The White House fiscal responsibility summit and the recently passed economic stimulus law continue to take up much of the capital’s attention today — but don’t forget the $410 billion spending bill that the House is slated to approve by Thursday. The government is technically only funded until the first week of March, meaning that time is short to wind up the 2009 appropriations cycle.
Want to know what’s in the massive spending measure? You can download each section of the bill right here.
But a more important question might be what’s not in the 2009 spending bill. The Medicaid family-planning aid that was removed from the stimulus amid Republican attacks, for one, is nowhere to be found in the Health and Human Services title of the 2009 spending measure.
One wonders if that absence will draw fire from women’s health advocates, some of whom believed the family-planning provision could make a quick comeback after it got dumped earlier this month. When GOP governors such as Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty are using Medicaid family-planning money as an excuse to cut their budgets, how can congressional conservatives get away with slamming the program as taxpayer-funded abortions?
