Recent actions by Republicans are giving me a serious case of outrage. When the House voted to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood, that was just plain idiotic. As Ruth Marcus says:
House Republicans voted to increase the number of abortions, raise federal health-care costs and swell the welfare rolls.
That wasn't their intent, of course, and certainly not their stated policy. But it is the predictable and inevitable impact of their twin moves to eliminate funding for the federal family planning program and strip Planned Parenthood of all federal money.
If anything, this assessment is understated. The sharper, and still accurate version, would be that Republicans voted to let more women die from breast cancer, cervical cancer and AIDS. How's that? The family planning programs also provide cancer screening and HIV counseling to millions of low-income and uninsured people.
Let's be clear about one thing. Almost none of this money went for abortions. The only federal funding for abortion involves the thankfully low number of situations in which poor women seek abortions for pregnancy due to rape or incest, or when their own lives are in jeopardy. In 2006, the last year for which figures are available, the federal government paid for 191 such abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
So even though defunding Planned Parenthood supposedly is about deficit reduction, actually the motivation of Republicans is purely political. They're playing to their far-right base, which views abortion as against God's will -- even though it is constitutional and legal according to the laws of our secular land.
Aside from the few lawful exceptions noted above, Planned Parenthood doesn't use any federal money to pay for abortions. Yet Republicans want to punish women by denying the organization any financial support at all, even for family planning (which reduces abortions) and cancer screening (which saves lives).
Crazy.
Logically, next House Republicans will vote to deny all Medicare and Medicaid funding for any hospital or other medical care provider which performs abortions, even though paid for privately. This is just what they're trying to do to Planned Parenthood: punish the supposed "sin" of abortion by stripping the sinner of all federal support.
Then there's the equally irritating actions of Republican Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin.
Like most people, I rarely pay much attention to unions, since their influence and membership has dropped a lot over the past few decades. But Walker has woken me up to the danger of further pushing American workers into semi-slave labor status.
Just as with his House Republican brethren, Walker talks as if his sole concern is saving money. We're supposed to believe that this is why he wants to decimate unions' collective bargaining rights and ability to organize. Clearly, though, he's really out to destroy unions.
Today David Sarasohn, a columnist for the Portland Oregonian, had a great column on this subject.
Despite the repeated claims of Gov. Scott Walker, this isn't a fight over saving money to deal with the state's financial crisis, a change likely to happen in every state. The public employee unions have largely accepted the governor's financial terms, and the total comes to just $165 million in a two-year Wisconsin shortfall of $3.6 billion.
The crucial elements here are the demands that unions lose collective bargaining power on all issues except wages, and that the state stop withholding union dues and require repeated elections to keep public employee unions certified. The goal is, in the near future, to remove the unions as a political force.
(The exceptions here are police, firefighters and the state troopers, all of whom supported Walker in the last election. They can remain political players.)
The goal here isn't to try to protect services by reducing costs; it's to keep public employees out of the way of cutting services.
Hmmmm. Methinks I see a pattern here.Republicans saying one thing and doing another. Claiming they're into preserving the public's pocketbook while working to destroy organizations that people support.
That's a risky strategy.
I'm confident it's going to backfire on the "R's" come election day in November 2012. Voters wanted jobs, jobs, jobs when they cast ballots in 2010. But so far, Republicans are solely focused on making their political wet dreams into reality.
Ooh, no more Planned Parenthood. Ah, unions crippled as a source of Democratic Party support.
Only problem is, a Gallup poll found that 61% of Americans oppose weakening the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions. And 66% of women support Planned Parenthood as a provider of birth control pills and other forms of contraception.
So by overreaching, Republicans are going to find that they've overstepped the bounds of what voters called for in the midterm elections -- which was much more about getting politicians to work together on solving our country's problems than eliminating federal funding for important health programs and destroying unions.
I also want to say, thank you, Republicans, for firing up the Democratic base.
Progressives were demoralized after the mid-terms. Now they're marching by the tens of thousands in Wisconsin and working like crazy to make sure that the Senate doesn't go along with the House budget package.
If Republicans had played their cards right, they could have cemented the support of moderates and independents. However, by pandering to the wacko wing of their party, they've vastly increased the chance of seeing their electoral gains vastly diminished or even reversed completely in 2012.
You nailed it for what Republicans are. The only question I have is who are Americans...
Posted by: Rain | February 23, 2011 at 05:32 PM
@Rain, to paraphrase the movie Gladiator: "America is the Mob. Conjure magic for them and they'll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they'll roar."
These people in control of The House are out of control.
Posted by: Jeff | February 24, 2011 at 07:57 AM
"I'm confident it's going to backfire on the "R's" come election day in November 2012." Keeping hope alive. My son has been saying the same thing, the more the GOP panders to the wacko bat-shit crazy wingnuts, the better position the Democrats will be in come 2012. I hope you are both right.
Posted by: Laurie Dougherty | February 24, 2011 at 08:02 AM
The USA is broke. There is no money beyond what goes to pay debt and we don't even produce that much except by fiat. If you don't know what fiat currency is, you will disagree with most of my comment.
Time to cut back to basic, essential functions of government, and even they will have to be stripped down to bare bones. Even then we may be doomed. It's probably too late.
Too bad. Everyone will have to pay the price for the profligacy of the past.
The gravy train is over.
There is nothing in the Constitution that mandates Planned Parenthood even if it is a good thing.
It can be funded by tax deductible doantions if it is so great and people want to support it.
Not all conservatives are bat shit crazy religious zealots that believe in this imagined character called God and have this concept called "sin". Nice guy this God who creates people with inherrent weakness and then punishes them for being sinful. That God is the one who is bat shit crazy. Thank God that God doesn't exist except in the minds of the naive and infantile.
But don't you think it is rather cruel to kill a baby in the third trimester? The thing is ALIVE!!! It is a human being with nerves and a brain that feels pain when it is aborted. I don't want to support an organization that supports that. Let them get their own money.
America is broke. People need to understand that. There is no money except what the Chinese loan us (and will never get back) or the printing press at the Fed. That stuff is funny money. Not real money.
Get real and realize the US is no different than a family who has maxed out their credit cards, a mortgage they can't pay and no job.
And people want entitlements?
OK. Wave the magic wand.
Posted by: Millie | February 24, 2011 at 12:23 PM
Millie, there's also no requirement in the constitution that the government pay for subsidies to big oil companies or giant agricultural corporations, like it does now. Or fund the modernization of Afghanistan when our own infrastructure is crumbling.
I agree that government needs to cut back. But there are many better places to start than Planned Parenthood.
Posted by: Blogger Brian | February 24, 2011 at 01:31 PM
I certainly agree with Blogger Brian's comment at 1:31 PM.
Holy shit! Common ground! Amen!
Posted by: Millie | February 24, 2011 at 04:50 PM
Join the backlash....
An impressive coalition of progressive organizations is holding rallies at every state capitol tomorrow Saturday February 26 to support public sector workers in Wisconsin and to fight back against the Republican assault on living standards for low and moderate income people.
Find out more at MoveOn.org. Click the button on the left for Attend a Rally and then enter your zip code. Sign up or just go.
Home page
http://front.moveon.org/
Rally page (Scroll to bottom to see sponsors)
http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/index.html?action_id=238
As of now, 700 people have signed up here in Boston; about 450 in Salem.
The US is broke because the Republicans broke it. It's time for a government that "promotes the general welfare" not just a the welfare of the rich.
Posted by: Laurie Dougherty | February 25, 2011 at 10:40 AM
the republicans did it. the republicans did it.
the democrats did it. the democrats did it.
republicans-bad, mean
democrats-good, kind
republicans-good
democrats-bad
me tarzan, you jane.
mindless drivel. braying of a jackass.
Posted by: Millie | February 25, 2011 at 05:40 PM
The US is not broke - yet. The US will be broke when the rest of the world unanimously declares that the government of the US no longer has any credibility.
The US will not, under any circumstances, allow the rest of the world to make that determination. All measurement of wealth and value, anywhere on the planet, is made against a standard put in place by the US.
If the indebtedness which the US government ALLOWS itself to accrue results in shortages of the commodities needed to sustain our existence, we will simply TAKE what is being withheld.
The US government is the living, breathing, embodied epitome of egotistical selfishness.
It is called "survival of the fittest". It is a natural, organic compulsion of complex organisms to "organize" (sic!) into groups in order to facilitate survival.
The USA is the big dog, the king of the hill. And here we will stay until another group of organisms comes along with a better idea.
Posted by: Willie R | February 27, 2011 at 07:21 AM