Month: January 2009 Page 2 of 10

This is bang-my-head-against-the-wall frustrating:

House Democrats are likely to jettison family planning funds for the low-income from an $825 billion economic stimulus bill, officials said late Monday, following a personal appeal from President Barack Obama at a time the administration is courting Republican critics of the legislation.

[ . . . ]

Under the provision, states no longer would be required to obtain federal permission to offer family planning services — including contraceptives — under Medicaid, the health program for the low-income.

Yes, that’s right, the Democrats will be caving to the Taliban-aping GOP.  The “controversial” idea here is that states could automatically elect to use their federal Medicaid funding to cover services that they’re presently providing with state funds.   In other words, states would no longer be the ones paying for condoms and such for low-income Medicaid recipients, thus freeing up the state to use its tax revenues to meet other needs while ensuring that contraception is still available.   Seems pretty straightforward, no?  And since it’s up to each state to make this election, it should appeal to those conservatives who are always claiming that issues like this should be decided at the state level (in theory, anyway – I’ve found that that’s more often than not still as much a cover as “states’ rights” used to be).   And yet here Democrats are, allowing something as simple as plain contraception to be treated as some divisive issue?  I’m sorry, didn’t the American public just spend two years throwing out the theocracy supporters?  And Democrats react like this?  Pathetic.

I’ve never been a fan of holding up lobbyists as some inherently evil group.  I think running against them is mostly a stunt, and I think broad prohibitions against them entering government is a bad idea.  That said, if you’re going to make a point of adopting rules against lobbyists, you really should stick to them.

Update: While I’m not a fan of the rhetorical device of slamming lobbyists, I’m absolutely appalled by the revolving door. As such, I’m completely okay with fairly severe post-employment bans on lobbying agencies of which you were previously a part. Not a perfect solution, but it’s better than nothing. (Thought I’d made this part of my original post, but somehow bungled it.)