Obama begs Waxman to yank birth control from the stimulus

My latest from the Washington Independent: Yesterday officials confirmed that Barack Obama had personally appealed to House Energy and Commerce Chair Henry Waxman to remove a controversial portion of the stimulus bill that would have supplied birth control to more low-income women as part of a much larger expansion of Medicaid.

Links to the Windy piece would be much appreciated. The post provides underreported factual background about what the birth control provision would and wouldn't cover and how the program fits into the larger economic stimulus plan.

Comments

[El Cid]

Clearly you are forgetting that Democrats always win by giving in to Republicans. Of course, other, less sophisticated people refer to this as "losing", or "genuflecting", or "capitulating", but the sophisticates know this as "bargaining".

[The Phantom]

Birth control is useful social policy, but to include this as "economic stimulus" is imbecilic.

Everything that is good and useful is not going to also serve to get the economy going.

[Eric Jaffa]

The Phantom -

If low-income people have more cash because their doctor's bill was lowered by this legislation, then that will stimulate the economy.

[The Phantom]

Bullshit

You can use those types of arguments to justify nearly every kind of spending

Nothing has changed in Washington in that all these thieves are trying to jam their pet projects into the "stimulus" package, including the Mafia Museum in Las Vegas.

It creates a very legitimate opposition to something that should be a no brainer

[togolosh]

Helping low income women take better control over their own bodies (and therefore lives) is good regardless of the economic impact. In this case it's a positive economic impact because those women will be better able to participate in the economy if they aren't on maternity leave (which in a lot of minimum wage jobs simply means losing your job).

Having this good measure in a must-pass bill is smart politics. Let the GOP sink it if they can. Force them to own their insane hostility towards anything to do with sex.

[Cass]

Another textbook example of harnessing patriarchal psychology to serve the interests of wealth and power. The firms that have sent us all spiralling in the direction of another Depression get free, no-strings-attached infusions of taxpayer money; the poor get lectures about "morality" and "responsibility" from bought-and-paid-for Congressional parasites.

[parse]

Another textbook example of harnessing patriarchal psychology to serve the interests of wealth and power. The firms that have sent us all spiralling in the direction of another Depression get free, no-strings-attached infusions of taxpayer money; the poor get lectures about "morality" and "responsibility" from bought-and-paid-for Congressional parasites.

According to Lindsay's story, Republicans are up-in-arms over the family planning provision, calling it a wasteful giveaway that will not stimulate the economy. They claim it is an attempt by Democrats to push through their expansion of health care agenda — via an unrelated bill. How does that constitute a lecture on "morality" and "responsibility"?

[Cass]

How does that constitute a lecture on "morality" and "responsibility"?

It doesn't. I'm going on the, I believe, well-founded assumption that Republicans have picked out "family planning" to crank up the Culture Warriors against resources going to inherently less worthy members of society. (An added plus in this case is that the money is the purpose of wicked, consequence-free fornication.) To put it another way: cultural conservatism equals patriarchy, patriarchy equals hierarchy, and hierarchy means your superiors (wealth and power) can do no wrong while your inferiors (poor and probably minority women, in this case) can do no right.

[TB]

Pretty much sums it up:

"Of course Republicans will oppose this [the stimulus bill]. Anyone who doesn't have their head stuck up David Broder's ass knows that there is no margin for Republicans in supporting the stimulus package. It will bust the budget beyond the busted-up bloody pulp it already is, it will include all sorts of stupid funding decisions that will provide fantastic attack ad fodder, and it might not even work. And as I wrote earlier, if it succeeds, Republicans won't even get the credit (which will go to Obama and his Congressional allies).

It would be stupid for Republicans to try and obstruct the bill, but there's no political reason for them to support it."

[Alon Levy]

Cass, virtually all Republicans opposed releasing the second round of TARP money, too. Among the Democrats, the Blue Dogs were least likely to support releasing the money, and the Progressive Caucus members were the most likely. Even on the first bailout vote, more liberal members of the House were more likely to vote for the bailout, all other things being equal (link).

Togolosh, one of the points made by Republicans and conservative Democrats against the bill is that it contains a lot of provisions that have little stimulus value. Saying that birth control is good in general confirms their concerns rather than addresses them.

[Cass]

Cass, virtually all Republicans opposed releasing the second round of TARP money, too. Among the Democrats, the Blue Dogs were least likely to support releasing the money, and the Progressive Caucus members were the most likely. Even on the first bailout vote, more liberal members of the House were more likely to vote for the bailout, all other things being equal.

The first bill was of course subject to lots of populist posturing by Republicans who promised Pelosi they'd vote for it, right up until the last moment. And as TB said, they have even less reason to vote for it now. Why not saddle it on the Democrats, especially when you know the loot's going to be distributed regardless?

American conservatism is based on the mythology of the free market, and that myth can't withstand too much open hypocrisy if its going to continue to attract the votes of the non-privelaged. (In a similar way, perhaps, you can always find lots of peasants to support the Czar if they can only be allowed to idealize him.) I just don't believe that ideology is, at the end of the day, much more than a rationalization. Forget about the Republican opposition to oversight or public control that's allowed so much money, for instance, to flow unimpeded into executive pockets. Just look at the disproportionate amount of rage directed at any paltry program that potentially benefits the inferior classes (women, Negroes, workers that happen to belong to a union) versus the hundreds of billions flowing directly into AIG or Bank of America. There are still, of course, reactionaries everywhere trying to convince us (as they always try and convince us) our current nightmare is wholly the fault of greedy minorities cashing in on liberal programs. Anything will do to take the blame off of Daddy, and fix it somewhere on the lower end of society's ladder.

[Cass]

And here we are: supporting slutty women...

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/republicans_exploit_economic_stimulus_bill_to_increase_the_abortion_rate/

... and radical Negroes...

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/oh_no_people_might_have_birth_control_and_houses/

...with YOUR TAX DOLLARS!!!

[The Phantom]

uh....

or maybe there are better ways to get the economy moving

[Alon Levy]

Cass, the analysis of Nate Silver that I linked to shows that party identification is a weaker predictor of TARP vote than ideology, and that members of Congress who have more reason to be populist voted no rather than yes. In the most recent bill, the Republicans almost uniformly voted no, but the Democrats' votes broke down neatly based on their ideology. You can use a partisan argument to explain away the Republican vote, but not the Blue Dog and Progressive Caucus vote.

You also overstate the "rage directed at any paltry program that potentially benefits the inferior classes." The main Republican rage is directed against the increase in government spending. In a list of talking points leaked to the Weekly Standard, the main argument is the high cost of the program relative to the number of jobs created; Head Start, clean water, and child care grants are some of the programs the talking points list as having high value and comprising of too little a portion of the stimulus.

Finally, current research in political science and sociology doesn't bear you out on your claim that ideology is rationalization. It turns out that ideology, as expressed in surveys about political or economic priorities, predicts behavior better than race, class, income, or other demographic factors. For example, people with individualist views are likelier than average to think that market collapses are a huge risk but environmental breakdowns aren't, as are high-income white men. However, with individualists the relationship is far stronger: knowing only that someone scored "individualist" on a cultural attitude survey will allow you to make the above prediction about risk with greater certainty than knowing only that one is a high-income white male. Silver's analysis, showing the importance of ideology about the vote, is a good piece of evidence for this consensus, though far from the only one.

[Anacher Forester]

Weak. Weak. Weak.

Color me deeply disappointed.

-AF

Andrew Sullivan Is A Fraud

[TB]

It doesn’t belong in a ’stimulus’ bill.

Sure it do. See, state governments are not allowed to run fiscal deficits. Ergo, whenever a recession hits, most states are forced to raise taxes or make significant budget cuts. This has the effect of further hurting the states’ economies, since government spending counts as part of GDP. So one of the best things any federal stimulus bill can do is to give extra funding to states until revenues start rising again.

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/16659.html

[The Phantom]

Lets spend it on any old thing

I suggest that we spend some of this money to offer a 50% subsidy on bar and food tabs at New York's dive bars - Raccoon Lodge, Jeremy's Ale House and Rudy's Bar and Grill in Manhattan, and Rosemary's Tavern and Three Jolly Pigeons in Brooklyn.

This will help increase production of Budweiser and potato chips, and will help unemployed people network in a happy state hopefully leading to many new jobs.

[Berto]

Colbert nailed it yet again.
Let the GOP Reps say "No" to every last penny from the Stimulus Plan coming in and tainting their districts. Or as he said "putting no money where there mouths are".

[NoBuddy]

The point of the stimulus legislation is to help the economy. If the birth control provisions cost less than the consequences of not spending for birth control, such as Medicaid or other welfare benefits, then the money should be spent. We need an end to a lot of this ideology based policy, and more emphasis on policy based on the data.