Elon Musk, Ramaswamy signal intention to defund Planned Parenthood
The leaders of President-elect Donald Trump's proposed Department of Government Efficiency have indicated that funding for the nation's largest abortion provider may be on the chopping block as they seek to make drastic reductions to government spending.
Billionaire Elon Musk and former 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy discussed their plans as Trump put them in charge of the new department in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal published Wednesday.
Stressing that they intend to serve as "outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees," Musk and Ramaswamy highlighted their plans to assist "the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America."
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Trump has said the new department will provide guidance from outside government to "dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies."
"This team will work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget. The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory recissions, administrative reductions and cost savings," Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in the op-ed.
"DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood," they wrote.
In a post on X Wednesday, pro-life activist Lila Rose of the organization Live Action praised Musk and Ramaswamy's proposal to cut funding from Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, as "amazing."
Defunding Planned Parenthood has been a top priority of pro-life activists and Republican politicians for years.
The federal government took several steps to defund Planned Parenthood during the first Trump administration, including by implementing a rule prohibiting recipients of federal funding related to family planning from performing or referring for abortions. Efforts to defund Planned Parenthood have also materialized at the state level. In 2020, a court ruling allowed Texas and Louisiana to cut funding for the organization from the states' Medicaid programs.
Data from Planned Parenthood's 2022-2023 annual report shows that the organization took in $699.3 million in government health services reimbursements and grants in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023. This figure accounted for more than 34% of its total revenue.
As for the legal authority to cut funding to Planned Parenthood and make other reductions in government spending without receiving consent from Congress, Musk and Ramaswamy insist that they are on solid legal ground.
They expressed confidence that the U.S. Supreme Court, as currently configured, will agree with the position taken by Trump that the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, "which stops the president from seizing expenditures authorized by Congress," is unconstitutional and a "usurpation of Executive Branch powers."
While Musk and Ramaswamy believe that the Supreme Court will find the law unconstitutional, Trump predicted that he would be able to "work with Congress to overturn the limits" of the law in a statement posted on his campaign website ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
"For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending through what is known as impoundment," he recalled.
"I will use the president's long-recognized Impoundment Power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings," Trump vowed. "This will be in the form of tax reductions for you. This will help quickly to stop inflation and slash the deficit."
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
