No budget cuts here

By Jennifer J. Foster

I wrote a post last night about President Obama’s crusade to cut unnecessary federal government spending and how the $17 billion he and his budget director were able to come up with is both a lot of money and not all that much money, depending on how you look at it.

Well, as it turns out, President Obama not only missed an opportunity to add $38 million to the list, he actually wants to pour millions more into the issue.

From FoxNews.com:

President Barack Obama wants to eliminate spending on abstinence-only education and spend the money on programs to reduce teen pregnancy that do not take an abstinence-only approach ...

Administration budget documents say Obama wants to redirect funding from “abstinence-only education programs to evidence-based and promising teen pregnancy prevention programs.“

According to the story, the state grant program Obama wants to drop is getting $38 million in 2009. Savings? No, not quite—he wants to spend all that money, plus $12 million more, on other programs.

So, not only are we not going to save that money; we are going to spend more money on something else.

I understand that there are strong feelings about what constitutes effective sex education and whether the government should even be involved in providing such education. Given the state of the economy and the deficit that continues to swell, the prudent course of action would have been to get the federal government out of the sex education business altogether. But regardless of your feelings on that issue, this is yet another example of Obama missing an opportunity to prove himself to be the moderate he keeps claiming to be.

If he really respected everyone’s position on the issue, he would seek to rewrite the rules of the existing state grant program to include abstinence-plus sex ed programs, not end the program altogether in favor of something else.

And what is that something else? Oh, that’s the most interesting part.

The most positive results, Obama’s budget plan asserts, come from programs that “provide a range of services in addition to comprehensive sex education.“

Hmm ... “a range of services.“ I wonder what that could mean.

I bet Kathleen Sebelius could tell us.

Could it be ... yes, I believe it is ... Planned Parenthood, an organization that has a sex education program but also provides “a range of services”—including, oh, say, abortion—in addition to the sex ed program.

Here’s why this is so aggravating: The president is saying to conservatives, not only do I not agree with your approach, I don’t respect your values. And not only am I going to try to completely eliminate the program that funds your work, I’m going to give that money—and a bunch more—to this other group, which basically teaches the exact opposite thing.

And that’s not even taking into consideration the conflict of interest Planned Parenthood has in providing sex education. Can you think of any other organization that has a financial stake in the failure of what it teaches, yet is charged and trusted with teaching it anyway?

Yeah. Me either.

Planned Parenthood must be thrilled with this president. We’ve always known how much he respects their opinion. Now we know how far he’ll go to protect their business.

See also:

If you are curious about the kind of things that Planned Parenthood tells kids, check out this web site, which PP created especially for them. You might be especially interested in the section titled, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Questioning.“ Is this how you want your tax dollars spent?

U.S. Government Funds $400,000 Study on Gay Sex in Argentina Bars: Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.