Want to Save Real Money in D.C.?

The Republican Study Committee recently announced a plan to prune $2.5 trillion from the long-standing federal spending spree. Yes, $2.5 trillion is a lot of pocket change, but the RSC plan doesn’t go far enough in ridding the federal government of the feminist strongholds salted throughout the bureaucracy.

Let’s be clear: These feminist programs are not about promoting equal opportunity. Au contraire, mon frere. These “female-empowerment” initiatives are all about sex-based quotas, preferences, and earmarks that in practice serve to disadvantage men in schools, in the workplace, and in the legal system.

To its credit, the RSC proposes to axe these feminist social-engineering programs:

1. U.S. Agency for International Development, including its innocent-sounding Women in Development program — $1.4 billion
2. Legal Services Corporation, which helps low-income women get quickie divorces so fathers can’t see their kids — $420 million
3. Title X Family Planning — $318 million
4. Women’s Educational Equity Act of 2001 — $3 million

The Republican Study Committee also plans to end bans on competitive sourcing of government services. This means no more “woman-owned” set-asides which everyone knows are a joke.

But the RSC should not pass up the opportunity to eliminate altogether the cacophony of feminist-inspired programs that clutter the federal bureaucracy. Given the fact that men are lagging in practically every department these days, it makes little sense to squander taxpayer money to hinder men even further.

First to go will be the Women’s Bureau at the Department of Labor. Women now compose half the U.S. workforce and I doubt the National Association of Women in Construction will rue the Bureau’s absence. So let’s do a victory-lap for gender equality and get on with it!

Second is a phase-out of the “Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering” program of the National Science Foundation. This program supports efforts like Gender Bias Bingo ($300,000) and the Gender Equity Project at Hunter College ($3.9 million). (Women I know are embarrassed by the overt pandering, but are reluctant to take on the feminist cranks.)

At the Department of Ed, the Title IX apparatchiks will need to find a new job. Americans have no need for government-mandated quotas of college sports teams.

Over at the State Department, the Office of Global Women’s Issues has done enough gender-bending to last a lifetime. How would Americans like it if some foreign power tried to foist a neo-Marxist initiative on our unsuspecting citizens?

Health care is another example of the Alice-in-Wonderland logic that pervades the government’s approach to gender issues. Women have better access to health services, enjoy the benefits of twice as many sex-specific research studies, and live five years longer than men.

Males do not have any offices of men’s health in the Department of Health and Human Services. But females have five offices of women’s health strategically located at the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the Health Resources and Services Administration, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health.

So if women wish to be paragons of gender equality, I’m certain taxpayers will applaud this $4 billion savings.

The Republican Study Committee needs to take a close, hard look at these programs, as well:

1. Office of Child Support Enforcement (no proof of the program’s effectiveness, except for putting destitute dads behind bars) — $4 billion

2. Violence Against Women Act (no evidence this Clinton-era hold-over has done anything other than break up families) — $1 billion

3. Perkins Vocational Education Act, which trains women to become car mechanics, welders, and lumberjacks (yes, really!) — $100 million

4. TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) Family Violence Option (bon-bons for aspiring Welfare Queens) — $63 million

Then we need to rid ourselves of the various and sundry women’s advisory committees such as the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS). (Not to be confused with the now-defunct gender advisory commission aptly named LACK-O-WITS.)

And let’s not forget the hulking monstrosity that lurks on the East River, sometimes referred to as the United Nations. Referring to it as a “beast,” House Foreign Affairs chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen recently proposed eliminating funding from the UN Human Rights Council.

And why not make it a clean sweep? Take out the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, the Women’s Development Fund (UNIFEM), and other UN gender-agenda programs, too.

And for the squeamish and chivalrous in our midst, keep this fact in mind: There is no such thing as a sensible feminist. Just when you think you’ve come up with a happy meeting of the minds, she’ll come forth with yet another tale of downtrodden women.

And no doubt you’ll end up feeling like a quisling of the impious patriarchy.