U.S. House GOP in spending bills takes aim at federal LGBTQ, racial equity policies

The small-scale nature of some of the provisions appears more targeted than in past years, Sonya Acosta, a senior housing policy analyst at the liberal think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said.

“It’s not a new thing for members of Congress to have anti-LGBTQ policies,” Acosta said. “But to have them be so minute seems different.”

Appropriators, generally seen in Congress as moderates who must compromise, write contentious provisions into bills to mollify more extreme members, Dent said.

“This has been going on for years, and it’s only getting worse,” he added. “Just getting these people trying to force appropriators to write bills we knew could never become law. But it’s a wink and a nod: ‘OK, we’ll pass this piece of garbage out of the House and we’ll get to where we want to go in the end but we have to go through this process.’”

Environmental justice targeted

In another example, an amendment to the Interior-Environment bill offered by Texas Republican Chip Roy would block funding for environmental justice programs.

Biden’s Justice40 Initiative has sought to spend 40% of certain environmental and climate funding in disadvantaged communities that have been harmed by pollution and climate impacts.

“This entire ideology is based on the notion that federal environmental funding should be allocated based on immutable characteristics,” Roy said on the House floor Friday, apparently referring to environmental justice efforts targeted to communities of color.

Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Maine Democrat who is the ranking member on the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, responded that undesirable sites such as landfills, incinerators and radioactive waste storage have often been placed in low-income communities.

Environmental justice initiatives seek to reverse that historic discrimination that has resulted in communities seeing lower property values, higher health care costs and shorter lifespans, she said.

“Why would my colleagues try to defund any efforts to improve the lives of people in rural and low-income communities?” Pingree said. “I’m sorry, but it’s just another attempt to implement an extreme agenda to attack minority groups at all costs, and to return the U.S. to a time when environmental discrimination was the norm.”

The House adopted Roy’s amendment on a 212-204 vote. Republicans Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon and Fitzpatrick joined all Democrats present in voting against adoption.

The bill also included a provision to block funding “that promotes or advances” critical race theory, an academic field generally used in higher education that has nonetheless become a target of social conservatives worried that it is an example of reverse racism taught to young students.

The bill includes some funding for the Bureau of Indian Education, which supports schools on reservations. Another spending bill covering education, labor and health and human services also includes BIE funding.

Senate leverage

Spending bills are typically resolved by the leaders of each party in the House and Senate, Dent said.

Because of the nature of each chamber — and the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to pass legislation — the House version typically includes more partisan provisions that are stripped out of the final product. The Senate version is generally more bipartisan from the outset, giving that chamber the upper hand in negotiations, Dent said.

“Whatever bill crosses the finish line is not going to have these very contentious policy riders because they can’t get a bipartisan consensus in the Senate that would allow for 60 votes,” he said.

Dent, who was seen as a moderate during his time in office and has endorsed some Democrats since leaving Congress in 2018, criticized House Republicans for allowing a group of conservative hardliners to dictate the appropriations process.

“They go through this exercise all in an attempt to placate, pacify, appease, this hard-right group that didn’t support the budget agreement anyway,” he said. “All this time and effort to appease folks who are not going to end up voting for the bill anyway.”

But including such provisions in the House bill allocating housing funds still has consequences for LGBTQ people, Acosta said.

“LGBTQ folks experience homelessness at higher rates,” she said. “And part of that is because of the attitudes that are now being promoted at the federal level. And so that’s only going to exacerbate the issues that are happening on the ground.”

Seeing that could make LGBTQ people less likely to feel comfortable seeking services, Acosta added.

“Even if it’s just around messaging,” she said. “That messaging is incredibly harmful and counter-productive.”