Shell Game

A show of hands. Who thought that the Republican victory in November was all about reducing profligate spending and restoring fiscal sanity to our great nation? How many of my friends on the right told me that they were not concerned about the tea party's hidden conservative and religious agenda? It was all about the economy, right?

Don't feel bad, you weren't alone in being scammed. I smelled the con early and screamed my head off but who the hell listens to me anyway? Watched enough three card monte on the street to know that the marble is never in the cup.

Last night the eleventh hour budget deal was announced, a stop gap measure to keep the American engine running for another week. What were some of the main sticking points, you may ask? Defunding Planned Parenthood and if some accounts are correct, gutting the EPA. Now most of you probably know that Planned Parenthood is already prohibited by the Hyde Amendment from spending federal tax monies on abortion. This is apparently not enough for the Republican Party. They tried to prohibit sending any foreign aid to countries for the purposes of family planning and contraception.

Now the globe faces many challenges but the failure of humans to have more babies on a planet struggling with limited resources is not one of them. A rider was attached to the final stop-gap spending bill that included language preventing the District of Columbia from using tax dollars for abortions.  You could bitch about their constant prattling about state's rights but that only works when the other side is in office and after all, D.C. is only a district.

Republicans also includes language to deny federal money to put in place Obama's year-old health care law. The deal requires that the proposal be voted on by the Democratic-controlled Senate, where it will fall short of the necessary 60 votes. They also included language to allow vouchers to parochial schools in D.C., throwing another symbolic bone to the religious base.

I know for a fact that Planned Parenthood is the only medical stop all year for many of the women that I know. They provide a host of services including contraception, pap smears, cancer screening, mammograms and other vital diagnostic tests. To defund them because they also provide private abortion services, an activity that only comprises 3% of their business,  is ridiculous and misogynist on its face and anti-woman. The practice is still legal, remember. Although maybe not for long with a majority catholic SCOTUS. In any case, the true agenda of the right is unmasked and guess what, it had nothing to do with the economy after all.

This budget imbroglio was supposed to be the easiest one, if everybody plays nice it funds the government through the end of the year. Obama gives up another 7 billion in spending cuts, mostly hitting health and education. In response, the Republicans have proposed a new tax cut for millionaires.

Not everybody on the right is happy. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, told reporters that he's a no vote on the final package."We really wanted more advancement on the life issue than was in the final package." Apparently Obama had to agree on an up or down vote in the Senate to defund Planned Parenthood in order to push the thing through, a vote that is expected to fail.

Next election, watch the candidates very closely. If their lips are moving, assuredly they are lying.

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Good article by Ronald Brownstein in the National Journal.

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And another by Mike Lux in Huffpo. Thomas E. Mann from the Brookings Institution weighs in. Don't say the A word.