Senate may give Planned Parenthood Zika funding in new Continuing Resolution

GOP Aide: Senate Republicans’ Budget Bill Opens up 

Possible Zika Funding for Planned Parenthood

Dustin Siggins, Stream.org, September 24, 2016

Dustin Siggins, Stream.org

A GOP Senate Appropriations Committee aide has confirmed to The Stream that Republicans will allow Planned Parenthood to “apply for reimbursements” under new Zika prevention funding proposed by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

On Thursday, the Republican-controlled committee released a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the federal government’s operations funded until December 9. Federal funding is currently approved through September 30, after which discretionary operations of the government would shut down. In addition to funding the federal government, the CR bill provides $500 million for emergency flood assistance in several states, and provides $1.1 billion to fight the spread of the Zika virus.

Democrats have thrice-blocked a stand-alone funding bill intended to fight Zika in Florida, Puerto Rico and elsewhere, in part because Planned Parenthood would be unable to access $95 million used to stop the virus’ spread.

The New Funding

Politico reports that the CR bill does not include several non-funding priorities of each party, such as an Internet provision preferred by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and emergency funding for Flint, Michigan, desired by Democrats. The lack of funding for Flint and the non-inclusion of a financial provision preferred by Democrats led President Barack Obama’s press secretary to say on Friday that the president is considering vetoing the budget bill.

But it is the Zika funding that is creating controversy on the pro-life right. Democrats have held up funding for months because Republicans declined to open up a $95 million pot for access by Planned Parenthood. Now, that’s changed, according to an internal Capitol Hill analysis provided to The Stream.

That analysis notes that Hyde Amendment limitations on the $1.1 billion in Zika prevention and vaccine funding are in place, thus limiting potential use for abortions to those related to rape, incest and life of the mother. Planned Parenthood may be able to access portions of $95 million being sent to Puerto Rico ($60 million), $15 million for states that have “local transmissions” of Zika (so far, Florida), and $20 million for a Puerto Rico-specific “Maternal and Child Health Block Grant” that will go through a specific funding mechanism that the analysis states “has never been used for Planned Parenthood.”

According to the GOP aide, “the Zika agreement does not provide funding for any particular non-government organization. Like other health care providers, Planned Parenthood and its two affiliate clinics in Puerto Rico are not guaranteed funding in any form.”

“Health care providers will be eligible to apply for reimbursements through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) or through the Puerto Rico Department of Health,” continued the aide.

Pro-life advocates may also take issue with the funding of contraceptives. Many forms also act as an abortion-inducing drug or device. None of this money is going through Title X, which is where Planned Parenthood gets tens of millions annually for providing contraceptives and abortifacients to women.

The rest of the money is going to international aid, vaccine development and other Zika-related efforts. That funding is detailed by the committee’s official summary of the Zika section of the funding bill.

One Heritage Foundation analyst accused Republicans of giving Planned Parenthood a chance to “get a raise,” since the CR funds both the annual $500 million-plus that typically goes to Planned Parenthood and leaves open the door to other reimbursements.

Live Action’s Lila Rose urged supporters to tell Congress to reject the CR, saying that Planned Parenthood is “exploiting the Zika crisis and taxpayers to boost its bottom line even more.”

Planned Parenthood’s hypocritical drive to end pro-life free speech

Planned Parenthood’s hypocritical drive to end pro-life free speech

by Dustin Siggins, originally posted on HotAir.com

On August 31, the California legislature sent a bill to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk that could throw whistleblowers and pro-life investigators in jail. Written by Planned Parenthood, it has been opposed by The Los Angeles Times and the ACLU – two prominent organizations that back abortion – on free speech grounds.

Days later, President Barack Obama proposed a regulation that would, according to Huffington Post, “permanently” prevent states from defunding Planned Parenthood. The regulation says that states may not take away Title X birth control and abortifacient funding – most of which goes to Planned Parenthood – from any groups over philosophical or ideological differences, such as the scientific truth that abortion kills unborn children.

In other words: If you’re a taxpayer who might want your tax dollars to not fund abortion-inducing drugs and devices, you’re out of luck. This is unlike “about 9,000 providers” who lost state funding in the last couple of decades, according to Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Casey Mattox. Mattox told Congress that while “in most of these cases, they’re completely uncontroversial,” only Planned Parenthood receives federal protection, “a privilege that other providers don’t get to have.”

These are just the latest efforts by Planned Parenthood and its well-funded allies in government to restrict free speech by pro-life Americans. Planned Parenthood has backed the Obama administration’s HHS Mandate that requires nuns, priests, religious health and educational institutions, and for-profit business owners and employees to pay for abortion-inducing drugs and devices. The mandate lost in the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2014 Hobby Lobby case, and was knocked down to lower courts by the Supreme Court earlier this year.

Yet Planned Parenthood stands by it, demanding that private citizens use their private dollars to pay for things they morally oppose.

Bubble and barrier zones that limit pro-life advocates’ ability to make their case while on public property are in place across the country, with Planned Parenthood’s backing, while no such restrictions apply to abortion workers and volunteers. In fact, in Chicago, Planned Parenthood donated birth control and abortifacients so its supporters could stand on Hobby Lobby’s private property and distribute these items.

Additionally, a number of cities and states around the country have attempted to force pro-life pregnancy care centers to recommend abortions. The California version of this law has been supported by Planned Parenthood, which has hypocritically joined NARAL in opposing pro-life investigations while using NARAL’s “investigations” to target pro-life speech.

Planned Parenthood’s cherry-picked sensitivity to free speech infringements aren’t limited to undercover investigations. The group sued Ohio to retain state funding, with its lawyers declaring eliminating funding would constitute harm to Planned Parenthood’s free speech. The same is true in Utah, and elsewhere.

Op-Ed: A GOP for America's future

A GOP for America's future

originally posted here by Dustin Siggins

Note: This piece was co-authored by seven philosophically and geographically diverse conservatives who believe the GOP must lead in 2015. Our proposals outline a path that will accomplish this goal for the betterment of America.

On Election Day, the GOP won the Senate, held the House, and made solid gains in several states. The party can rightly claim a mandate from voters.

But what is that mandate? Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have promised that Congress would move on tax reform, the national debt, and repealing the Affordable Care Act. We hope that they follow through -- but given the GOP's tendency to overpromise and under-deliver, we have our doubts.

If the world were run by scientific and mathematical reality, Republicans would pass a constitutional amendment recognizing the scientific fact that we are human beings at conception. They would enact aggressive Social Security and Medicare reform, and revamp the tax code. And they would repeal the Affordable Care Act, eliminate corporate welfare and food stamps, and drastically expand domestic energy access.

However, these goals are not politically possible with President Obama in the White House and a GOP that tends to flinch in the face of tough decisions. So what can be accomplished that would help the nation and convince its conservative base that the party can be trusted?

McConnell and Boehner have outlined good steps. But we, a geographically and philosophically diverse group of conservatives, think they can do better.

First, pass legislation that could garner bipartisan support. Greater transparency and efficiency among the executive and legislative branches should be a top priority. Medicare, Medicaid, and the Defense Department alone face tremendous fraud and improper payments, and the federal government as a whole loses hundreds of billions of dollars annually to mismanagement and duplication.

Expanding drilling opportunities, something supported by many Democrats, would provide more jobs and more tax revenue, reduce environmental harm, and -- over time -- allow the U.S. to reduce its funding of Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and other nations that abuse human rights and/or provide fertile ground for terrorists.

The GOP should also renounce its relationship with Big Business by refusing to renew tens of billions in special-interest tax preferences at the end of the year, and end nearly $100 billion in federal corporate subsidies. Whether for oil companies, wind farms, NASCAR, or Goldman Sachs, policies that take from middle America to help the wealthy are immoral and fiscally insane.

These savings should be used to lower taxes for all Americans -- unless President Obama wants to defend giving approximately $150 billion in taxpayer dollars each year to wealthy special interests while the average American struggles to find work.

Now comes the hard stuff. We are pleased to have seen McConnell say in a press conference that the party will conduct investigations and oversight of the Executive Branch. Republicans should also allow only qualified judges to garner Senate approval, and should stop an executive amnesty cold.

Fiscally speaking, the nation is in serious trouble. Social Security and Medicare have become increasingly more expensive. They are the primary drivers of our debt. While extensive reforms are unlikely to pass, Republicans should promote means-testing of both programs and force Obama to defend giving Bill Gates and Warren Buffett retirement money.

Likewise, Republicans should demand that the president uphold his promise that all Americans be able to keep their health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and overturn the unconstitutional HHS Mandate. They should also eliminate Congress's Obamacare subsidies for themselves.

Finally, it is important that the federal government stop its funding of abortion, be it at home or abroad. In 2009 and 2014, polls found that the American people do not support federal abortion funding. Republicans should force President Obama to explain why the average American should pay for the destruction of a million unborn children each year.

The plan we have laid out is considered radical inside the Beltway. We can hear it already -- "Obama will never sign it, and getting 60 votes in the Senate will be impossible." However, this is only part of the story. In December, a government funding bill must be passed; Republicans should include some of our measures in that legislation. Likewise, each and every funding bill and debt ceiling bill should include our very reasonable recommendations.

Two weeks ago, the GOP was given a golden opportunity to prove that it is better than the other guys, a duty it has shirked for at least 15 years. This is a chance for Republicans not only to show the American people they are just as tired of Beltway politics as voters, but also to swing the pendulum just a little bit away from fiscal and cultural destruction, and toward a brighter future.

--

Dustin Siggins is the D.C. correspondent for LifeSiteNews.com and a public relations consultant. Drew Belsky is the deputy editor for the online political journal American Thinker. Oklahoma State Representative George Faught is a small business owner who was elected to a fourth term on November 4. Christopher Arndt is the chairman of the Michigan Young Republicans. John Hawkins is the founder of RightWingNews.com and a contributor to Townhall.com. Jamison Faught is a conservative activist from Oklahoma who blogs at MuskogeePolitico.com. Win Martin is an openly gay Washington State resident and formerly a political blogger.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the co-authors.

Big Government Helps Buddies

Big Government Helps Buddies

by Dustin Siggins

On June 13, Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow in Labor Policy James Sherk released a paper analyzing how the Obama Administration’s auto bailout could have cost the taxpayer nothing in the long run if the United Auto Workers (UAW) had received normal bankruptcy treatment. Instead, they were provided special treatment which violated numerous aspects of traditional contract law, and were given approximately $3.5 billion more in treatment than the total cost of the bailout. In short, according to Sherk, the taxpayers were charged $26.5 billion on their maxed-out credit card.

On Tuesday, Ed Carson wrote in Investors Business Daily that taxpayer losses may be worse than Sherk calculated, given General Motors’ continuing drop in stock price. From Carson’s op-ed:

General Motors (GM) shares fell to a fresh 2012 closing low of 19.57 on Monday. The stock hit 19 in mid-December, the lowest since the auto giant came public at $33 in November 2010 following its June 2009 bankruptcy. 

Normally you might say, tough luck investors. But this is Government Motors. The Treasury still owns 26.5% of GM, or 500 million shares… 

Those shares were worth about $9.8 billion as of Monday. That would leave taxpayers with a loss of $16.6 billion. 

But that's not the full tally…[T]he administration essentially gifted $45 billion in write-offs (book value $18 billion) to GM. So when GM earned a $7.6 billion profit in 2011…it paid no taxes. 

Include that $18 billion gift, and taxpayers' true loss climbs to nearly $35 billion.

Regardless of whether you look at Sherk’s or Carson’s numbers, the losses dealt to the public as a result of special treatment for the UAW are significant. While admittedly only one percent of this year’s expected deficit, and a much smaller fraction of the totality of deficits since the auto bailout was first initiated nearly four years, it is another reminder that big government will always help out its buddies and special interests first. This assistance flourishes under both parties, whether it’s by protecting farm subsidies and defense contractors, bailing out banks via TARP, giving the insurance industry a generation of guaranteed customers via the individual mandate, providing college students further taxpayer subsidization in an election year, or giving a bailout to the UAW.

With Democrats controlling most of Washington during a period of the largest deficits in the history of America, including Congress under the last two years of the Bush presidency, it’s easy for Republicans to claim such government favoritism is a problem mostly confined to the Democratic Party. However, this ignores the history just prior to 2006, when then-record deficits were brought by Republicans, and ignores that many Republicans have supported the individual mandate, farm subsidies, TARP, and student loan subsidization over the years, and have defended the defense industry to the hilt. Mitt Romney, for example, has taken four of these five positions in the last couple of years alone.

Big Government is a bipartisan problem, and conservatives would do well to remember this as we head into the fall elections and the potential for a Republican sweep in Washington. Voting for a party won’t prevent us from falling off the fiscal cliff we are heading towards – voting for a number of candidates might.

Dustin Siggins is a policy and politics blogger who regularly contributes to HotAir.com, HotAir.com’s Green Room, Race42012.com, and RightWingNews.com. He is the co-author of a forthcoming book on the national debt with William Beach of The Heritage Foundation.

Book Review: Tom Coburn's 'The Debt Bomb'

Senator Tom Coburn versus Everyone Else in Washington

by Dustin Siggins

In The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan To Stop Washington From Bankrupting America, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) explains how Washington's career politicians, staffers, and lobbyists have set the nation up for fiscal failure.  Pulling few punches, Coburn targets sacred cows of each party and explains that rather than being in gridlock (as the media claims is the case), Congress has spent the last several decades (and especially the last 15 years) working to expand influence and re-election capabilities regardless of party.

Opening with a story about how America's rising debt could cause first a financial, and then a military crisis by 2020, Coburn reminds readers that this country is only as powerful as its finances will allow it to be.  In this fictional-but-likely future, foreign investors decide in 2014 that America is no longer a viable financial investment.  Over a span of days, this new consensus works its way into the value of the dollar, sinking it by 50% and increasing inflation.  Riots become widespread, the National Guard is deployed, and the G-20 meets to tell the U.S. that tax rates will double, retirement ages will leap precipitously, and means-testing will be the order of the day on benefits.  Finally, in 2019 -- two years after employment finally drops from 24% -- China invades Taiwan and informs the U.S. that if we stop the invasion, the U.S. will lose both financially (as China dumps our debt) and militarily (as both nations perhaps engage in a nuclear exchange).

Unlike other authors, Coburn takes on the debt from a series of critical angles, not just partisan ones.  This is done in a way that breaks through the fog of D.C.-speak and explains in plain terms the corruption all too present in Washington.  The impacts of the debt on the unemployment rate, national security, retirement, social welfare, personal freedom, tax rates, energy reform, and morality each have portions of chapters (in some cases, whole chapters) dedicated to them.  Additionally, Coburn aims to show just how much smaller government could be if we just eliminated fraud/waste/abuse/duplicity from the federal government...as much as one-third, or over $1 trillion per year (nearly $3,900 for every American every year).  If nothing else, the disgust readers should have for their elected politicians is a victory in and of itself, and it should lead to a successive series of efforts by voters to term-limit members of Congress.

The most important reforms Coburn addresses are those related to duplication/oversight, military spending, taxes, and entitlements.  With an envious lack of ego, Coburn looks at the problem from the perspective of an outsider involved in the process rather than as an elitist insider who knows all the answers.  Does the senator have answers?  Yes.  Does he think his are the only ones?  Absolutely not.  While his own oversight reports and Back in Black solutions are regularly mentioned both in chapters and in an addendum, Coburn praises Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), among others, for truly working to find a way to defuse our debt bomb.

The inside baseball Coburn exposes should embarrass both members and their constituents.  Earmarks, personal discussions, and careerism are all brought to the fore, but nothing is more "inside baseball" than the debate that took place leading up to the debt ceiling compromise last August.  The utter dysfunction of Congress is laid bare in Coburn's descriptions of what happened.  Meeting after meeting and discussion after discussion led to a deal that not only didn't cut spending, but actually grew spending by $2 trillion over ten years...and still left our nation's credit rating downgraded.

(click "read more" for the rest of this review)

Column: Pity the debt-paying generation

Pity the debt-paying generation

By Bill Beach and Dustin Siggins

The Heritage Foundation

The outlook for the Debt-Paying Generation - those young Americans on the hook for our monstrous national debt - keeps getting worse.

Take two developments in just in the last two months: First, the Congressional Budget Office released an update showing that since last year the amount of debt it expects America to carry (as a percentage of GDP) in 2035 has jumped significantly.

Second, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner each made it clear that they think cutting less than 10 percent of spending over the next 10 years is a responsible way to govern.

The CBO report continues a long series of annual warnings that the fiscal future is getting steadily grimmer: "Debt held by the public is now projected to grow even faster in the next decade under the alternative fiscal scenario than CBO projected last year. ... By 2021, it would exceed 100 percent of GDP, 10 percentage points higher than projected in 2010. In later years, debt would follow a path similar to what CBO projected last year, reaching almost 190 percent of GDP in 2035, effectively the same level as projected previously."

As columnist Peggy Noonan noted some months ago, part of the reason for the existence of the tea party is that compromise in Washington is often between moderates and liberals, not liberals and conservatives.

For example, the CBO said the initial phase of the Boehner compromise would take the debt per worker in 2021 from about $161,631 to about $156,324 - clearly, laughably inadequate. As one of us once wrote, "You can't balance the federal budget and stay inside today's policy lines. Rethink the lines, however, and you'll be amazed how quickly we could move toward fiscal sanity. It's all a matter of those tricky lines."

Thinking outside the lines is just why we are writing a book about the Debt-Paying Generation. It's also why Bill Beach was a lead author of a recent Heritage Foundation report on a plan to return to a balanced budget.

In that plan ("Saving the American Dream"), Heritage called for achieving permanent budget surpluses by 2021; pro-growth tax reform; and entitlement reform. While there is plenty of room for debating how we get to permanent total budget surpluses, the fact is that we need real solutions - and fast.

Heritage's plan is but one answer, but it is one that can work.

Unfortunately, except for rare exceptions such as Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., both of whom have plans that would balance the budget sooner than anyone else on Capitol Hill, much of Washington would rather pay attention to the latest Washington sex scandal than worry about the real threat that is America's growing national debt.

When it really comes down to it, the budget debate can be reduced to the following points:

1. Reform our immoral and inefficient tax code, perhaps by replacing it with a flat expenditure tax, such as Heritage proposed. A strong period of economic growth will be needed to help lift us out of our fiscal mess, and the flat expenditure tax frees the economy to grow at its potential while supplying government with the revenues it needs.

2. Cut spending. To start, basically anything ending with "Department" or "Administration" should be closely scrutinized for need and effectiveness. Doubtless hundreds of billions in outlays each year could be saved by reforming broken programs and eliminating those that simply don't work. Entitlements, of course, must be reformed.

3. Shrink the size of government employee rolls. Fully one-sixth of America's workers are employed by some level of government, and when one adds the millions of defense and other contractors into the mix, more than 30 million people are employed by tax dollars. These are dollars that, instead of expanding the economic pie or tax revenue are simply recycled. We support cutting 10 percent of all government employees or contractors, to start.

As James Agresti recently noted in The Daily Caller, the longer that Americans bury their collective heads in the sand, the more extreme solutions will have to be. Today's seniors and near-seniors could have supported minor increases in retirement ages; partial or full privatization; or any of a number of other options 20 years ago to entitlements that would have made Medicare and Social Security better off today and in the foreseeable future. They could have voted for politicians who wanted a fair tax code instead of one riddled with special-interest loopholes.

Instead, the status quo was largely kept in place. Now solutions must be drastic if we are to prevent the Debt-Paying Generation from bearing the consequences of the decisions of their parents and grandparents.


About the writers

William Beach is director of the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation. Dustin Siggins is a former policy researcher in the Center for Data Analysis at Heritage. Readers may write to the authors in care of The Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Washington, D.C. 20002; Web site: www.heritage.org. Information about Heritage's funding may be found at http://www.heritage.org/about/reports.cfm.