Random Excerpts

Roger Severino is Vice President of Domestic Policy at The Heritage Foundation. As director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 2017 to 2021, he led a team of more than 250 staff enforcing civil rights, conscience, and health information privacy laws. Roger subsequently founded the HHS Accountability Project at the Ethics & Public Policy Center. He holds a JD from Harvard Law School, an MA in public policy from Carnegie Mellon University, and a BA from the University of Southern California.

Yet years of foreign aid have failed to bring peace, prosperity, and stability to the hemisphere. Poverty, joblessness, and social unrest have led to leftist electoral victories from Mexico to Chile. These regimes are hostile to American interests and private enterprise, breed corruption, implement radical policies that will further impoverish their people and threaten their democracies, and are more open to striking partnerships with Communist China. Left-wing authoritarian kleptocracies in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela deny their people basic freedoms, violently and ruthlessly suppress any dissent, repress communities of faith, and generate such misery that hundreds of thousands of their citizens have attempted to cross our southern border over the past two years. No recent Administration has made any progress in reducing the chaos and desperation in Haiti.

Information Harvesting. Every year, more than 300,000 Communist Chinese nationals attend U.S. universities or are hired at U.S. national laboratories, innovation centers, incubators, and think tanks. To put this in perspective, according to the Chinese Ministry of Education, only 20,000 American nationals were studying abroad at Chinese universities on the mainland in 2018.”° These Chinese nationals—often members (or the sons and daughters of members) of the Chinese Communist Party—now account for approximately one-third of foreign university and college students in the United States and about 25 percent of graduate students specializing in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM).”° As a Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) report has warned:

Treasury must also seriously evaluate U.S. foreign direct investment in China. Particular focus should be paid to investments in CCP or other state-owned enterprises, investments that result in technology transfers from the U.S. to China, investments that enhance China’s military capacity, and investments that pose risks to critical U.S. supply chains by sourcing critical components or feedstocks in China. An enhanced reporting system is warranted, and greater legal authority and restrictions are appropriate.

Budget Review. Develop a tiered-down approach to cut costs, reduce the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions, and eliminate duplicative programs. EPA should not conduct any ongoing or planned activity for which there is not clear and current congressional authorization, and it should communicate this shift in the President’s first budget request.

At the end of the Obama Administration, the VA was held in low esteem both by the veterans it served and by the employees who served these former warriors. Eroding morale caused by the downstream effects of a health care access crisis in 2014 led to the resignation of Secretary Eric Shinseki and extensive oversight investigations by Congress from 2015-2016.

Making Family- Sustaining Work Accessible. Our national work ethic is an American hallmark. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “America is the land of labor.” Much of American life is mediated by Americans coming together to take responsibility for solving problems and helping their communities. Our labor agenda must allow community institutions, including small businesses, schools and universities, religious organizations, and worker organizations, to thrive.

Eliminate or Reform Marketing Orders and Checkoff Programs. Marketing orders and checkoff programs for agricultural commodities are similar in many ways. They both allow private actors within an industry to collaborate with the federal government to compel other competitors within an industry to fund the respective marketing order or checkoff program. There are currently 22 checkoff

DOT is particularly difficult to manage because its 11 major components—nine modal administrations, the Office of the Secretary, and the Office of the Inspector General—all have their own sets of personnel including administrators, deputy administrators, chiefs of staff, and general counsels. Most grants flow through the modes, such as the Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration, and Federal Aviation Administration.

Climate Change. Upon taking office, President Biden issued executive orders to “put the climate crisis at the center of U.S. foreign policy and national security” and mitigate “the devastating inequalities that intersect with gender, race, ethnicity, and economic security.”° USAID subsequently declared itself “a climate agency” and redirected its private-sector engagement strategy—teaming with America’s corporate sector to wean countries off foreign aid through private investment and trade—to support the Administration’s global policy to “transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.”