The FDA alone had three DEI-related divisions: one for diversity management, a diversity working group, and a DEI “excellence” center.
The incoming Trump administration has promised a reversal, but OpenTheBooks’ Christopher Neefus said that would be tough.
“Academia is already saturated with the DEI worldview, and now we can see there are public dollars and cents attached to keeping it that way,” Neefus said. “It’s a self-reinforcing model that will take time to unwrap. If the new administration plans to get rid of this misguided focus on equity, there’s a very long walk back from the 2025 budget request.”