A seemingly innocuous breast cancer bill demonstrates the right’s cynical approach to government
There are a lot of big bills on important topics being rammed through the General Assembly during the early weeks of the 2011 session. The new conservative majorities have bills to slash spending, deregulate charter schools, opt out of federal health care reform, restrict federal loans to community college students, allow more people to carry more guns, build more erosion-enhancing “groins” along the coast and many, many more.
Through it all, Republican lawmakers have been sticking to their conservative playbook and prescribed talking points. There are four rules:
Rule #1: “Taxes are evil (and too complex).”
Rule #2: “Government is bloated and inefficient.”
Rule # 3: “Private solutions are the answer.”
You know this rap, right? We’ve all heard it over and over for years.
“But what about #4?” you ask. “Didn’t you say there were four rules?” Well, that’s right; the last one goes like this:
Rule #4: “Rules #1-3 govern except when it’s politically expedient to say the exact opposite.”
Supporting the evil government
If you think this might be a bit of an exaggeration, consider a proposal advanced this week by several conservatives in the state House of Representatives on the subject of breast and cervical cancer.
The bill would add another “check-off” section to individual state income tax returns in which taxpayers could designate part or all of their tax refunds (and even more money, if they so choose) to the Cancer Prevention and Control Branch of the Division of Public Health of the state Department of Health and Human Services. Currently, the forms have such a line that allows for a donation to the N.C. Nongame and Endangered Wildlife Fund.
According to the language of the bill:
“Funds distributed pursuant to this section shall be used only for early detection of breast and cervical cancer and shall be used in accordance with North Carolina’s Breast and Cervical Cancer Control Program’s policies and procedures.”
In other words, conservative state legislators are establishing a mechanism by which North Carolina taxpayers can voluntarily increase their income taxes to support a quintessential, “do-gooder” state bureaucracy – a state human services program that provides publicly financed health care (in this case, cancer screening) to women who make too much money to be eligible for Medicaid.
Still not convinced that this is an example of Rule #4 in action?
Well, then you should have listened to the explanations tendered for the proposed legislation in the House Health and Human Services Committee this week; you would have thought you’d stepped into a meeting of the Progressive Democrats of North Carolina.
Conservative legislator after conservative legislator took to their microphone to explain, often with great emotion, how he or she (or a loved one) was a cancer survivor. Several spoke of the critical importance of early detection in the fight against cancer, what a great job the state Breast and Cervical Cancer Control Program does, how few women seek screening and how important it is that we extend this potentially-life saving protection to women of modest income.
When one lawmaker, Rep. Verla Insko of Orange County, expressed her support for the program but queried the chief sponsor (Nelson Dollar of Wake County) about why this particular program deserved to be elevated above scores of other worthy state programs that might receive such treatment, Dollar blithely explained that this was being done in a dozen other states and it was supported by a host of nonprofits from the cancer community (some of the groups comprising what one of the state’s better-known right-wingers regularly refers to as “the spending lobby”).
Piling on the irony
Of course, double standards in politics are nothing particularly new. Most people accept it as a fact of life that politicians have different constituencies at times. In this case, however, the hypocrisy is so blatant that it simply must be called out and examined.
Right after the Health and Human Services Committee meeting, Rep. Dollar and several of his conservative colleagues dashed over to the press room in the state Legislative Building. Their purpose, ironically, was to speak at a news conference announcing their support for a bill they call the “Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights” or “TABOR.”
Amazingly, of course, TABOR is a proposal modeled on Colorado’s disastrous experiment with artificial spending caps that would seek to limit the growth is state government spending in a highly destructive fashion.
As has been detailed on numerous occasions in numerous places, it is precisely programs like the cancer screening initiative that are the first to fall by the wayside when states slash public spending. And TABOR is the gold standard (or on this case, lead standard) when it comes to budget and services slashing.
So what’s really going on here?
Divining the ultimate intentions of politicians is never an easy task – especially when their actions directly contradict their supposed principles. Is it a matter of mere obliviousness or actual, bald-faced duplicity and cynicism? In this case, there would appear to be plenty of both involved.
With respect to the former, it was evident from the comments of the various lawmakers in the committee that some were simply too shallow to grasp the contradictions inherent in their actions. These people can readily understand the importance of public action to combat breast and cervical cancer because they’ve been impacted by it. They’ve seen that the victims are blameless. Helping “the other,” however – victims of HIV or other diseases less well-known in the affluent, majority communities they inhabit or, for that matter, poor kids in need of child care – is beyond their experience since they simply don’t experience or encounter such problems in their own narrow worlds and aren’t curious enough to look beyond them.
A more cynical explanation exists as well and it boils down to this: Breast cancer and cervical cancer are nice, polite, politically noncontroversial diseases. Both are well-known and widely experienced amongst affluent majority constituencies. Well-connected advocacy communities exist to combat each disease. Corporate interests love these issues. Heck, even professional golfers, football players and NASCAR drivers display the pink breast cancer ribbon.
In this sense, each provides an easy, feel good “out” for lawmakers looking to burnish their credentials as “humanitarians” and soften their political images – particularly at a time in which they’re getting plenty of bad publicity about elevating right-wing, budget-cutting ideology over the common good. Add to this the Republican Party’s desperate need to improve its recent poor electoral performance among women voters and the ultimate explanation for this legislation and its rapid consideration just a few weeks into the 2011 session becomes all too apparent.
Of course, the sad part of all this is that the causes and the public program being elevated are excellent. Like hundreds of other worthy causes and programs, they deserve generous public appropriations.
It simply ought not to come in such an ill-considered and cynical manner.
