“Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” – Vice President Joe Biden
The good news in President Obama’s budget is that Title X funds (p. 434) that generally give money to entities like Planned Parenthood, have gone down from $297,400,000 to $286,479,000. (That is still higher than the figure in 2007 -$283,146,000.) Also, it appears that $5,000,000 is set aside for true abstinence education (p. 490) while almost six times that amount is reserved for “comprehensive” abstinence education that does everything from encouraging young kids to shower together to helping fund online “How to BDSM” videos for teens.
The bad news is that the Obamacare slush funds make it impossible to fathom where some of the money will be going. In one instance the budget gives “ approximately $14.6 billion over 10 years to implement innovative policies to train new health care providers and ensure that the future health care workforce is prepared to deliver high-quality and efficient health care services. And, to encourage and enhance training of primary care practitioners, and other physicians in high-need specialties.”
While this provision is probably to counter the rapid loss of doctors the country is facing over Obamacare regulations, I cannot remember if protections to ensure that money doesn’t go to training of future abortionists were including during the legislative fight against Obamacare back in 2009 and 2010. Regardless, considering this Administration’s flagrant and willful ignorance of the law, there is little guarantee.
The $350 million slush fund known as “Community Services Block Grants” still exists as well, to be distributed at the whim of the Secretary.
Lastly President Obama’s budget “includes $10 million for an HHS initiative to prevent and address domestic human trafficking in addition to anti-trafficking efforts by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. This initiative will provide direct services to domestic victims of trafficking, train service providers, and invest in data collection, research, and evaluation.”
Traditionally, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security are very territorial over anti-trafficking funds; however, HHS for years has given grants to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which is one of the largest anti-trafficking relief organizations in the world. A few years ago, the Obama Administration cut off funding for the USCCB because of the Catholic Church’s pro-life views. Friends within the program at HHS confirmed that the outside relief organizations who took over the grants from HHS have done a horrible job in keeping up with the demand of those suffering from trafficking. It is unknown if HHS is now deciding to do some of it in house, which doesn’t bode well for those victims.
Ending as we began, with good news, the President’s budget, while highlighting his pro-abortion priorities, usually is dead on arrival when it reaches Capitol Hill. In the last few years it has been introduced in the Senate, NO ONE, including Democrats from his own party, voted for his budget. In fact Senate Democrats just last week decided they won’t even bother working on a budget this year, despite it being required by law for them to do so.
