Biden Spending Splurge On Trans Procedures, Illegals & Foreign Nations

As the U.S. continues to accumulate debt at a record pace, entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are calling attention to tens of billions of taxpayer dollars being spent on illegal immigrants.

Citing a Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) study, DOGE posted on X Monday, "In 2023 alone, illegal immigration cost taxpayers $150.7 billion. To put this in context with other costs (adjusted for inflation): World War I: $334 billion; Apollo Space Program: $257 billion; Manhattan Project: $30 billion; Panama Canal: $15.2 billion; Hoover Dam: $1 billion."

The FAIR study, which was released in March of last year, combined estimated expenditures by the federal government ($66 billion) with state and local costs ($115 billion), minus $31 billion in estimated tax contributions from migrants. The money was spent to cover schooling, health care costs including uncompensated hospital expenses and Medicaid, law enforcement costs including incarceration, removal, and border protection, and welfare costs including food and housing assistance, among other expenses. The $150 billion total equaled a $35 billion increase from a previous estimate of $116 billion in 2017.

The sharp acceleration in spending has coincided with the largest surge in illegal immigration ever seen in the U.S., which has occurred as a result of a series of open-border policies implemented by the Biden administration beginning in 2021. The total number of encounters with illegal border crossers as of June was 8.2 million more than in the entire first Trump administration.

The spending on migrants is part of a four-year federal spending spree never before seen in American history. Biden has overseen annual budget deficits of $2 trillion, and by the time he leaves office next January, it is estimated that he will have overseen a net increase of over $9 trillion in the national debt, a record-setting amount for a single term.

FAIR Executive Director Julie Kirchner told Fox News on Tuesday that the total amount of taxpayer dollars spent on illegal immigrants is likely much higher than their original estimate. "The population we cited in the study was 15.5 million. We now estimate that it's over 16.8 million, and we're in the process right now of doing another estimate on the illegal alien population, and I'm sure it will be higher. So, we know the costs are going to go up." She also noted that their report did not include state and local costs associated with sheltering migrants.

In New York City, where there are currently over 58,000 illegal immigrants facing criminal charges, almost 100,000 migrants seeking asylum have moved there over the last two years, and the city estimates it will spend over $12 billion through fiscal year 2025. Meanwhile, Chicago has spent over $400 million on migrants over the past two years.

"The scale of spending on illegal immigration boggles the mind!" Musk observed Monday in response to DOGE's highlighting of the FAIR report.

Kirchner expressed confidence that DOGE's efforts could save "billions and billions of dollars each year" in taxpayer money.

The changes could not come fast enough as a new report also shows the Biden administration spent more taxpayer dollars subsidizing transgender procedures than ever before while Biden's FEMA workers skip the homes of Trump voters and extend tiny loans to U.S. hurricane victims.  As one of his last acts the president also decided to hand out another $1.7 billion to foreign nations on his way out the door.

The Democratic establishment went all-in on funding transgender procedures during the Biden-Harris administration. The 2024 Democratic Party platform classifies puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone injections, and the removal of healthy body parts as "medically necessary." And the last two Democratic administrations have put your money where their mouth is.

According to partial data furnished to the media, the amount of money American taxpayers have spent on transgender procedures has risen by more than 60% during the Biden-Harris administration.

Megan Brock of The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained the amount taxpayers spent on transgender procedures in 16 states: Michigan, Idaho, Illinois, Virginia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Maryland, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Kentucky, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.

"From January 2018 to September 2023, 16 states spent more than $165 million funding 'gender transition services' --including puberty blockers, hormones, and sex-change surgeries -- with more than $45 million spent on interventions for children 17 and younger," reported Brock.

Of those 16 states, all but Utah broke down the data by year, allowing for an annual comparison.

Taxpayer funding of transgender procedures increased by nearly two-thirds during the first two years of the Biden-Harris administration alone, rising from $27,753,478 in 2020 to $44,553,052 in 2022. That a 64% increase in just two years.

Brock revealed how much money liberal states spent on transgender procedures, including medical interventions and social transitioning, such as speech therapy:

"Illinois spent $40,843,721, which included $14,296,558 in services for children 17 and under. Oregon spent $30,045,262 and Washington State spent $27,145,383. Other statewide totals for gender transition services includes Maryland, which spent $11,849,062, Nevada, which spent $10,096,655, Michigan, which spent $6,821,169, and New Hampshire, which spent $2,360,534."

These funds can be attributed to the deliberate policies of the Obama and Biden-Harris administrations -- the sort of legal sleight-of-hand currently being debated by the Supreme Court. In 2016, the Obama-Biden administration aggressively reinterpreted federal civil rights laws as though they covered people who identify as transgender. The Obama administration argued that "sex discrimination" included so-called "gender identity," and it turned on the spigot of taxpayer funds to the transgender industry (coincidentally, a large Democratic donor group).

Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, conventionally known as Obamacare, prevents discrimination based on sex. On its way out of office, the Obama administration issued a rule asserting that this prevented "discrimination" based on "gender identity" and sexual orientation. "Medicaid benefits are subject to Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the law's major non-discrimination provisions," notes the health news service KFF.

In other words, Obama said denying transgender procedures could constitute a civil rights violation and trigger a federal lawsuit, a brazen attempt to bully private insurance providers and state Medicaid programs into covering at least some transgender procedures. The number of transgender medical interventions nearly tripled over the next three years.

Experts say taxpayer funding helped fuel the explosion, reports Brock. "I would say that there has likely been an increase in 'top surgery' among 16 and 17 year olds simply due to the fact that this surgery has become more accessible," according to an email DCNF obtained from Jason Rafferty, who helped write the transgender policy of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). "Most if not all [doctors inflicting transgender surgeries on minors] now take Medicaid -- very few patients are paying the fully [sic] cost of surgery out of pocket."

The Trump administration reversed this rule in June 2020 -- not a moment too soon -- and the Biden-Harris administration reversed Trump's reversal, reinstating the Obama policy in May 2021.

Kamala Harris's ideological commitment to extreme transgender ideology drove more swing-state voters away from her than any other issue. President-elect Donald Trump said the watchword of his next administration will be, "Promises made, promises kept." Let him not waste any time keeping this vow and saving taxpayers' dollars.

The Left's funding priorities come into better focus when we observe that ...

While the Biden-Harris administration gives the cold shoulder to funding veterans and Trump-supporting hurricane victims, it has not spared any expense to support foreign interests ...

After being defenestrated by his own party and having his replacement lose a near-landslide last month, President Joe Biden has ramped up his commitment to unpopular foreign aid giveaways. In between naps, the lame duck president committed to giving $1 billion to Africa as a misbegotten form of reparation for America's (non-)history of colonialism. During a visit to the National Museum of Slavery, Biden invoked "the stolen men and women and children who were brought to our shores in chains and subjected to unimaginable cruelty."

"I've learned that while history can be hidden, it cannot and should not be erased. It should be faced," said the president, whose party has spent little time in the last decade facing any other direction.

More concerning, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced another $725 million weapons package to expand Ukraine's losing war with Russia, including the use of anti-personnel landmines.

At least Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) has announced Wednesday that he will not include the Biden administration's request for another $24 billion to Ukraine in his year-end funding bill.

It has become a cliché to contrast the level of foreign aid and funding of illegal immigrants with the unmet needs of veterans and other Americans -- but as these underreported stories prove, the comparison is tragically apt.

Originally published at The Washington Stand