Speaker Mike Johnson Would Like to Slash Funding for Planned Parenthood, PBS

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he would “like to” axe funding to abortion giant Planned Parenthood and PBS when President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House.

In an appearance on Fox News’s The Story with Martha MacCallum on Wednesday, Johnson said defunding Planned Parenthood and PBS is contingent on whether Congress can “build consensus to have the votes to do that.”

“Now, some of this will be done by executive order out of the White House. He has a broad authority to do a lot of that. But where Congress is involved, that’s where it takes the hard work of legislating and getting everybody on the same page,” Johnson said. “So there’ll be lots of ideas that come out. We don’t want to put too many of it out right now, okay, but this is part of that preparing the playbook to unleash and unroll in January.”

Johnson also touted the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will be led by Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk and will focus on eliminating wasteful government spending.

“Here we have, what I think, Martha, is a generational opportunity to make real transformational change to the administrative state, the deep state. We want to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state. And I think what Elon and Vivek have in mind can help us in that regard,” Johnson said.

Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that they plan to cut funding for “progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.” 

“…DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood,” they wrote.

Planned Parenthood’s 2023 annual report reveals that taxpayer funding in the form of government grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements hit $699.3 million and made up 34 percent of Planned Parenthood’s overall revenue.

Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding has increased by 43 percent since 2010, according to an analysis by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute. The institute noted that Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding is reported by its affiliates, whose information lags behind the national office and covers fiscal years ending in 2022. 

Planned Parenthood also reported $997.5 million from private contributions, up 44 percent from the previous report. In total, the abortion giant reported nearly $2.1 billion in income and more than $2.5 billion in net assets. 

The same report shows that Planned Parenthood peformed 392,716 abortions in 2021-2022, a five-percent increase from the previous year and a 20-percent increase over its past ten reports, according to the institute. Total services were down 17 percent.

“In 2021-22, abortions made up 97.1 percent of Planned Parenthood’s pregnancy resolution services, while prenatal services, miscarriage care, and adoption referrals accounted for only 1.6 percent (6,316), 0.9 percent (3,604), and 0.4 percent (1,721), respectively,” according to the institute’s analysis.

At the same time, American Life League’s STOPP International 2023 Report on Planned Parenthood CEO Compensation shows, using the latest available data, that the total compensation paid to all Planned Parenthood affiliate CEOs increased from $13.3 million in 2015 to $16.8 million in 2020 — a 26.3-percent increase.

The average compensation for a Planned Parenthood CEO rose from $237,999 in 2015 to $317,564 in 2020 — a 33.4-percent increase in five years, according to the report.

Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.