GOP to use congressional budget power to reverse Biden’s ‘woke’ policies and strengthen military

Congressional Republicans are hoping to use the Legislature’s constitutional power over the defense budget to force President Joe Biden to reverse his progressive, ‘woke’ policies at the Department of Defense (DoD).

Critics say that such policies have reduced America’s military to the lowest level since Jimmy Carter was president.

“We passed my amendments slashing DEI bureaucrats, banning race and gender quotas in military recruiting and promotions, reinstating unvaccinated service members fired by the Biden administration, and shutting down the Navy’s drag queen digital ambassador program, and we passed provisions to defund critical race theory courses at West Point and our service academies, fire the chief diversity officer at the DOD and end drag shows at our military bases,” Rep. Jim Banks told Fox News Digital.

Banks, a Republican, is chairman of a military affairs subcommittee dealing with personnel.

The GOP is also fighting to get financial compensation for military members who were involuntarily separated from service for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

The Military Times reported that Republicans are additionally demanding that mandatory inoculations with experimental vaccines never be required by the DoD again.

In fact, Fox News reports that there are so many demands by lawmakers for changes by the Biden administration to reverse progressive policies that have weakened the military, that negotiations with the House Rules committee for what will come to a floor vote are taking longer than usual.

The showdown between Biden and the GOP on defense spending has been a long time coming after military disasters occurring during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the failure to prevent Putin and Russia from staging an invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and an ineffective response to China’s growing belligerence, including a failure to confront China on COVID-19.

Last week, a Chinese researcher with the Wuhan Institute of Virology reportedly said the COVID-19 virus was a biological weapon developed by the Chinese communist state. 

The Heritage Foundation released a study on U.S. military strength in October which rated the country’s defenses as “weak.” 

Mike Rogers, a Republican from Alabama, who serves as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has warned that Biden’s progressive policies have created a recruiting crisis for the U.S. military.  

“Joe Biden has our military going WOKE and the results are as expected,” Rogers said via Twitter in April. “Nobody wants to sign up for indoctrination by the radical left through CRT and gender identity training and now our military is falling behind. It’s time to end the wokeness and make our military STRONG again!”  

Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, said that under Biden, the DoD has spent over 6 million hours on “diversity training,” according to Politico.    

GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has also said that Republicans won’t cut overall defense spending.  

“I want to make sure we’re protected in our defense spending, but I want to make sure it’s effective and efficient,” McCarthy said. “I want to look at every single dollar we are spending, no matter where it is being spent.”