Obama to drop 'family-planning' from stimulus as GOP concession

"How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives? How does that stimulate the economy?" asked an incredulous Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio.

WASHINGTON (MCT) - President Barack Obama has told congressional Democrats to drop a proposal to spend money on family planning from the proposed $825 billion plan to stimulate the economy, a White House aide told McClatchy.

Obama is likely to offer that concession when he meets Tuesday with congressional Republicans, who've complained bitterly that the proposal is liberal pork that has nothing to do with stimulating the economy or creating jobs.

"How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives? How does that stimulate the economy?" asked an incredulous Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, his party's leader in the House of Representatives, after an opening meeting Friday with Obama at the White House.

Boehner was to host Obama at a follow-up lunch Tuesday at the Capitol.

Boehner was pointing to a proposal in the bill to expand Medicaid family-planning services. Republicans said the proposal would make taxpayer-financed family-planning services, including contraceptives, available to those who don't qualify for the help now under Medicaid.

"Whether or not you think that is good public policy, it has nothing to do with an economic stimulus," a Boehner aide said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi-D-Calif., appeared to sidestep the question when she was pressed over the weekend to explain how family-planning money would boost the economy or create jobs.

"Well, the family-planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost," she said on ABC.

"The states are in terrible fiscal budget crisis now, and part of it, what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements, are to help the states meet their financial needs," she said. "One of those, one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception ... will reduce cost to the state and to the federal government."

She refused to say then that it was a mistake to include the proposal in the stimulus proposal and likened it to helping people buy food or get financial help when they were out of work.

"No apologies," she said. "We have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

"Food stamps, unemployment insurance, some of the initiatives you just mentioned, what the economists have told us, from right to left, there is more bang for the buck _ is the term they use _ by investing in food stamps and in unemployment insurance than in any tax cuts."

Republicans also are likely to renew their pitch to Obama to cut back some of the other spending in the proposed bill.

Among some of their targets:

_$5 billion for colleges and universities, many of them already with billion-dollar endowments.

_$600 million for new cars for the federal government.

_$200 million to improve the National Mall, including $21 million for new grass.

_$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts.

Overall, they say, the proposal would create at least 32 more government programs at a cost of more than $136 billion.

___

© 2009, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.