Scott Walter’s Oral Testimony to House DOGE Subcommittee

Scott Walter’s Written Testimony to House DOGE Subcommittee
Written Testimony: HTML or PDF (House website)
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Full Subcommittee Hearing (House website)

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Oral Testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform

Subcommittee Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, chair

Hearing on “Public Funds, Private Agendas: NGOs Gone Wild”

Scott Walter
President, Capital Research Center

June 4, 2025

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Chairwoman Greene, Ranking Member Stansbury, distinguished members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the honor of testifying. I’m president of the Capital Research Center, where we study nonprofits every day.

Americans are proud of our nonprofit sector, which has long led the world, because they love real charities that actually help people here and abroad. They don’t think of the nonprofit sector as the plaything of billionaires and politicians.

Yet all too often, that is the reality of our Nongovernmental Organizations, or NGOs. Far too many NGOs are really BGOs—Basically Government Organizations—for two reasons. First, they get most of their money from government, not citizens. Second, they serve the Big Government political agenda that fights to centralize power in Washington for the benefit of the Left’s preferred political party.

From countless egregious examples, consider the Solidarity Center.[1] This nonprofit child of the country’s largest union federation, the AFL-CIO, is chaired by the AFL-CIO’s president. Solidarity Center doesn’t just boost unions, it also champions DEI and “climate justice.”[2] It’s suing the current administration because DOGE recommended its federal gravy train end. It’s received over $86 million from the federal government since 2008. Sixty-one million of that $86 million was given under President Biden, doubtless encouraged by three Solidarity employees who went into his Labor Department.[3] Solidarity receives 99 percent of its total revenue from American taxpayers.[4] It serves the AFL-CIO, which gave 86% of its 2024 political donations to Democrats.[5]

Today’s Democratic witness, Diane Yentel, is another powerful example of nonprofits serving Big Government. One of her typical tweets attacked DOGE and defended the Vera Institute of Justice,[6] which in 2023 received 79 percent of its revenues from government.[7] It’s a hard-left, Soros-backed group whose priorities oppose the views of America’s democratic majority by advocating soft-on-crime policies and defending illegal aliens.[8] Its biggest vendor in its last IRS filing was Blue State Digital,[9] which began life as Barack Obama’s digital campaign team and now serves the entire Left.

Ms. Yentel was hired by Obama at HUD,[10] and President Biden considered her for a cabinet post.[11] Her previous job was leading the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an NGO that advocates for ever-more federal spending by HUD[12] and uses identity politics to justify its agenda.[13]

In her current job leading the National Council of Nonprofits, Ms. Yentel quickly sued the Trump administration over budget cuts.[14] What lawyers did she turn to? The Democracy Forward Foundation, whose board includes President Biden’s notorious chief of staff Ron Klain and is chaired by Marc Elias, the Democratic “super-lawyer.”[15]

Ms. Yentel claims the Republican tax bill would have handed “unchecked power to the Trump admin[istration] to punish nonprofit orgs that don’t fall in line with … its ideology by labeling them as terrorist-supporting groups.”[16] Nonsense. As an honest left-leaning law professor explained in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, “a despot seeking to silence nonprofits would be weakened, not empowered” by the legislation.[17]

No wonder nonprofit expert Bill Schambra warned that Yentel’s partisanship at a major nonprofit membership group “may erode” public support for nonprofits by suggesting “nonprofits are just like the other major institutions of American society, fighting fiercely to maintain the status quo against necessary reforms.”[18]

It’s understandable, though not admirable, that status-quo nonprofit leaders are scared by DOGE examining their government funding. They’ll use an Urban Institute study designed to scare you Members of Congress with statistics like, “Government grants support nonprofits in every … congressional district.”[19] No one explains why it’s wonderful that so many nonprofits are as dependent on government cash as a meth addict is on methamphetamine. The same study stresses how larger nonprofits especially hoover up tax dollars. But while big nonprofits are often less effective at helping people compared to smaller neighborhood groups, they certainly are more powerful at lobbying government in the service of Bigger Government and the Left. They’re also great at suing government.

This politicized pseudo-charity, aimed at bloating government and seizing political power, goes back decades, as when the Obama administration took money from Catholic charities and gave it to Planned Parenthood.[20]

This is a simple, ugly story of tax dollars, cronyism, and political scheming, camouflaged by invoking the moving stories of the real heroes of America’s charitable sector. Please don’t fall for the sob stories.

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Notes

[1] Officially, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity.

[2] See InfluenceWatch, “American Center for International Labor Solidarity (Solidarity Center),” https://www.influencewatch.org/labor-union/american-center-for-international-labor-solidarity-solidarity-center/..

[3] Tyler O’Neil, “Labor Department Confirms Bureaucrat on Leave Amid Woke Conflict of Interest Questions,” Daily Signal, June 2, 2025, https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/06/02/union-activist-group-got-millions-grants-after-former-employee-went-work-grant-making-agency/.

[4] See American Center For International Labor Solidarity, IRS Form 990, 2023, p. 9, https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521984713/202443189349306369/full.

[5] OpenSecrets, “AFLCIO,” https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/afl-cio/recipients?id=d000000088.

[6] National Urban League, X, April 16, 2025, 6:06 PM, https://x.com/dianeyentel/status/1912628724656112011.

[7] See Vera Institute of Justice Inc, IRS Form 990, 2022, p. 9, https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/131941627/202411369349319281/full.

[8] InfluenceWatch, “Vera Institute of Justice (VIJ),” https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/vera-institute-of-justice/.

[9] See Vera Institute of Justice Inc, IRS Form 990, 2022, p. 8, https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/131941627/202411369349319281/full.

[10] Diane Yentel, LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/diane-yentel-8221466/details/experience/.

[11] Eden Stiffman, “An Outspoken CEO Rises to Defend Nonprofit Sector in Turbulent Times,” Chronicle of Philanthropy, April 29, 2025, https://www.philanthropy.com/article/an-outspoken-ceo-rises-to-defend-nonprofit-sector-in-turbulent-times.

[12] National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Federal Budget & Spending,” https://nlihc.org/federal-budget-and-spending.

[13] National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Racial Equity and Fair Housing,” https://nlihc.org/explore-issues/policy-priorities/fair-housing.

[14] Diane Yentel, X, January 28, 2025, 11:57 AM, https://x.com/dianeyentel/status/1884284681115279821.

[15] https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/democracy-forward-foundation/.

[16] Diane Yentel, X, May 12, 2025, 5:52 PM, https://x.com/dianeyentel/status/1922047204300321206.

[17] The professor was discussing the 2024 version of the provisions, as found in H.R. 9495. See Darryl K. Jones, “The ‘Nonprofit Killer Bill’ Seems Scary—but Current Law Is Worse,” Chronicle of Philanthropy, January 23, 2025; https://www.philanthropy.com/article/the-nonprofit-killer-bill-seems-scary-but-current-law-is-worse?sra=true.

[18] Quoted in Eden Stiffman, “An Outspoken CEO Rises to Defend Nonprofit Sector in Turbulent Times,” Chronicle of Philanthropy, April 29, 2025, https://www.philanthropy.com/article/an-outspoken-ceo-rises-to-defend-nonprofit-sector-in-turbulent-times.

[19] Laura Tomasko, “Government Funding Cuts Put Nonprofits at Risk Across the Nation,” Urban Wire, February 21, 2025, https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/government-funding-cuts-put-nonprofits-risk-across-nation.

[20] Jerry Markon, “Health, Abortion Issues Split Obama Administration and Catholic Groups,” Washington Post,  October 31, 2011, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/health-abortion-issues-split-obama-administration-catholic-groups/2011/10/27/gIQAXV5xZM_story.html.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/scott-walters-oral-testimony-to-house-doge-subcommittee/