The hotly-contested Michigan budget, as it stands, appears to eliminate Implicit Bias Training (IBT).
IBT, you may recall, is one way Michigan imposes diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In doing so, Lansing insults Michigan’s healthcare workforce ethics, and indoctrinates them with a Marxist, anti-Christian worldview.
It does all this through Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) licensing requirements.
LARA and Implicit Bias Training
Licensing gives the state unique powers over health professions. LARA laws and regulations decide who may work in Michigan, and how they must work. Through LARA, the state extracts the license fees professionals must pay to practice, and disciplines the non-compliant.
Of all LARA’s licensing requirements, continuing IBT “education” is the most hated. It especially grates upon clinicians who hold themselves to a higher standard, believing they must treat everyone as equals created in the image of God.
To cap it off, Implicit Bias Training never goes away. LARA requires an hour of training per year from every healthcare professional who renews a license, ad infinitum.
IBT traces back to Gov. Whitmer’s 2020 Executive Order delegating it to LARA. Our legislators have placidly been funding IBT enforcement ever since.
Until now.
New LARA budget bans DEI
LARA’s 1550 staff operate on an annual budget of $579.3 million.
The constitutional key to maintaining our freedoms is that LARA, and the rest of the executive branch, depends entirely upon the legislature to approve that budget.
Budgets have “boilerplate,” the standardized language that commands or prohibits spending activity.
Michigan’s House-passed boilerplate targets the Whitmer administration’s DEI practices by name. This screen shot shows bill text from LARA’s section of the budget.
The identical DEI ban repeats 14 times, once for each major department in the House-passed budget bill.
Will the ban become law?
Michigan’s first-ever continuing resolution is funding government. Budget talks are in overtime.
Representing the House are bill sponsor Ann Bollin, Matt “Mad Dog” Maddock, and Abbas Farhat. On the Senate side are Sarah Anthony, Sean McCann, and Jon Bumstead.
It’s a question of who blinks first: the Republican-controlled House, or the Democrat-controlled Senate, backed by the Whitmer Administration. They have all committed to finalizing the budget within a week. You can follow progress here.
Obviously, budgets are not just about the money. They greatly impact policy – the way we do healthcare.
Although the federal shutdown dominates headlines, reporting generally fails to reveal its close ties to Michigan’s budget and the ACA/Obamacare. We’ve lined up important information for you to know at the Forum.
