House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is not making working with the Senate to
fund highway projects a top priority these days. That might be because he's too
preoccupied with defunding Planned Parenthood.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said "at the very minimum … money should be withheld this year, until you get to the bottom of what is going on here." McCarthy is the highest-ranking official to demand Congress stop funding Planned Parenthood, in the wake of two videos that allegedly showed the group trying to sell fetal tissue.
"Is Planned Parenthood putting the mother's life in jeopardy to somehow protect organs of the baby?" McCarthy asked Monday afternoon. "These are serious questions, regardless of where anybody stands on the issue, knowing the doubt of what’s going on here, is this a place where tax dollars should be spent? At the very least there should be a moratorium until this investigations is done."
Chances are, the congressional investigations and hearings—and McCarthy says there should "a number of hearings—will cost taxpayers practically as much money as Planned Parenthood gets from the federal government. While the exact amount of funding the group gets isn't entirely clear, the most
recent estimate was $105 million in direct federal grants in 2012 from the Title X program. That funding helps provide low- to middle-income women access to family planning, STD screenings, and other reproductive health care. That care does not include abortion, whatever anti-choice advocates say about it. Planned Parenthood also provides a lot of basic healthcare to women all over the nation who don't have access to other providers, much of it through Medicaid. Is that going to be the next target for McCarthy and his anti-choice pals—ending Medicaid to women in their childbearing years?