Star Parker: How a Black Movement About Freedom Became a Movement About Welfare

The 36 million who watched President Donald Trump’s address to Congress also watched as Congressional Black Caucus member, Rep. Al Green, shook his cane and shouted at the president.

When he refused to desist, Speaker Mike Johnson ordered him removed from the chamber.

Two days later, in a bipartisan vote, the House censured Green.

The Congressional Black Caucus stood in firm support of Green’s actions and, in their own move to disrupt, CBC members sang “We Shall Overcome,” an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, as Johnson read the censure on the House floor. When they refused to stop disrupting, the Speaker gaveled the session to recess.

CBC Chairperson Rep. Yvette Clarke, noting Black Caucus support for Green, then went into the usual refrain about refusing to accept spending cuts in “programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security while giving tax cuts to billionaires like Elon Musk.”

But there have been no discussions about cuts in Medicare and Social Security, nor are there tax cuts targeted to billionaires.

Regarding Medicaid, this is the usual Democrat distortion, calling reducing proposed increases in spending a cut.

What Republicans propose is an increase in Medicaid spending over the next 10 years of $1.5 trillion rather than the programmed $2.4 trillion. A reduction in an increase in spending is not a cut, Madam CBC chair.

Per The Wall Street Journal, Medicaid expenditures have increased 207% since 2008 and 51% since 2019. As a share of federal spending, Medicaid has increased from 7% of total federal spending in 2007 to 10% in 2023.

Most offensive is these increases result from scamming the Medicaid program by states, who use the funds beyond what Medicaid was meant to do. Medicaid was supposed to be about health care support for “poor children, pregnant women, the elderly and disabled.”

But it has gone way beyond that. Medicaid funding is used for housing vouchers, food stamps and sundry other non-health care programs.

This happens because federal health care funding matches state funding by one to three dollars per state dollar. So, the more states spend, they get multiples in subsidies from the federal government.

The bottom line is Medicaid is a broken, poorly structured program where federal spending has exploded.

The Civil Rights Movement was about freedom and justice. It was about combatting discrimination in which Black Americans were denied the same inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as other Americans.

Longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer reportedly observed, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

The Civil Rights Movement culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which set law to address the institutionalized discrimination that existed.

But after the crowning achievement of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the movement was captured by the left and was transformed from being about personal freedom and justice into a movement about endlessly growing government and growing government dependency.

“We Shall Overcome” is now about the struggle against those who want to reduce the dangerous and massive expansion of government.

In 1965, the year after the Civil Rights Act was passed, federal spending stood at 15.9% of GDP. By 2024, it reached 23.1%.

In 1965, federal debt held by the public stood at 35.1% of GDP. By 2024 it way up to 97.1%.

Per the Congressional Budget Office, we’ve arrived in 2025 where the percent of federal spending consumed by interest on our debt is about as large as our defense spending.

The Congressional Black Caucus hurts our country and Black citizens alike by transforming the ideal of freedom to the ideal of big government.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has helped all Americans of all colors by refusing to be intimidated by those militantly carrying the banner of the welfare state.

Star Parker is the founder and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and author of “Necessary Noise: How Donald Trump Inflames the Culture War and Why This is Good News for America.” She hosts a weekly show called “CURE America with Star Parker.”

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