House Democrats Blast Republican Plan to Create Committee on Planned Parenthood

When House Republicans announced a new witch hunt against Planned Parenthood, Democrats were swift and decisive in their response…

In order to investigate videos already proven to be edited fakes, to not show what Republicans claim they show, House Republicans have decided to create a select committee to spearhead a new anti-Planned Parenthood witch hunt.

Moron Blackburn (R-TN) announced:

“To get answers for the American people, we are significantly ramping up our oversight and investigative practices.”

“We will move to establish a new select subcommittee that will focus its full attention, resources and subpoena power on getting to the bottom of these horrific practices.”

Republicans have already ignored all the answers they demanded, and Blackburn went on to repeat the same tired Republican lies about the videos:

“I know this is difficult to talk about, and it should be. But on these videos, they haggle over prices, they casually sift through body parts.”

She claimed,

“These are some of the most abhorrent, inhumane things imaginable, and they do it all as if it is just routine — an expected part of doing business.”

House Pro-Choice Caucus leaders immediately denounced the Republican cabal plans. Co-Chairs Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY), and Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), called the plan “Nothing more than a taxpayer-funded witch hunt intended to rationalize their efforts to restrict Americans’ access to health care”:

WASHINGTON, DC — As House Republicans announced plans to create a select committee to investigate Planned Parenthood, Pro-Choice Caucus co-chairs Reps. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Diana DeGette (D-CO) today released the following statement:

Our country has urgent issues that must be addressed, starting with preventing another partisan government shutdown in just a few days’ time. Instead, House Republicans have unveiled plans to create a Benghazi-style committee to attack Planned Parenthood, proving that Republican cabal efforts to restrict access to health care are snowballing out of control. Trotting out heavily edited videos to justify another publicly funded smear campaign against Planned Parenthood is the lowest form of political pandering and will do nothing to solve the very real problems facing our nation.

Republicans have already wasted millions of dollars on their attempts to take away Americans’ health care and millions more fabricating a scandal over Benghazi even after three committees found the charges were baseless. And with multiple committees looking into Planned Parenthood without finding any laws broken, Republicans are returning to a tactic that wastes taxpayer money and produces no substantive information. While Republicans apparently can’t find the money to fix our crumbling roads, bridges, and schools, they’re jumping out of their seats to waste millions of taxpayer dollars on yet another political stunt.

This move by Republican leaders is nothing more than a taxpayer-funded witch hunt intended to rationalize their efforts to restrict Americans’ access to health care. We urge Republican leaders, in the strongest possible terms, to not waste the House’s time, money, or dignity on this craven political ploy.

Nancy Pelosi also issued a statement on this latest Republican plot to undermine the health of American women:

Pelosi Statement on Republicans’ Select Committee to Attack Women’s Health

Washington, D.C. – Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement after it was announced House Republicans will seek to create another radical select committee to investigate Planned Parenthood:

The Speaker’s resignation has not yet broken Republicans’ fevered obsession with shutting down the government at the expense of women’s health. House Republicans are planning yet another taxpayer-funded Select Committee to burn more of the millions of taxpayer dollars they’ve already spent playing politics – this time with the goal of taking lifesaving preventative care away from millions of American women.

Planned Parenthood provides a lifeline to millions of women every year, who often cannot afford cancer screenings or well women care anywhere else. One in five American women has relied on a Planned Parenthood health care center in her lifetime, and an independent forensic investigation has demonstrated the videos were manipulated to smear Planned Parenthood. Clearly, there must be a thorough investigation of the blatant wrongdoing of the group that clandestinely filmed and selectively edited these videos, likely in violation of numerous state and federal laws.

Make no mistake: House Republicans have renewed their war on women’s health. With this Committee, Republicans are trying to make it easier to shut down the government and harder for millions of women to access the lifesaving health care they need. Hard-working families deserve better than a taxpayer-funded Republican Committee fixated on dismantling women’s health.

Over the past seven years, we have learned that Republicans have no intention of governing, but rather leaping from invented crisis to invented crisis in an effort to delegitimize everything that fails their extremist litmus test. Planned Parenthood is simply their new Benghazi.

And despite all their talk of budgetary frugality and fiscal responsibility, Republicans have shown there is no amount of money they will not spend to further their invented scandals, no time too precious to waste on witch hunts to appease their bigoted and narrow-minded base.

If they showed even a fraction of this passion for doing their jobs, imagine how much fuller our recovery would have been since 2008.

But rather than deal with climate change or inequality as the post asked, they will, with all the false righteousness they can muster, fiddle while the world literally burns around them.