None of this federal funding supports abortion services. It pays for services like breast cancer screening, pap smears, pregnancy counseling and contraception. But the fanatical anti-abortion wing of the Republican Party targeted Planned Parenthood because it is the largest provider of abortion services in the United States and a defender of the right of women to have access to abortion.
The Republican leadership reportedly agreed to drop the defunding of Planned Parenthood in the final deal with the White House, and House Republicans voted Friday night to accept the agreement.
However, the Obama administration and Senator Reid agreed to include a provision demanded by the Republicans that bans the District of Columbia from using its own funds to pay for abortion procedures. Under the notorious Hyde Amendment, enacted in the 1970s and never seriously challenged by the Democrats, federal government funds cannot be used to pay for abortions. But the District of Columbia, like many states, uses funds raised from its own tax revenues to do so. This has become a political football because Congress controls District spending. A Republican-controlled Congress barred the practice, and the Democratic-controlled Congress lifted the ban in 2009.
As is invariably the case in such political confrontations in recent US history, the Democratic Party cowers before the demands of the ultra-right and ultimately offers agreements on their terms. Both President Obama and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid acceded again and again to additional demands from the House Republicans.
Speaker John Boehner reportedly reached agreement with Reid and Obama last week on $33 billion in cuts in fiscal year 2011 domestic social spending. He had reason to be pleased, since the original demand of the House Republican leadership, put forward in January, was for $32 billion in cuts.
Under pressure from the right wing of the Republican caucus, Boehner raised the figure in spending cuts to $61 billion, incorporated in the budget passed by the House in February. Obama and the Senate Democrats countered with an offer of $10 billion, and the horse-trading continued, while Boehner used the demands for policy changes -- on abortion, environmental regulation, and a ban on implementation of the Obama health care program -- to extract more and more spending cuts.
Boehner repudiated the $33 billion figure, proposing instead $40 billion in cuts and reportedly getting a counter-offer of $38 billion in cuts from Reid and Obama on Thursday night. But even this new level of austerity proved insufficient.
Some of the most right-wing figures in the Republican Party joined the debate in the final hours, urging Boehner and the House majority to pocket the many concessions from the Democrats without taking the risk of provoking a public backlash against a shutdown of federal services.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
3
2
