When the family planning funds were deleted from the Stimulus bill ....it was done late last Tuesday night and gone by Wednesday morning, it was apparent to us hard nosed, but clear eyed Democratic partisans that doing so was the beginning of a slipperry slope leading to Republican empowerment.
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Loony seeming Republicans, like Boehner, attack contraception!! Not abortion but birth control!! Chris Matthews makes nutty upside down analogies that making contraception available for poor women through Medicaid is just the same as forcing women in China to have abortions. Really?? Not really. Nevertheless Democrats panic. Our new president asks Chairman Henry Waxman to cut birth control funding. This is preventive medicine just like drugs for heart disease are preventive medicine... Preventive medicine saves lives and money (is that stimulus???), but then so do bridges that don't fall down.
While the Republicans were successful at removing the family planning money from the stimulus, this of course has not satisfied their hunger...It has only emboldened them...and it will continue as they will go now go after all other kinds of social spending that has to do with that naughty thing called sex. They will go after spending on anything that doesn't help them or their contributors.
By Lindsay Beyerstein, The Media Consortium MediaWire blogger.
The $825 billion economic stimulus package is finally taking shape as House committees finalize their contributions to the bill. The good news is that healthcare spending will be a major part of the stimulus: $87 billion has been set aside to help states pay for Medicaid alone.
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