Jodi Jacobson, editor-in-chief of RH Reality Check, finds a couple of bright spots in Pres. Obama’s proposed budget for FY 2012:
… President Obama’s fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget request … proposes increased funding for reproductive health and family planning programs here and abroad, drawing lines in what is sure to be a contentious battle with the House GOP leadership, whose proposed Continuing Resolution (CR) all but eliminates the same programs.
The president’s budget proposes to allocate $327 million to the Title X family planning program, a $10 million increase over last year’s request. It also maintains the current level of funding, $110 million, for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program.
[…]
According to the Department of Health and Human Services:Over the past 40 years, Title X family planning clinics have played a critical role in ensuring access to a broad range of family planning and related preventive health services for millions of low-income or uninsured individuals and others. In addition to contraceptive services and related counseling, Title X-supported clinics provide a number of related preventive health services such as: patient education and counseling; breast and pelvic examinations; breast and cervical cancer screening according to nationally recognized standards of care; sexually transmitted disease (STD) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) prevention education, counseling, testing and referral; and pregnancy diagnosis and counseling. By law, Title X funds may not be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.
So for many low-income women, access to Title X clinics may, for example, mean the difference between early detection and early treatment of cervical cancer, or early death from the same.
Susie Madrak participated in a blogger conference call with Ken Baer (at the Congressional Budget Office) and David Plouffe, and asked Baer to address the “shared sacrifice” meme:
Baer’s opening remarks focused on “shared sacrifice.” Some bloggers weren’t buying it. (I know I didn’t.)
My question: “When you’re talking about shared sacrifice, clearly, the working and middle class is getting a disproportionate slam everywhere they turn with this budget, and you’re talking about a few, what sound like token items to the rest of us out here, and I wonder how you rationalize that during this severe economic recession.”
Baer said people got that impression from the stories that were released early, without looking at the big-budget picture. (Click here.)
Jonathan Chait argues that the proposed budget is not so bad because it shows Pres. Obama is trying to beat the Republicans at their own game (now there’s a new strategy!), but Jonathan Zasloff says a much more effective way to cut the budget deficit still remains, as always:
… But in fact there is a quite simple way to reduce federal spending by $47 billion a year as a conservative estimate: that old public health care option.Such things, however, cannot be discussed in polite company, so let’s just reduce Pell Grants, maternal and child health, and food safety inspections instead. Whew! Glad we dodged that bullet.
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