Little information is known as to what this final 2011 budget will consist of or exactly what government programs have been targeted. Even members of Congress were kept in the dark as to exactly what is in this “compromise”.
Planned Parenthood was removed from the budget and any attempt to defund this program has at least been delayed. Fighting over a mere .008% of the 2011 budget nearly shut-down the government, with new Tea-Party House members apparently unaware of the consequences of defunding Planned Parenthood.
In 2006 publicly financed Family Planning prevented 1.94 million unwanted pregnancies in the US which averted an estimated 810,000 abortions. Publicly financed contraception pays for itself. Every $1 invested in Family Planning saves taxpayers $3.74 in Medicaid spending. One in every five woman in this country has already or will use Family Planning services. Federal money is already banned from funding abortions. Washington state Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, along with other colleagues in the Senate, have been very outspoken on what has been described as a GOP war on women.
Other Republican “riders” removed from the 2011 budget were defunding of the new health care bill and defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Also, the budget does not include measures sought by Republicans to limit environmental regulations. Republicans were reportedly given assurance that all of these issues will be addressed in the future, so expect many more battles to come.
GOP policy "riders" that were left in the budget include banning the District of Columbia from spending its own funds to provide abortions to low-income women and funding to continue a controversial DC school voucher program.
The President warned that - “Some of the cuts we agreed to will be painful. Programs people rely on will be cut back” – but at least for now, we don’t know the detail of just what pain he’s referring to.
While pundits are proclaiming Democrats and the President were losers in this budget compromise, The Tea-Party consensus is that they lost this fight and they’re more determined than ever to win round two. The 2012 budget looks to be an even greater battle with Republicans supporting Representative Ryan’s radical budget proposal which includes dramatic cuts to Medicaid and a move to privatize Medicare. This 2012 GOP budget also proposes substantially reducing top corporate and individual tax rates.
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