Biden Budget Seeks over $83 Million for State Department DEI Programs

T he Biden administration’s State Department and international-affairs budget proposal requests over $86 million for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility-related programs, or DEI, as part of the White House’s broader drive to reshape the federal bureaucracy along the lines of “equity”-focused principles.

The document reveals how some long-standing U.S. foreign-policy priorities, such as human-rights promotion, have been drastically reshaped to advance DEI principles.

The budget request released today follows a raft of actions by the State Department to elevate DEI-related initiatives over the past two years. Among other things, the department has created an office of diversity and inclusion, appointed a chief diversity and inclusion officer and a special representative for racial equity and justice, and rolled out an “equity action plan” that establishes metrics to measure the implementation of DEI programs. State also put in place new human-resources guidelines that require foreign-services officers to “advance” DEI principles in order to be eligible for promotion.

A Republican congressional aide who reviewed the State Department budget request warned that these trends will ultimately degrade U.S. diplomatic efforts. “Woke ideology and culturally en vogue but diplomatically useless DEI notions have come to penetrate every last inch of the State Department,” this person told National Review. “Every office, and every process, has been colonized by this way of thinking. The new budget proposal reflects this.”

Under the proposal, the lion’s share of DEI-related funding for the State Department’s work falls under the category of “continued expansion of programs to foster diversity and inclusion further supporting the President’s Executive Orders.” The administration requested just over $83 million for that specific objective.

The State Department’s budget-request document states that the money would go toward implementing a series of Biden-era executive orders on advancing racial equity, preventing gender and sexuality discrimination, furthering the work of a White House gender-policy council, and instilling diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility values throughout the bureaucracy. While DEI is the most common acronym for equity-focused initiatives in the private sector, federal agencies have started to regularly use DEIA, adding a letter for accessibility.

With the requested funding to implement those orders, the State Department would offer training on “substantive areas focused on DEIA” and expand employees’ understanding of DEIA, according to the budget document. It also states that some of the $83 million “bolsters recruitment and retention of 22 Department employees from varied backgrounds,” though the document does not specify the jobs performed by those specific employees. Some of the funds will also go toward combating discrimination and increasing support for people with disabilities who qualify for overseas postings.

While the budget seeks $83 million for implementing the “equity”-related executive orders, the budget proposal mentions the promotion of DEI principles in other sections that pertain to State Department offices focused on work unrelated to DEI.

 The budget request sets aside $222.5 million for professional and cultural exchanges — an unspecified portion of which would go toward bringing a new DEI emphasis to cultural diplomacy intended to counter foreign adversaries.

“The Request will also support the Citizen Exchanges Program in presenting positive alternatives to Chinese and Russian narratives and influence by advancing values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility as well as democracy, human rights, civic participation, and transparency with a focus on issues related to youth and young professionals, women, and traditionally underrepresented populations in international exchange programs,” the document’s section on funding for exchange programs states. Though last year’s budget justification discussed countering Chinese and Russian narratives, today’s request marks the first time that a DEI focus has explicitly been added to that effort.

The administration’s request for State Department funding also sets the total budget for its bureau of democracy, human rights, and labor at $180.7 million and describes DEI factors within the bureau’s human-rights promotion work “as core elements of good governance” and a “priority of the Biden-Harris Administration’s foreign policy,” while listing additional priorities like democracy promotion.

An additional $3 million allocation would support the creation of an “Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access” at the U.S. Agency for International Development. That office would oversee implementation of USAID’s DEIA Strategic Plan and Equity Action Plan.

With Republicans in control of the House, the Biden administration’s budget request will almost certainly not be enacted in the form it was proposed today. Early indications suggest that there might be pushback from congressional Republicans on grounds that it promotes left-wing ideologies, in addition to other objections. In a statement about the international-affairs budget today, Senator Jim Risch (Idaho), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized it as “just convenient branding for climate and ‘green energy’ programs that have nothing to do with prevailing in our competition with China.”

In comments to National Review, Representative Jim Banks (Ind.), chairman of the new congressional “anti-woke caucus,” criticized the DEI-focused portions of the budget as liable to fuel the propaganda narratives of foreign dictatorships.

“Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping’s dream is for foreigners to think that the sole alternative to authoritarianism is government-enforced leftism,” Banks said, adding that “the Biden administration’s budget is doing public relations for dictators around the world.” Banks touted a budget proposal he led at the Republican Study Committee last year that would ban the use of State Department funds to “promote Critical Race Theory and other anti-American ideas.”

Meanwhile, the congressional aide scoffed at the State Department’s declared intent to use equity-focused principles in cultural exchanges to counter foreign adversaries: “DEI as the United States government’s means of competing against — and offering better alternatives to — China and Russia? Absurd.”