In what has become a near-daily occurrence since before the November 8 election that chose a new House Republican majority, President Joe Biden’s appointees at the Department of State are hiding information about millions of U.S. tax dollars going to protect atheism in foreign countries.
Meanwhile, here at home, Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress are pushing forward — with help from a bunch of Republicans who apparently just don’t get it — legislation, the purposefully mis-named ‘Religious Freedom Act (RFA), that will inflict profoundly serious injury to the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom of expression and practice in America.
Think about that: Biden’s cronies at Foggy Bottom refuse to tell Congress how much they are spending to protect atheism overseas, even as Biden cronies in Congress are about to weaponize federal law and regulations against religious freedom of expression and practice.
We’re talking about the same Congress that is the first branch of the federal government under the Constitution and the branch from which approval must be received to spend every single penny of appropriated tax dollars.
But the Biden attitude appears to be why respect the First Amendment when you don’t respect the First Branch?
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) explained in an impassioned floor speech on behalf of his proposed amendment to the RFA:
“There are three major problems in the bill on the issue of religious liberty. If these three things are not changed in this bill, it will put religious liberty at great risk for millions of Americans who … have sincerely held religious beliefs.” You can learn the specifics of the three problems Lankford was referencing here.
As for the atheism grants, Rep. Jim Banks, the Indiana Republican who is Chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), issued a statement earlier this week informing the nation that the State Department’s Mariah Mercer, an assistant to Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussein, steadfastly refused during a telephone conference call last week to answer any questions about the atheism grants.
“The Biden State Department has abused US taxpayer dollars to push critical race theory, fly the pride flag at the Vatican, fund atheist networks abroad and fund gender transition surgeries. U.S. taxpayers deserve diplomats who champion their values abroad, but the Biden State Department stands for the far-Left only,” Banks told The Epoch Times.
This refusal flies in the face of the Constitution, which requires all federal spending to originate in the House of Representatives. Ever since the first day of the first Congress under the Constitution — March 9, 1789 — executive branch officials have routinely provided whatever information was sought by Congress about how they were spending tax dollars, subject only to minimal and prudent exceptions.
Now, the Biden administration is giving Republicans in Congress the middle finger by refusing to provide requested documents that every senator and representative has an unquestionable right to receive.
Ironically enough, the most prominent of these refusals may well be that of the Department of Treasury flipping the figurative bird to incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan’s repeated request for copies of 148 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) filed by banks with the government regarding the financial dealings of Biden’s cocaine-snorting, prostitute-chasing son, Hunter.
Such reports are typically filed by bank officials when they suspect a client is using his or her account to launder money illegally, which can also be an effective means of hiding income so it can’t be taxed.
One can only wonder if the suspicious activities bank officials detected in Hunter Biden’s financial dealings involved any of the funds going to the “Big Guy” as his commission for the use of his name in the influence-peddling operation of his son and his brother, Jim Biden.
You need not guess at the identity of said “Big Guy,” since two of Jim and Hunter’s former business associates revealed it in 2020.
“It used to be before the Biden administration, if the committee wanted to see that information, whether it was Democrats on the committee or Republicans on the committee, they could have access to it … until the Biden administration,” Jordan told Epoch TV’s Joshua Phillip.
Jordan also noted that “the Biden administration hasn’t complied with any of the correspondence, any of the letters and requests that came from [expected incoming House Committee on Oversight and Reform Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.)].
“They have changed the policy on SARs for the ability of committees to review that information. So we’ll see if we get access. Maybe we’re going to have to go to the banks to get that information and not through the Treasury Department.”
As it happens, regulations promulgated by Treasury to implement the Bank Secrecy Act give the Secretary of the Treasury discretion to decide whether to provide SARs to Congress. The current occupant, Secretary Janet Yellen, is thus relying on a regulation originally drafted and implemented by one of her most illustrious predecessors, James A. Baker, III.
Baker, formerly President Ronald Reagan’s Chief of Staff and later Secretary of State under President George H.W. Bush, approved the regulation in 1987. This writer asked Baker earlier this week if he intended the rule to enable across-the-board denials of SAR requests from Congress.
“I intended that the rule be used to do what it says. And that is to vest in the Secretary the discretion to determine whether SARS reports should be provided to Congress in any given case,” Baker responded through his highly capable spokesman, John Williams.
That much seems clear. Baker intended no more and no less than to give his successors as Treasury Secretary the discretion to decide when to make an acceptable exception to the long-standing process of routinely providing SARS to Congress. Such exceptions prior to the Biden era typically involved SARs that were critical to ongoing criminal investigations.
Knowing Baker to be the honorable and patriotic man that he is, we can certainly assume he expected his successors to exercise such discretion prudently and in a manner consistent with the Constitution.
In other words, exactly the opposite of what Biden and Yellen are now doing.
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