Government Shutdown Coming Right Up

Steve Benan of Washington Monthly claims there is a 70% chance of a government shutdown. I agree with him. Even Nancy Pelosi agrees. It's not coming because of some ideological stance by the GOP but from sheer incompetence. The House budget process, which has now zoomed to over 500 amendments,physically means the House will miss the early March deadline. There is not even enough time to reconcile the House and Senate since the two exist on different planets. I'm not even sure the House, even though it's been running to 4am, will have enough time to work through their own budget, let alone discuss a Senate version.

There are scads of things to write about in the House GOP budget. They intend to gut all government agencies that make the basic rules for the economy and even the IRS, which has to collect the limited tax dollars needed to keep the sinking ship afloat. Virtually every cut to a program offered by the GOP eliminates jobs. An early estimate of the GOP budget is that it will cost 1 million jobs.

Last night they cut all funding for the new Consumer Protection Agency. The budget goes far beyond just gutting anything that Barack Obama proposed over the last two years. It is a declaration of war on basically all government programs, with the exception of the military,which have been developed since the last Depression. A list of the cuts is mind-boogling. The fascinating point of the exercise is that the overall GOP House budget does not cut the annual deficit or the national debt. Top that off and it kills jobs and doesn't create any.

But the kicker for me was the orchestrated attack on Planned Parenthood, which received $363 million last year from the federal government. Rep. Mike Pence claimed that the elimination of federal funding for Planned Parenthood was a "victory for life". Planned Parenthood called the act "extreme and dangerous."

Mr. Anti-abortion Chris Smith from New Jersey described a abortion procedure during the second trimester in the graphic detail we haven't heard since Jesse Helms would describe pornographic acts on the Senate floor. Smith let a little cat out of the bag. He said Planned Parenthood performed 300,000 abortions per year. He claimed that was one-fifth of the abortions performed every year. So we have gone from 50 million per year to 1.5 million, closer to a statistical reality. But color me dubious still because we know from Planned Parenthood's own ads that they perform 300,000 screenings for breast cancer per year. So it's odd that the number is identical to Smith's assertions about abortions. But at least we can dispel the 50 million, Mao-purge like figures.

Men should really stop pontificating about women's health issues. Jackie Speier (D-California) immediately responded to Chris Smith and talked about having the very same procedure Smith described because of necessity and talked about losing the child. The American Taliban can't silence American women like they would want to.

Since the House Republicans want to defund Richard Nixon's creation the Environmental Protection Agency,why should we be surprised that they defunded another one of his creations--Title X Programs? Title X was created in 1970 to provide comprehensive family planning services, including all preventable health services for women. This is the program that provides Planned Parenthood with its funding. By eliminating the program,you essentially close down 4,500 community-based clinics. These clinics provide breast and cervical cancer screenings, HIV preventative education, pregnancy diagnosis and counseling. Of course, this program primarily supports lower income families. Over 1.2 million youth and adults participated in these programs last year.

Now if you are truly interested in lowering the number of abortions in America, wouldn't you support family planning programs and contraception? We know from Bristol Palin that abstinence programs don't work.

Nancy Pelosi said that the whole night's debate--several hours on Planned Parenthood--was surreal but that it posed serious risks to women's health. She called out Republicans on their clear position against family planning and urged them to go openly on the record against the idea. Jackie Speier wondered aloud what the whole Planned Parenthood debate had to do with creating jobs.

You could go batty just writing about Republican lunacy at both the federal and state level. A Republican legislator in Montana has entered a bill to declare global warming "natural" and "beneficial". After two years of marriage equality in New Hampshire,Republicans want to repeal the same sex marriage law because "it might encourage the development of sharia law."

I leave it to a leftwing blogger who parodied these efforts by writing a brief post that "Arizona has outlawed Karma."