Imagine a person who’s a compulsive shopaholic. Weekly, this person spends about $400 on various accessories, $100 on food and $20 on various vitamins and health-related products. Imagine further that this person wants to confront this unsustainable habit — especially because she has to borrow money from friends to go on with it — and cut back on spending starting with health-related products.
Over the past thirty years, America has increasingly begun to resemble our imaginary friend with compulsive-shopping issues. She is only beginning to realize how excessive and unnecessary all the money she spent — along with all the toys and accessories she purchased — really is.
However, like our imaginary friend, elected legislators in America, namely the Republican majority in the House, are not confronting America’s spending problem in the most prudent way. Instead of cutting back on the largest defense budget in the world, these legislators want to cut PBS.
Instead of cutting back on all those tax breaks to corporations, these legislators have blocked all funding for Planned Parenthood. This is equivalent to our imaginary friend cutting back on her $20 health-related purchases.
I write this not from a particular ideological vantage point, but a purely pragmatic and objective perspective. In 2010, in response to Washington’s carelessness about the working class, America elected (or re-elected) the party of so-called fiscally responsible Republicans to the majority. Disregarding the two massive and unsustainable wars and billions of dollars in corporate tax breaks, they in turn went on to address what they perceived to be America’s most pressing problem: abortion.
Last week’s defunding of Planned Parenthood, which provides reproductive and maternal health services, was very much a manifestation of corrupt ideology over substantive zeal to resolve problems.
It’s a shame for a party, which claims to be a party of family values, to disregard the social impact of not allowing people to have a choice in their families.
And what of their efforts to defund PBS? Surely family values would dictate stripping funding from the only media outlet in America that provides educational content — and whose viewers will most likely be left-leaning — and substitute it with glaring examples of American corporatocracy like MTV’s “Jersey Shore.” At times I really wonder what particular family values the GOP wants to instill in our society.
There is a bigger point to be made here. Last year Newsweek listed the U.S. at No. 11 of world’s top 100 countries. The list is based on indicators like education, health and quality of life. These are all issues that can be given substantive consideration and resolution. Comparatively, abortion is a minuscule priority.
The rhetoric of big government prevents us from dealing with real issues. I say rhetoric because it is just that: a bogus and careless political manipulation that always gets people re-elected.
We need to seriously look at our current circumstances. How is a government involved in a woman’s personal reproductive choice not a big, big government?
Reach Sohail at sbayot@asu.edu
