This guy's top priority is NOT "Job Creation Solutions"
is getting pathetic:
House Republicans have opened a sweeping investigation into Planned Parenthood, requesting reams of financial information and details on how the women's health organization keeps federal funds separate from abortion services.
House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) sent Planned Parenthood a six-page letter earlier this month detailing the committee's request. House Republicans have repeatedly tried to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding because it provides abortions, even though federal funds are not used for those services.
Stearns is demanding, among other things, financial documents going back 20 years because he and his fellow Republicans are certain that if they investigate far and wide enough, they're bound to find ... something.
And if the name Stearns rings a bell, it should. This guy has spent the whole year trying to come up with new and creative ways to shut down Planned Parenthood and undermine women's access to reproductive health care. While his official website claims that his top issue is "Job Creation Solutions," his record says otherwise.
Earlier this year, Stearns was the proud sponsor of the doomed-to-fail H.R. 165, the Informed Choice Act, which, yes, sounds great—who could possibly be against informed choice?—but was actually an attempt to give millions of taxpayer dollars to crisis pregnancy centers. You know, those fraudulent religious centers that pretend to provide medical care, but actually only exist to persuade women not to have abortions by lying to them? Yeah, that's where he wanted your taxpayer dollars to go.
Then, of course, there was his giddy endorsement of investigations into Planned Parenthood, based on the O'Keefe-style "sting" videos. But that didn't go anywhere either.
And of course Stearns was a big supporter of the House's many attempts to directly defund the country's largest provider of women's health care because "defunding Planned Parenthood should be a fiscal and moral priority for Congress, and for the American people."
And since none of those efforts have succeeded, Stearns and his fellow Republicans figure they'll just bury Planned Parenthood in redundant audits and demands going back decades because maybe that's how they'll finally succeed in their "fiscal and moral priority."
As if it wasn't already clear by now, these Republicans don't give a damn about serving the American people. Investigating the country's largest provider of women's health care won't create a single job. It won't reduce the deficit. It won't save taxpayers a single dime.
But it sure will endear them to their base of angry, hateful, religious zealots that make up the American Taliban. And we know that's what really matters.
