Friday, September 11, 2009

Is Rep. Jay Inslee Lying to Constituents about Abortion in Health Care Reform?

The issue of Inside the Beltway politicians lying about the contents of the Democrats' controversial health care reform bill is in the news lately. It seems Washington Rep. Jay Inslee may be trying to get in on this action.

If you send Mr. Inslee a letter objecting to the well-documented fact that the health care reform proposals being considered in Washington would result in a massive increase in taxpayer funding of abortion, and thus a massive increase in abortions, you'll get a letter back assuring you that this is not the case.

In one letter from Mr. Inslee's office which we received, he assured us that the Hyde Amendment would prevent this from happening.

The fact is, however, that the Hyde Amendment does not provide a blanket ban on federal money going to abortion, but rather specifically applies to Medicaid and only Medicaid. The so-called public option health care plan that would come into effect under Obamacare is nothing to do with Medicaid. Thus Mr. Inslee is either completely uninformed -- which would be shockingly negligent on his part -- or is deliberately misleading constituents.

Moreover, Mr. Inslee sits on the House Energy & Commerce (HEC) Committee, which was considering the health care reform bill and passed it out of committee. Mr. Inslee voted no less than three times against amendments that would specifically have prevented the bill from including abortions as an insured health care service.

All of this is unsurprising when you consider Mr. Inslee's 100% rating from the abortion lobby, and the fact that his wife, Trudi, is on the board of Washington State's chapter of National Abortion Rights Action League.

We have contacted Mr. Inslee's office on two occasions by phone to find out why he is misleading constituents. The lady who answered the phone assured us that his office would never deliberately mislead a constituent, but she promised a response within a few days. With no response forthcoming, we called again. Same assurances, same result.

The fact is Mr. Inslee knows full well that the health care reform bill he supports would fund abortions, and would lead to tens or hundreds of thousands of extra dead babies each year, and huge increases in the standard of living of his abortion industry patrons.

If people don't feel bad about killing babies, why would they feel bad about lying about it?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jonathan, in order to make your claim, you seem to be determined to believe that the proposed public option would be subsidized by taxpayers, rather than being run entirely on premiums of the 12 million or so customers its estimated to have signed up in the first ten years. The only way your claim of the public option including subsidized abortions makes any sense is if H.R. 3200 was changed to make the public option into an entitlement paid for from the General Fund, rather than a financially independent GSE as it is now proposed. So, no Inslee is not the liar here.

The truth is that the democrats have maintained an open legislative process that has made it easy for republican members to propose sloppy, redundant abortion ban amendments in order to "trap" democrats. Therefore, I'm afraid you've been conned by cheap legislative games.

Dan Kennedy said...

BTW, anonymous. Any expenditure by the Federal Government are Federal dollars whether from the General Fund or other sources. You should stop playing those "cheap games".

Jonathan, I got the same runaround by Inslee. Here is what I sent him (still no reply):

Dear Representative Inslee,

I'm afraid that your response is a non-sequitur:

"At this time, there is no language in the bill that will repeal the Hyde amendment restrictions on federal funding for abortion."

Since the legislation sets up a separate revenue stream not covered by the Hyde amendment, why are you telling me this?