To Rep. John Boehner,
This morning, Politico reported on discontent among GOP members of Congress who feel that they were left out of the decision-making process in the upcoming bailout bill. Though I feel that all viewpoints are valuable to come to a reasonable solution, I feel that concerns should, at the very least, pass some sort of scientific muster to retain their value.
The article is here: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17862.html
Following this morning's meeting with President Obama, you remarked that you had some concerns about the size of the bill. Particularly you took issue with the expenditure on contraceptives. You remarked “How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives?”, following up with: “How does that stimulate the economy?”
Now, there are two points in these remarks where you are completely wrong.
First of all, spending money on contraceptives would likely stimulate the contraceptive industry (a significant player in the national economy) in the same manner that lending money to banks increases their money supply, building highways and bridges increases the money supply and jobs for local contracting businesses, and lending money to the automotive industry increases their money supply.
Second of all, increased spending on contraceptives will likely reduced the rate of unwanted pregnancies by making available contraceptive options to lower-income Americans, where a considerably high birth-rate currently exists. This will serve to reduce the future burden on our tax dollars by slowing the increase in population that burdens those very tax dollars, freeing them up for other expenditures (or even reducing taxes!).
Since you and your vehemently pro-life colleagues hove no intention of backing up your pro-life agenda for the past fourteen years with real action, America has no recourse but to return to programs and solutions that advocate contraception and abortion as alternatives to pregnancy.
So, I am convinced that you are opposed to contraceptive spending on purely ideologically moral grounds and not at all on grounded evidence based in reality. This is a very good reason to reject your argument outright and disregard your proposal. You have simply wrapped your objection into simple conservative talking points that have no basis in reality.
In the future, Rep. Boehner, if you would like to be taken seriously I suggest you stick to fact-based arguments and scrutiny that is well based in reality. Your ideas were right to be disregarded, because you are simply arguing what you want to be true, not what really is true. If you are the future of the Republican party, then I see the Democrats have a bright future ahead indeed.
