Many Americans who don’t follow politics closely have a sense that the status quo of the federal government, built up over time by both parties, is “neutral” and doesn’t heavily favor one side or the other.

However, the Left has either created or captured vast swathes of the federal government over the years, meaning that dumping untold billions more dollars into the agencies and programs it has created or taken over further empowers the Left’s all-encompassing social and economic agenda.

That’s why House Republicans must take advantage of their constitutionally appointed congressional power of the purse and cut off the gravy train.

On Thursday, June 1, the Senate passed a legislative package passed by the House the day before that may lead to some modest spending reductions but, more significantly, features a temporary suspension of the federal debt limit that will likely increase the debt by close to $4 trillion over the next 19 months.

Now that the drama about passing the debt deal is over, Congress will move on to writing legislation that funds the federal government in fiscal year 2024.

While House Republican leadership touted the debt deal as historic deficit reduction, it remains to be seen what (if anything) will actually be cut. That’s because the deal includes a variety of budget gimmicks that could add over $50 billion in spending above the supposed budget caps. And remember, even if Congress reduces the annual budget deficit, it will still spend far more than it takes in and continue to grow the national debt.

At a time when excessive spending is driving much of the inflation plaguing families across the country, House Republicans have an obligation to seek real cuts in this year’s appropriations process.

Fortunately, there are many ways to drain the federal swamp. In addition to getting rid of waste, Congress should also cut or eliminate programs that fund the infrastructure of the political Left.

The Axis of Big Education and Big Science

To say that the federal Department of Education’s enormous budget helps the Left should not be a surprise to anyone by now.

Funding for public K-12 schools favors the monopolistic government-run educational status quo and provides an opening for the Biden administration to promote welfare dependence and counterproductive racial essentialism across the country.

Moreover, subsidies for higher education serve to empower institutions that have been almost entirely captured by the Left for decades.

In addition to hosting race and gender studies departments whose de facto purpose is producing radical activists, universities also use their massive endowments to hire legions of diversity bureaucrats that seek to force ideological conformity on students and faculty alike.

There is also increasing awareness that federally funded science agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and more provide the political Left with enormous amounts of power and resources.

That power was on full display during the COVID-19 pandemic as the CDC promoted disastrous school closures, extremely costly lockdowns, and ineffective mandates.

The NIH, where Dr. Anthony Fauci held court, doubled down on an approach that elevated faulty science over fundamental freedoms (and also awarded grants for infectious disease research in China).

There is also an alarming leftist intersection between Big Education and Big Science. For example, the CDC colluded with national teachers unions to leverage school closures as part of a push for unnecessary “reopening” funds in early 2021. The CDC is also helping to promote the LGBTQ+ agenda in K-12 schools.

Perhaps the most insidious crossover involves the numerous multibillion-dollar federal grant programs for scientific research. A substantial portion of these grants go toward universities, for understandable reasons.

However, federal agencies also give universities generous premiums to cover supposed overhead costs, far above what private grant-writing organizations provide. This amounts to a stealth subsidy worth billions of dollars per year. Given the Left’s stranglehold over academia, this means that Big Science provides even more resources for ideological crusades.

While it’s vital for conservatives to reform federal education and science policy, the first step should be reining in their budgets.

Radical Foreign Policy Agenda

The same goes for foreign policy, which has increasingly become a political instrument for Democrats. Examples include:

• Using foreign aid to promote “climate change” activism, race and gender identity ideology, and abortion overseas.
• Warping diplomatic work into becoming an extension of left-wing domestic policy obsessions.
• Promoting dependence on ineffective foreign aid in places like Afghanistan.

While foreign policy is a necessary function of the federal government (unlike most other programs), Congress must dislodge the Left’s grip from the foreign policy apparatus.

Action Needed Now

The Left has secured other funding streams throughout the federal budget, ranging from subsidies for mass transit (benefitting government labor unions), to pointless subsidies for “green” energy, to woke arts organizations such as the Kennedy Center and the National Endowment for the Arts.

With every year that these programs and agencies continue to reap tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, the political Left gets stronger: more university-trained activists, more biased bureaucrats, and more control over our everyday lives.

Our sky-high national debt makes it even more urgent for House Republicans to put an end to the madness and cut off the Left’s relentless power grab.

This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal