The Republican’s Abortion Tax scheme
From slate.com…
The Republican platform ridicules Democrats for failing to recognize the difference between public and private money. It complains that Congress “treats well-deserved tax cuts as a kind of spending, so that letting Americans keep more of their earnings is considered the same as more spending on pork projects.” Democrats forget that “eliminating … tax reductions” is just another way “to raise taxes,” says the GOP:
Today’s Democratic Party views the tax code as a tool for social engineering. They use it to control our behavior, steer our choices, and change the way we live our lives. The Republican Party will put a stop to both social engineering and corporate handouts by simplifying tax policy, eliminating special deals, and putting those saved dollars back into the taxpayers’ pockets.
Two years after writing that platform, Republicans have captured the House of Representatives. And what’s their first item of business? Using the tax code as a tool for social engineering. This week, the House began hearings on two abortion bills: the Protect Life Act and the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. Both bills would outlaw the use of federal money for abortions. And to give the government more leverage, they would redefine tax credits as federal money.
In the hearings, held Tuesday by the House Subcommittee on the Constitution and Wednesday by the Subcommittee on Health, Republican lawmakers and pro-lifers suggested that federal funding of abortion should be prohibited in the name of individual freedom and government neutrality. It’s “not ‘pro-choice’ to force others to fund a procedure to which they have fundamental objections,” Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told the Subcommittee on the Constitution. The subcommittee chairman, Republican Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona, concurred: “This legislation is really about whether the role of America’s government is to continue to fund [abortion] despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans—even some of those who consider themselves pro-choice—strongly object to their taxpayer dollars paying for abortion.”
Read the whole article. It gets more vile.