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WASHINGTON — Somewhere in America, a Model Congress moderator is giving thanks. Because civics lessons don’t get better than this.
This being the government shutdown dance happening in Washington right now.
Washington now is arguing over the 2010 budget. That’s an important aspect of the story this weekend. Of course, for the obvious reason: An impasse on funding the federal government will have immediate results on federal workers and Americans who receive government aid, including, most alarmingly, military families. But it also underscores the fact that Democrats neither passed nor proposed a budget last year, despite being the majority party on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
That puts some of the protests from the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, in some perspective. “Nobody is in total control,” the Nevada Democrat said this week. “It’s self-evident we don’t control Washington or we wouldn’t be having this problem.”
So there’s the spin and the blame-game aspect of the story. Be skeptical, because as I listen to much of the press coverage, there is a lot of buying into his spin, in particular. But when you get beyond that, there is an underlying reality about democracy in America, about the realities of democratic government that Reid touched upon, however disingenuously, in his case. However cynical we are, justifiably, about Washington — congressional approval ratings are routinely dismal — process and numbers aren’t always an excuse or an inside game. Backrooms aren’t always dark and shady. Sometimes they’re exactly the realities standing between you and your policy goals. Sometimes there are people trying to represent your will or otherwise be good stewards in 3am negotiations. Not everyone is corrupted by power. Not everyone is thinking about the next election.
Good stewardship is of the utmost priority for a lot of the people on Capitol Hill, as it was a driving force of much of the Tea Party movement we saw in force this past summer and November. Good stewardship is what led the Republicans to promise $100 billion in spending cuts. Good stewardship is what pressed the Republican Study Committee, the fiscally conservative caucus in the House, to push leadership to move faster in its insistence on it.
Good stewardship is part of what got a majority in the House to vote to defund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion funder, which receives tax dollars under Title X family-planning appropriations, in a short-term “continuing resolution” vote earlier this year.
One of the under-covered stories of the Tea Party is that those who identify themselves as part of it tend to be pro-life. And even where they don’t, the question “Why?” is the one which resonates with them, not “Why not?” when it comes to whether or not we should be federally funding something. Good stewardship requires that. Good stewardship is at the heart of the principle of subsidiarity — smaller government isn’t just an ideological battle. It’s about how best to make sure the least of our brothers aren’t left out of policy debates and the daily life of America.
Good stewardship is also, frankly, a reason to think about the next election. A lot of the stories about the speaker of the House being at odds with members of his own caucus have truth to them. But it’s not because they’re on dramatically different pages. Differences are, at root, about expectations. A lot of what Republicans in the House campaigned on, they have and can and will vote and work on, but things can only move so far along the how-a-bill-comes-a-law conveyor belt.
As John Boehner, R-Ohio, is wont to say, he is speaker of one half of one-third of the federal government in Washington. And so you can vote to repeal a conscience-betraying, unsustainable comprehensive healthcare-reform plan, but you’re probably not going to get the Senate to do the same, and you’re not going to get the president to sign it. And you can vote to defund the long-protected Planned Parenthood, and even get some surprise senators to join you in the Senate, but, again, there are obstacles along the way to making it so. They need more votes, as just a fact of practical politics. They need reinforcements. A change in leadership in the Senate would help. A different president certainly would. On a multitude of issues.
Lying right below the headlines about the shutdown politics of the moment are the realities of the long haul. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., just introduced a bold budget with the support of GOP House leadership, tackling tough issues — namely some entitlement reform — that a lot of members of his caucus didn’t even campaign on, but are simply necessary. The Republican Policy Committee followed with something similar, but with even more of the toughness. Neither will likely come to fruition, but the majority in the House is doing their part to ask tough questions and challenge Washington to answer the call to responsible stewardship. At a time of such economic hardship and in the wake of such economic recklessness, the majority party in Washington owes Budget Committee Chairman Ryan and the House Republicans a serious response.
And so, all of what you’re hearing right now about Republicans insisting on “waging war on women” and their “health,” which Democrats hope is their winningmost talking point (and they may be right, at least in the short term), is only the beginning of a much longer debate. Even as it affects people’s lives in ways inconvenient and much more dramatic and unjust, this shutdown showdown we’ve been watching is but a skirmish in a longer battle over the way Washington works and spends. One that requires long-term persistence, long-term education, long-term participation, long-term support.
And about that supposed war on women’s health you have been hearing so much about and will continue to, no doubt: On Friday morning on the Senate floor, instead of voting to keep the military safe from any shutdown during this time of war, Harry Reid sang that tune. Arizona Republican Jon Kyl, while voicing skepticism at Reid’s insistence that Planned Parenthood funding is a non-negotiable for the speaker of the House (he’s never made that promise to his caucus), quickly rebutted: “You don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your blood pressure or cholesterol checked,” he said. “If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood.”
As it happens, most the short-term latter-day negotiating has not even been about Planned Parenthood, it’s just a compelling media talking point — especially when defenders misleadingly talk about mammograms which Planned Parenthood clinics do not, contrary to popular belief, do, but only refer women to. Much of the short-term negotiating has centered around the funding of abortions in the District of Columbia, extending policy to prohibit taxpayer funding of them. That’s been a mainstay bipartisan policy over the past three decades. A mainstream policy that both Bill Clinton and even this president have signed into law, that even this president voted for as senator. The president had the audacity to call a House vote on keeping the military safe from this shutdown debate “a distraction.” But much of the Planned Parenthood pink protective noise this week has been just that. As much as I and many pro-life groups and the majority of the House would like it, John Boehner never promised he could deliver on defunding Planned Parenthood at every step of the way. He’s made some bold pro-life promises, but given the realities of Washington at this moment, he didn’t make that one.
One party appears to be radical and stubborn on social policy in these negotiations. And it’s not actually the Republicans.
That’s a snapshot of but one of the stewardship battles to come. How are low-income women best helped? Is it by funding the nation’s largest abortion provider, a nearly billion-dollar organization, with plenty of wealthy boosters, which has been a major prop to the libertine sexual ethics that has created a confusing, miserable reality for so many men, women, children and families? One that is even willing — there is evidence — to aid and abet criminal activity? One that, as former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson has so well illustrated in her book, Unplanned, isn’t making abortion rare, but necessary for the profits its business makes?
It’s unclear how this shutdown story will go down in history. But in a just history, House Republican leadership would get some credit for forcing a conversation in the most prudent, responsible way it could, given the realities of Washington. It’s leadership, and it is best received as an invitation for even more, on a bipartisan basis.
Kathryn Jean Lopez (klopez@nationalreview.com) is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a nationally syndicated columnist.
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I wonder why, when President Bush and the republicans had both the house and senate, they took Catholics for granted and didn’t defund Planned Parenthood when they could have easily.
I didn’t realize the Tea Party was socially conservative, they hid that well during the election.
It’s kabuki. They made a deal after 11p.m. Guess what won’t be defunded under the deal? Yup. Republicans and Tea Party pols don’t give a damn about abortion, they just want pro life votes and pro life money.
Elective abortion is not “health care.”
A free-standing center for screening mammograms, for testing for diabetes, or for testing for HIV, would have to conform to a plethora of federal, state, and county regulations. Even a free-standing clinic providing just porcelain veneers for teeth or the injection of Botox (if such clinics existed) would have to conform to many, many health care provider regulations and requirements by law.
But not abortion centers. They are everywhere exempt from all but a few of these regs. A tattoo parlor is more regulated by law than an abortion center is.
It is clear from their actions, then, no matter what they say, that even the states, the counties, and the feds, recognizes that abortion is not “health care.” After all, regulations speak louder than statements.
The budget is the first priority.
But there needs to be a national public study to discuss abortion and the free sex culture. And within it, to study the effects such counter values to traditional morality have done to women.
The American culture needs to look at the value and dignity of woman….We have a terrible reputation all over the world in places that value chastity and fidelity.
@Rover. The Guardians of Plenty were too busy handing out tax bennies to all their wealthy pals and partisan donors. They were also planning unfunded wars. But they weren’t doing much planning until the Ayn Rand-Wall Street Express To Retirement Hell Special nearly crashed into the station terminal head-house. The Whitehouse/Congressional station masters were lucky it simply ran out of fuel before it took down any more victims. But guess who the stationmasters asked to pay for the refueling of this once venerated train system. Hint: it wasn’t just the stockholders or regular passengers.
Indeed, the GOP, as usual, took the Catholics and prolifers and other social conservatives for the annual four-year ride to nowhere. But of course, the Democrats made no bones about it, they weren’t interested in creating any extra seats for pro-lifers, with one exception being that pro-lifers could ride along just so long as they kept their mouths tightly shut. Never mind that fiscally liberal/socially conservative former Democrats like myself were watching this Roe Express barrel along at ridiculously high speeds as usual while in the meantime, we couldn’t caution anybody about the dangers this out-of-control train was going to cause to the social safety net programs like Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid and even the good parts of the new Affordable Health Care Act (“Obamacare.”) HEY, at least some of us wanted to warn them about running out of steam when the Roe Express had used up all the available would’ve-been folks who could’ve been workers paying their share of payroll taxes to keep these most valuable components of our safety net from looking like the private passenger rail system just prior to its take over by Amtrak.
I realize the writer is a well-known conservative, but c’mon, calling Cong. Ryan’s budget plan and schemes for privatizing Medicare into the ground as “bold”? Give me a break. He’s no bolder than the Heritage Foundation and his lobbyist backers and the Koch Brothers will allow him to be.
Ryan’s notion of how to save Medicare and other safety-net programs is akin to one of our officers infamously bragging during the Vietnam War about torching a village during daylight hours to keep it from falling into the Communists’ control later at night. If his ideas ever take traction and become law, all I can say is, get on your knees and pray that whatever state you live in moves quickly enough to establish its own statewide single payer plan with fifty-state reciprocity agreements added to it. Under Ryan’s plan, if you run out of money and good health early in the month … well, I shouldn’t have to spell it out, right? How much more frightened do any elderly people reading this story and comments need to be?
While the pro-life cause won a small victory concerning public non-funding of abortions in the District of Columbia; we lost out on the Pence Amendment … the very moment it was filed, debated and voted upon. There was no chance of it becoming law. None whatsoever and Pence, his party’s leadership and even their pseudo independent (“Third” lol) Tea Party pals knew it from the moment he dropped it into the hopper. Pence has been around long enough to know the Senate wouldn’t have gone along with his amendment, no matter how worthy the cause of defanging PP somewhat by cutting off its supply of the taxpayers’ (blood) money was, and need I say what everybody knew the President had in mind for it?
Nice show, nice drama, nice intentions … but it was little more than a parliamentary wedge weapon to frighten the Democrats with some “legislative cold-cocking” if necessary to be used at the last moment during a back alley fight.
Concerning the so-called independent Tea Party (which is nothing less than a Republican farm team created by David Koch and Dick Armey, with help from the now-“transistioning” Glenn Beck), a couple of similar statements stood out practically begging for some—to-be charitable—clarification. While it’s true the TP, GOP and their few brave Democratic supporters of Pence’s Mother of All Self-Serving Soap-Box Grandstanding Amendments weren’t out to “kill women,” as asserted by Rep. Slaughter, I couldn’t believe this from Ms. Lopez, “One of the under-covered stories of the Tea Party is that those who identify themselves as part of it tend to be pro-life,” and of course, Rover’s concluding remark, “I didn’t realize the Tea Party was socially conservative, they hid that well during the election.” In fairness to both Kathryn Lopez and Rover, that was the Tea Party’s and the Koch/Armey strategy all along.
After all, we only have to look at the tag-team non-job creationary mugging pulled off by the GOP/TP when it enacted HR Res. 1, which was little more than a catalogue of longstanding ideological talking points and political pay-backs which had little or no effect in many respects save for giving the folks back home some proof that the so-called tigers they sent to DC to maul the old crowd that the Big Cats were indeed bringing home proof of their prey. Except what makes for good drama on CSPAN doesn’t always make for good governance in long run. Just watch, they’ll be running clips of their speeches ad (very) nauseum a couple of falls from now, no thanks to Citizens United and the fat cats that’ll make good use of a very bad Sup. Ct. decision.
Why in God’s name did the GOP feel it necessary to gouge $700M from WIC, and cut the stuffings out of free lunch programs for poor kids, Head Start, pre-natal programs, etc. to begin with? Aren’t they tired of the old quip, “Love the fetus, hate the kid” started by Barney Frank decades ago? Apparently not. ON the other hand, Planned Parenthood doesn’t need or deserve discretionary funding. It’s a publicly-held for-profit company. More over, it’s NOT the only place where people can obtain the same services they say that’s all they’re able to provide with federal funds. Breast exams, pap smears, and even birth control devices can be obtained through many thousands more clinics, both public and private. And yes, while the Democrats and liberals were right to say HR 1 reflected the real and un-advertised ideological aim of the whole bait n’ switch campaign of 2010; Planned Parenthood’s more virulent supporters can’t claim any prizes for purity either when it comes to complaining about taking too many ideological mud pies from the other side.
However proper and rightfully noble, defunding Planned Parenthood and dealing with abortion is far too serious a matter to have it tucked in with a slew of other issues. If ever there was a “stand alone issue,” abortion is is, just as slavery was 150 years ago and the Civil Rights Movement a half-century ago. These issues are far too salient to play parliamentary footsie and gotcha games with. Those games and “footsie” will always come back to haunt their backers of this legislative nonsense.
Congress and the WH avoided a mess last night; but they still have another huge express train to deal with when it comes time to raise the debt ceiling. If ever there’s a time for the pros to listen to Wall Street and other pros and push the kiddos and farm team pols aside…especially if they’re calling for not raising the ceiling; This is it. Refusal by Congress to raise that ceiling will result in nothing but a trainwreck that’ll destroy this nation’s economy like it’s never been destroyed before. Refusal to raise the ceiling is no less dangerous than a freaked out passenger who just discovered that he bought the wrong ticket while the train’s picking up steam and he panics, pulls the brake and … well, do I have to describe the rest?
Rover, I’ve been to many tea party gatherings and every speaker at I’ve heard has mentioned protecting the unborn and every fellow teapartier I’ve met is pro-life. It does amaze me that the democrats were willing to shut down the gov’t rather than cut funding to planned parenthood.
I am more and more disgusted with the likes of peole like Harry Reid and the President. I pray that God steps in and helps us convert their hearts and see the true value of life. Maybe all those in favor of Planned Parenthood should visit while they are performing their income generating services of “Abortion”. Something tells me if they even dared to step in during such a horrible crime, they might defund this organization first chance they got.
Let us reflect on the biblical revelation of 1Peter 2:13-3:17 . The Christian rekationships : ( Church and State) The Christian may not ignore his responsibility as a citizen. This section regards the state as a divine institution,designed to protect the weak, punish the unruly , and devise welfare for all. life to br an ordered society , not chaos. Acting as free men and at the same time as servants of God constitutes the paradox of Christian living within the state. Freedom oes not mean unrestrained liberty to do as one may please. Rather it is freedom to do the will of God. Christians in their relationships with one another and with non- Christians are to follow these commands from this particular epistle. They must hone all men, for every man is a person for whom Christ died. No man is cheap, not one of the 60 million slaves of Rome during this particular episle era. This idea was a breath of fresh Christian air in a land where multitudes were exploited . Christians must love the brotherhood . Within the Christian fellowship is born a new relationship which reflects the kind of God - caring love ( agape) which led Jesus to die for sinners. They must fear Hod- fear in the sense of reverence ,awe, worship ( cross reference Proverb 1:7;24:21) and finally they must honor the organization of civil government. ( commentary on the Bible, author: Charles M. Laymon)
We must recall one of the category of civil laws ( Love, Humanity, Charity) . A deeper reflection on Chrisyian Law of Love
” And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing( 1 Corinthian 13:3) The second Vatican Vouncil II ( Lumen Gentium #41) explains this particular scriptural passage ” knowledge and faith , which need not ever be separated , also requires their full meaning in the Christian who lives by love: ” Each one according to his own gifts and duties must steadfastly advance along the way of a living faith, which arouse hope and works through love”
Peace to all. !
we know tha in moral philosophy that God is a democrat. ” God is even, equal, ” perfect ” symmetrical and democratic in all his methods. The sun shines on all alike. The sun shines on prince and peasant ,on master and servant , on maid and mistress , on Christian and gentile, on Jew and Turk, on Saint and sinner , on beggar and billionaire. God has no favorite.Nature has not issued one share of ” preferred stock ” Science has it’s investigation or discoveries. God is absolutely democratic in all his methods. The rose is not exclusive - it will bloom in alley, court, prison, and palace- in the King’s garden or the poor man’s sod. The rain falls alike on all - on the beggar’s shack ,on the bishop’s hall, on the King’s palace, on the toilers’s cottage, on the rich man’s bungalow ,on the missionary’s compound , on the preacher’s manse,and on the gypay’s tent- ” For He maiden his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust ”
peace to all. !
Guerline,
Although you may not mean it as it sounds, you are really stretching it by calling God a Democrat if you are referencing politics in the USA. The “democratic” party is a sham of private interests looking to take over our minds and souls with social engineering. I look to the church’s teachings on subsidiarity and it blows the political democrats out of the water with their phony compassion.
Guerline, it’s true that God favors only those who not only say they “favor” Him, but He is also more inclined to Bless and find favor in those who will roll up their sleeves to make sure His word and command to love our neighbors as ourselves ... and not just in sentiment. Insofar God and American domestic politics is concerned, it’s hard not to believe he would’ve found disfavor with John Adams, John Q. Adams, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Frances Perkins and Msgr. John Ryan (two leading co-creators of Social Security.) It’s not essential that each of these individuals had perfect theological understanding and discernment. After all, this IS a secular republic.
Thinking of God as a “Democrat” takes quite a stretch; ranking right up there with another blog posting citing a link with Catholic Answers where George Washingto was described as a “death bed Catholic.” (Parson Weems; eat your heart out. Your exaggerations have indeed been bested.) WIth apologies to Lincoln, it was less important to God what party he should be a member of than what side the parties were on; God or Satan. And to be “fair n’ balanced,” both major parties have a lot of catching up to do in that respect.
Outside of abortion, (on the whole) the Democrats win hands down when it comes to promoting social programs designed to pull people out of the indignity of crushing poverty. And definitely for sure, Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan has a lot of catching up to do if he wants to be spoken of in years to come with the same respect according Msgr. John Ryan.
beside the fact that abortion is treated as a sacrament by the democratic party.
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