What if the "family planning" money in the stimulus bill is a head fake??

[Are_grits_groceries]

1- Obama wants to get Rethug support, and appear to be bipartisan. It's good to make them look intransigent when they dig in their heels now or later.
2- What are the things that will make Rethugs automatically foam at the mouth (Pavlov)? - Anything to do with guns, gays, and abortion.
3- He knows that the Rethugs will bitch about something because they are assholes. So the family planning money is stuck in there because he knows it will catch their eye, and they will flame about it ad nauseum.
4- The family planning money makes sense when explained, but the general public has the attention span of a gnat. It doesn't make sense on the face of it to say family planning=jobs.
5- The Rethugs have pointed this out so many times that who knows what else is in the bill to hear them and the MSM tell it. It's almost as if the entire $815b package is going to build a family planning clinic in every city or place with a population over 10.
6- So the money is dropped and appears that appears to be a concession and make Pelosi look bad. That's a double delight for the Rs.
7- The Dems were never serious about that part of the bill. They knew they could magnanimously drop it, and the if the Rethugs started whining about something else, they would whale on them for not caring about workers.
8- The tax cut portion is pretty much what Obama was promising anyway in the campaign. No real skin there and it satisfies the Rethug mania for tax cuts (Pavlov again).

This may just be my own fairy tale, but who knows??

[spanone]

1. you mean the '200 million for condoms' the rethugs have been cryin' over?

they are obstructionists and nothing more.

[Are_grits_groceries]

2. Yeah. That's one way they have phrased it. nt

[cliffordu]

3. I think you're on to something - it's always good to negotiate with a few gimmes

in your pocket so the suckers think you're actually negotiation.

And, the people he is going to see are pretty much ideologue rubes, anyway....

[Lemonwurst]

4. I considered this too, yesterday...

...when it was discussed here in a different thread. I'm hopeful that Obama is the poker player he's reputed to be. If so, something like this might just do the trick.

I'm reminded of an old trick we used to do at work when we knew our procedures were going to be audited - we'd look ourselves for something that would stand out and be easy to find and fix - and leave it there, addressing some of the other, more difficult issues in advance. Usually the auditors, always on a schedule, just had to find SOMETHING to report back that they had done their jobs.

So here the Repubs have something to thump their chests about to their grand old pile of 22%'ers. Ho hum.

(P.S. I honestly do believe the family planning initiative is a good idea, and hope it will be included in a future, less visible bill).

[Are_grits_groceries]

5. I think the family planning is a good idea too.

I hope it is done later. For now, it will serve as a good diversion.

[ellenfl]

7. hah! used to do the same thing with bank auditors.

i figured they would go out of their way to find something so an innocuous violation would usually placate them. i was always so anal retentive that i did not want them to find any mistakes . . . until i realized they would stay until they did! of course, this was back in the day when banks were still regulated.

ellen fl

[FarCenter]

6. The offending part of H.1 appears to be section 5004

"State Eligibility Option for Family Planning Services"

Which allows states to cover services and supplies for family planning under Medicare.

Ought to stay in the bill.

[tom_paine]

8. Your fairy tale is my fairy tale. Let's hope it's NOT a fairy tale,.

[sutz12]

9. Rope a dope, eh?

Hmmmmmmmmmm. Could be. I hope so.

The family planning part can be made up later as its own bill, or part of something else. It really is a good thing, though, and deserves passage.

[nickw]

10. smart

I was going to say our President isn't smart enough to pull something like this off... anyone else still surprised to hear the words "President Obama" on the news each morning?

[Are_grits_groceries]

11. Still catches me off guard. nt

[CTyankee]

12. I don't know about this as a political maneuver. It may not be smart. It will cause rancor

in our party as it will be seen as a "sell out" by many of us on the Left. Why start trouble? And, it won't work. The Repubs know this trick as well as we do. If you think they'll be happy and harmonious if we just kowtow on women's health, I think you're wrong. They won't support the bill. We'll have to pass it on our own, after a shrewd PR campaign proving to the American people how bad the Repukes are for this country.

It won't be any easier to sell the contraceptive funding as a separate bill if the Repukes can point to our retreat on it in the stimulus package as "hearing from the American public" that they didn't want it in the bill. Mark my words.