Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
It's not about the budget numbers any longer. It's about a series of attached policy riders that Tea-Publicans are trying to extort from Democrats in order to pass a budget.
Specifically, the Christian Taliban culture warriors want to defund Planned Parenthood in their blind pursuit to outlaw abortions worldwide, and thus deny hundreds of thousands of American women their only access to family planning, birth control, cancer screening and health care in many areas of this country.
And there are the anti-science "flat earthers," the climate change deniers opposed to a Supreme Court ruling permitting the EPA to write regulations for greenhouse gas emissions. And let's not forget the Randian free market anti-regulation zealots backed by the billionaire bastard Koch brothers who just happen to own energy companies that would be affected by the EPA regulations.
“We’ve been close on the cuts for days,” Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader, said Thursday, adding, “The only things — I repeat, the only things — holding up an agreement are two of their so-called social issues: women’s health and clean air.” Abortion Dispute Complicates Budget Negotiations – NYTimes.com:
[T]the debate over these measures is different in a few significant ways. The House Republican proposals are numerous and sweeping, and would essentially rewrite broad areas of policy.
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On Thursday, Republicans passed a measure [that] would reinstate a policy, scotched a few years ago by Democrats, that prevented the District of Columbia from using locally generated taxes to provide financial help to poor women for abortions. (The use of federal funds for abortion is already prohibited.)
Republicans also seek to prohibit payments for abortions overseas — a measure known as the “Mexico City” policy that was overturned by an executive order from Mr. Obama. Another rider seeks to end the United States’ contribution to the United Nations Population Fund, which focuses on reproductive health.
Finally, rather than cut all federal funds for Planned Parenthood, House Republicans would like to take the money given to it and other family planning organizations and give it to state health departments to spread at their discretion.
This rider has become a major sticking point, as it is a priority for House Republicans and inflames Democrats.
“I am really stunned, and I am angry as a woman,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, “that we have come to this after weeks of negotiating on numbers, where we have in principle an agreement on numbers, that there are those in the Republican Party in the House who are willing to shut down the government, take people’s paychecks away from them, because they want to deny women access to health care in this country.”
Watch Sen. Patty Murray's full statement in this segment of The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell:
Republicans are also seeking to undo years of environmental regulations, greatly restricting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
The House voted 255 to 172 on Thursday to halt the Obama administration’s program to regulate industrial air emissions linked to climate change, delivering a rebuke to a central tenet of the president’s energy and environmental policy. House Votes to Bar E.P.A. From Regulating Industrial Emissions – NYTimes.com:
[Should the bill] become law, it would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from acting to limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that the agency has declared a threat to human health and the environment.
The measure would also nullify a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that gave the agency the authority to issue regulations to curb those emissions.
The bill has no chance of becoming law and is merely a time-consuming distraction from the urgent task of reducing fossil fuel use and developing clean-burning alternatives.
So the government is going to shut down tonight because we are forced to suffer the fools of the right-wing fringe, the zealous intolerance of religious extremists, ignorant "flat earthers" who reject science, and the selfish greed of the billionaire bastard Koch brothers who do not want the EPA writing regulations for their energy businesses.
Our political system is broken. Pray for our country.
This morning Sen. Harry Reid made his final offer. Reid's Final Offer To GOP: Drop Planned Parenthood Rider Or Cause A Government Shutdown | TPMDC:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has laid a final offer at Republicans' feet, and it will require them to drop their insistence on defunding Planned Parenthood, and accepting what Reid insists is an agreed upon level of spending cuts.
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"The number we're not bending on," he told reporters in a press briefing Friday morning. "We're not bending on that and we're not bending on women's health."
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"The only thing left was women's health," Reid said. That's a bridge too far, he said. "I am really concerned that this government is going to shutdown" over this issue.
Stand firm. Let the Tea-Publicans shut down the government. It's time to remove their mask and to let the people see who they really are – authoritarian radical extremists.