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Download | Play Download | Play You TubeOn Hardball while discussing the aid for family planning included in the stimulus package, Chris Matthews says that government support for family planning "sounds like China" to him. Robert Wexler attempts to reason with him and explains that proper funding and education in this area actually increases people's choices and ultimately reduces medical costs. Rough transcript:Gingrey:...I mean we're throwing away, gosh I think that there's two hundred million dollars in there for family planning and contraceptives. Now indeed that may stimulate something but I don't think it's going to stimulate the economy.Matthews: Well Congressman Wexler why isn't it just, why isn't it just what we thought it was going to be...infrastructure, roads, bridges, stuff that everybody agrees on needs to be fixed and creates real jobs for real people that pay decent salaries. Why don't we spend all the money on that stuff that people can see rather than all these odds and ends and cats and dogs? I mean the bill has so much in it you think it's just a shopping list of the Democratic party. That's what it looks like.Wexler: No. No.Matthews: Everybody that wants something has something in here.Wexler: No what the Obama administration is arguing, and I believe they're correct is that three quarters of the money spent in this stimulus package will be out into the economy in eighteen months and I realize it's easy to find one item or this item but even, let's talk about that family planning. Family planning saves if done correctly an enormous sum of money down the road in the health care system. But back to your original point. Most of the money goes to building roads, bridges, infrastructure projects like my friend Mr. Gingrey said. As the states will have designed them and local governments as well will have designated them.Also in terms of building schools. We desperately need to upgrade our education systems. We have enormous amount of resources devoted towards c...
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President Obama has created a lot of talk with his bipartisan outreach, but so far the results have been predictable: nada.
These kinds of huddles are clearly not going to do any good in the short run. The Republican Party has been in the thrall of rigid ideologues -- men who would rather see the nation's economy go down in flames than either admit they were wrong or even let themselves be proven so -- for so long it will take eons to cure them of the habit.
In the long term, though, they will serve the very useful function of giving Obama cover when he finally gives up on his outreach and just pushes a progressive agenda through.
At some point he's going to realize that all the compromises made in the spirit of "bipartisanship" haven't yielded any results at all, particularly not in winning Republican votes. So at that point it won't make sense to keep making any compromises and just proceed without them.
When that happens, he may actually find Republicans finally willing to shed their ideological blinkers. But he shouldn't count on it before then.