Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, defends contraceptives being added to the economic stimulus bill. She was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos who asked her about this addition in the bill.
Partial Transcript:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?
PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those – one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?
PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.
HT: Drudge Report
So basically birth control will stimulate the economy because it will reduce child birth, and that will help because kids are expensive. Even if I could follow that logic, which I don’t, how will that help somebody now?
She also said in that interview that “experts” have said “we’ll get more bang for our buck by investing in food stamps and unemployment insurance than we will tax cuts.” So we are going to make people more dependent on the government for help. Again, while I understand that these programs are necessary in the short term (and I mean very short term). How does this address the long term solution.
I’ve made it pretty clear that I am against this stimulus package, but at the very least could we please rid this bill of anything that does not save a job or help create a job? But I don’t expect that to happen because that would just be common sense. Something that seems to be in short supply in Washington.