She writes:
Republicans: The provision would have allowed states to cover family planning services--but not abortion--that they already cover for low-income women who don't otherwise qualify for Medicaid, just without first requiring states to obtain a waiver from the federal government. That's it. It wouldn't have permitted new services to be included under "family planning." It wouldn't have required states to cover anything or anyone that they didn't want to. It just would have allowed them to do what they're already doing without first going through the red tape of obtaining a waiver.
Gee, thanks Amy. Glad to finally see that posted somewhere other than a lefty blog. Even if you only got around to doing it at 4 pm Thursday.
When the vote was yesterday.
Seems to me this would have been good information to have on the Time blog a few days ago. Like, maybe, Monday? You know, when the Republicans were getting the vapors and the Democrats were afraid that the Republicans wouldn’t support the bill with that icky female plumbing stuff in it. So they caved, like always, and took it out.
And then the House voted on the bill and no Republicans supported it anyway. Yesterday.
What took you so long?
Sullivan writes:
In the end, this week's fight came down to symbolism. Republicans thought they could paint the stimulus bill as a gift to "the abortion industry" when in fact the provision changes virtually nothing about current law.
Yeah, some of us were talking about that on Monday.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me nuts when Old Media tries to do New Media. They still don’t get it. The damage has been done, the discussion has been closed. Pointing out Republican hypocrisy and Democratic ineptitude now comes a little too late to be useful.
