onmyknees
05-05-2012, 03:19 AM
More than a few of your posts reference some sort of Republican War on Women, or slamming women back to the middle ages....you do it all the time both on the political boards, and figure out a way to slip your repulsive opinion in on even apolitical threads. So now it's time to come face to face with the truth, and the truth as told by CNN and The Washngton Post....not what anyone would consider conservative publications or even sympathetic to conservative positions. There's lots of reasons why people lie or misrepresent the facts. So after being confronted with the facts.....why do you continue to lie ? Are you ignorant ? Just too lazy to research facts and parrot what you read on left wing publications? Or just a damn liar? I suspect it's all three......
First the Washington Post looks at the evidence......
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A GOP ‘assault’ on women’s health?
Posted by Glenn Kessler (http://www.washingtonpost.com/glenn-kessler/2011/03/02/ABzNymP_page.html) at 06:02 AM ET, 05/03/2012 TheWashingtonPost
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(Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
“In order to pay for it, [House Republicans] are going to make an assault on women’s health, make another assault on women’s health, continue our assault on women’s health and pay for this with prevention initiatives that are in effect right now for childhood immunization; for screening for breast cancer, for cervical cancer; and for initiatives to reduce birth defects – a large part of what the Center for Disease Control does in terms of prevention.”
--House Minority Leader Nancy Perlosi (D-Calif.), April 26, 2012
“I’ll guarantee you that they’ve not spent a dime out of this fund dealing with anything to do with women’s health.”
--House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), April 30, 2012
This is why Americans hate politics. How can two serious, major-league politicians have such a vehement disagreement over even basic facts?
At dispute is how to provide funding that would prevent a jump in the interest rates for subsidized loans made by the federal government to undergraduate college students. The House of Representatives voted last week to keep the rate from doubling, but funded it by eliminating the Prevention and Public Health Fund that is part of President Obama’s health care law. (The House measure has little chance in the Senate controlled by Democrats.)
There is a bit of budget gamesmanship going on here, as well as a relentless messaging campaign by the Democrats. Just look at some of these quotes:
--“The only way they can find to pay for it is to attack women’s health and children’s health” (Rep. John Tierney of Massachusetts).
--“Under the cover of being for student loans, they now are attacking women’s health in the most cynical fashion.” (Rep. George Miller of California.)
--“The way to pay for this assistance for students is not to shut down health for the women of this country.” (Rep. Rob Andrews of New Jersey).
--“House Republicans have demonstrated their complete disregard and contempt for women’s health.” (Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois)
We are not going to get into an argument about whether the preventive health fund is a good or bad thing — Democrats say it provides steady funding for preventive health, Republicans say it is a “slush fund” to get around regular appropriations — but we do think it would be useful to examine how much money in this fund goes to women’s health programs.
The Facts
First of all, it makes a difference whether you look at the current fiscal year (2012) or proposals for the next fiscal year (2013). In the current fiscal year, there is very little money specifically allocated to women’s health programs.
Take a look at this list (http://www.hhs.gov/open/recordsandreports/prevention/index.html) on the Department of Health and Human Services website, and you will see there is nothing specifically aimed at women, except perhaps $7 million for breastfeeding. Pelosi mentioned childhood immunization, and that’s there, but that’s more for children than women. But cervical cancer, breast cancer, birth defects — nope, unless you label programs on obesity and tobacco as preventing birth defects.
Indeed, a year ago, when the White House decried a previous effort by Republicans to kill the fund, its official statement (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/112/saphr1217h_20110413.pdf) made no mention of women’s health. “By concentrating on the causes of chronic disease, the Affordable Care Act helps move the Nation from a focus on sickness and disease to one based on wellness and prevention,” the statement said.
Women make up about 50 percent of the population, so what Democrats are doing is essentially relabeling preventive health programs aimed at all Americans as affecting primarily women. A fact sheet provided by Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill made that case, arguing that “a higher proportion of women of child-bearing age are overweight or obese compared to men and women of younger or older ages.” He said that some 60 percent of the $1 billion in the fund for 2012 “benefit women and their children.”
Moreover, Hammill said that Pelosi was not trying to say these programs were in the fund now, only that they exist currently and would be funded through the fund in the future.
We are not sure if that is clear from her comments. Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck, meanwhile, says that the speaker “was responding to Democratic charges about cutting breast and cervical cancer” services when he said not “a dime” in the fund went to women’s health. “If you want to take his literal meaning to go beyond the breast and cervical cancer that he was asked about, I concede that 0.7% of funding has gone to a women-specific program (breastfeeding),” Buck said. “But if he was exaggerating, it clearly wasn’t by a whole lot.”
Still, the picture gets more complicated when you consider fiscal 2013 funding. That’s because, in President Obama’s budget, the administration proposed moving $260 million in funding for cervical and breast cancer prevention into the fund. It’s only a proposal, but that is why administration officials defend raising the women’s health issue in a statement (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/112/saphr4628h_20120427.pdf) on the more recent legislation.
“Women, in particular, will benefit from this Prevention Fund, which would provide for hundreds of thousands of screenings for breast and cervical cancer,” the statement said.
(Note the use of the word “will”.)
“For FY 2013, the Administration has felt forced to propose PPHF funding for certain large, indispensable prevention programs that it hasn’t proposed PPHF funding before – such as the breast and cervical cancer screenings for women program and the program to prevent and detect birth defects – in order to save these programs and ensure they continue to exist,” Hammill said. “They have been forced to do this because since January 2011 House Republicans have been systematically working to cut the vital Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill.”
However, we think an ordinary person would think Pelosi’s remarks made it seem as if the funding proposed for 2013 is actually happening right now. It’s unclear if the administration’s plan will be accepted by Congress, but budgetary stalemate actually works to Obama’s advantage. If the Congress is unable to allocate the funds based on its own priorities, that authority passes to the administration, as it did for the 2012 fiscal year. (That, in effect, is how the fund gets labeled “a slush fund” — Congress gave up its authority.)
Hammill argues that women are more adversely affected by cuts to government programs, and so it makes sense to keep the focus on the impact on women. He forthrightly defended the use of the phrase “assault,” saying “One would have to be living under a rock not to notice a clear assault on women and children under the Republican leadership.”
“I don’t think this is a gray area,” he said. “I think we are on solid ground here. ...Leader Pelosi’s statement is clear and factual.”
The Pinocchio Test
This is a good example of politicians using obscure details of the budgetary process to score political points.
From Pelosi’s statement, one could imagine a wholesale “assault” to strip funding for women’s health programs. But in fact, there are virtually no specific programs aimed at women currently in the fund. In the future, the administration hopes to add such programs, but that is not the reality today, as evidenced by the fact the administration never raised this concern last year when the GOP-led House also voted to kill the preventive health care fund.
Pelosi could have raised concerns about perceived cuts in preventive health. She could have also noted that women benefit greatly from such efforts. But she — and fellow Democrats — went too far to label this “an assault on women’s health.” Maybe evidence of that will emerge through the regular appropriations process—at which point we could revisit this ruling — but for the moment this smacks of political opportunism.
We wavered between one and two Pinocchios but ultimately this fits with two on our scale: “Some factual error may be involved but not necessarily. A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people.”
Two Pinocchios
http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/WashingtonPost/Content/Blogs/fact-checker/StandingArt/pinocchio_2.jpg?uuid=shYSCEniEeCn1tWe_T6KGA
Now Anderson Cooper
CNN Catches Dems for False Accusation, but Networks Missed the Story
By Matt Hadro (http://newsbusters.org/user/matt-hadro) | May 04, 2012 | 15:05
12 (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matt-hadro/2012/05/04/cnn-catches-dems-false-accusation-networks-missed-story#)
Change font size: A (http://javascript<b></b>:changeFontSize(1)) | A (http://javascript<b></b>:changeFontSize(-1))
CNN's Anderson Cooper twice nailed Democrats in the last week for falsely accusing Republicans of waging war on women's health, but the three major networks either ignored the story (ABC) or skimmed over the details without fact-checking the Democratic accusations (CBS, NBC).
Cooper aired a critical "Keeping Them Honest" report on April 27 and another one on Thursday May 3, refuting Democratic complaints that Republicans were unfairly targeting women's health through preventative care cuts. On the weekend of April 27-29, NBC and CBS covered the preventative care cuts but simply aired soundbites from both parties without investigating the validity of the Democratic accusations. [Video below the break. Audio here (http://newsbusters.org/sites/default/files/2012-05-04-CNN-AC360-Dems.mp3).]
The cuts came when House Republicans passed a bill to keep the student loan rates the same, and paid for it by nixing preventative care funding in ObamaCare. Democrats, led by Minority Leader Pelosi, cried foul and accused the Republicans of unfairly targeting women in the cuts.
Cooper found this claim to be unsupported by the numbers, since the preventative care funding included items that benefitted all the public, not items specifically for women like mammograms or prenatal care. Furthermore, the "women's health" money that would enter the fund next year, reported Cooper, amounts to a negligible amount -- "two-tenths of one percent" of the entire fund.
"Does that add up to a war on women? The cuts under today's bill are drastic, there's no doubt about it," Cooper reported. "But do they target women specifically as the Democrats are now saying and attacking the Republicans on? And the evidence doesn't seem to support that."
Cooper then grilled one of the Democratic congresswomen who had cried out at the GOP, asking her "How can you claim this is specifically an assault on women's health?" He also told her that she had voted to take money from that same preventative care fund to pay for the payroll tax cut. "But if the Republicans had then said that was a war on women by the Democrats, would that have been accurate?" he asked.
Meanwhile, ABC ignored the conflict altogether and NBC and CBS simply reported what both parties had to say, thus giving some credence to the Democrats' false charge. On April 27, both NBC Nightly News and CBS Evening News played the clip of Pelosi charging Republicans with taking money from "women's health."
A partial transcript of Anderson Cooper's report, which aired on April 27 on Anderson Cooper 360 at 8:00 p.m. EDT, is as follows:
[8:00]
http://newsbusters.org/sites/default/files/2012-05-04-CNN-AC360-Dems2%20dos.jpg
ANDERSON COOPER: We begin tonight, "Keeping Them Honest," with a fight over student loans. Specifically with Democratic charges that the Republican solution to this problem pays for it by waging war on women's health. That it's part of what they're calling, the Democrats are calling, the GOP war on women. Now, is that a fair accusation? Stay tuned on that.
(...)
COOPER: But the bill they passed today is paid for by eliminating preventative care funding in the Health Care Reform act. House Democrats wanted to tax oil companies. That's how they wanted to pay for it. Some members, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and others, also calling the GOP funding plan another attack on women.
(...)
COOPER: So "Keeping Them Honest" on this issue, who's right?
Well, we looked at what the House bill eliminates. It's called the Prevention and Public Health fund. About a billion dollars this budget year. The categories include tobacco prevention, HIV screening, nutrition programs, hospital and infection control, immunization, increases in the number of doctors and doctors' training. But no line items for things like mammograms, pap smears, prenatal care, any other specific women's health issues with the exception of breast-feeding.
(...)
We found a report from the Center for Disease Control, the CDC, that says low-income breast and cancer screening programs would be jeopardized if the prevention fund is eliminated. That's absolutely true.
Currently though, those services are paid for under a different program but are scheduled to come into the prevention fund next year. "Keeping Them Honest," though, that's only about two-tenths of one percent of the billion dollar fund. So, it's a tiny, tiny fraction. Does that add up to a war on women? The cuts under today's bill are drastic, there's no doubt about it. They do a lot of things, none of them especially good for public health. That's not the argument.
But do they target women specifically as the Democrats are now saying and attacking the Republicans on? And the evidence doesn't seem to support that. There's also this. House Democrats who now oppose the cuts didn't always consider the prevention fund off-limits.
"Keeping Them Honest," in fact, they agreed under Republican pressure to use some of the fund to pay for an extension of the payroll tax cut earlier this year. And when Minority Leader Pelosi was asked why it was okay then but not okay now, she answered, and I quote, "Good question, and all the more reason why we shouldn't be taking any more money out of it." She went on to say, she didn't favor doing it then, but said it was the only way to get the tax cut done.
(...)
COOPER: (to Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.)) How can you claim this is specifically an assault on women's health?
(...)
COOPER: But with all due respect, Republicans are saying -- they could say the exact same thing about you, that if you're serious about making a compromise, don't politicize this and say – attack the Republicans saying this is a war against women, when it doesn't seem like there's evidence to back it up.
(...)
COOPER: But congresswoman, no one ever acknowledges that their side also politicizes things, and you seem unwilling to do that as well. You say Republicans are politicizing it. I just want to ask you one more time. Are Democrats at all politicizing this?
(...)
COOPER: It was the President, though, who opened up the idea of taking money from this fund earlier this year to pay for the payroll tax, which was also what you voted for.
(...)
COOPER: But if the Republicans had then said that was a war on women by the Democrats, would that have been accurate?
First the Washington Post looks at the evidence......
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(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/a-gop-assault-on-womens-health/2012/05/02/gIQA6MDpxT_blog.html#comments)
A GOP ‘assault’ on women’s health?
Posted by Glenn Kessler (http://www.washingtonpost.com/glenn-kessler/2011/03/02/ABzNymP_page.html) at 06:02 AM ET, 05/03/2012 TheWashingtonPost
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(Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
“In order to pay for it, [House Republicans] are going to make an assault on women’s health, make another assault on women’s health, continue our assault on women’s health and pay for this with prevention initiatives that are in effect right now for childhood immunization; for screening for breast cancer, for cervical cancer; and for initiatives to reduce birth defects – a large part of what the Center for Disease Control does in terms of prevention.”
--House Minority Leader Nancy Perlosi (D-Calif.), April 26, 2012
“I’ll guarantee you that they’ve not spent a dime out of this fund dealing with anything to do with women’s health.”
--House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), April 30, 2012
This is why Americans hate politics. How can two serious, major-league politicians have such a vehement disagreement over even basic facts?
At dispute is how to provide funding that would prevent a jump in the interest rates for subsidized loans made by the federal government to undergraduate college students. The House of Representatives voted last week to keep the rate from doubling, but funded it by eliminating the Prevention and Public Health Fund that is part of President Obama’s health care law. (The House measure has little chance in the Senate controlled by Democrats.)
There is a bit of budget gamesmanship going on here, as well as a relentless messaging campaign by the Democrats. Just look at some of these quotes:
--“The only way they can find to pay for it is to attack women’s health and children’s health” (Rep. John Tierney of Massachusetts).
--“Under the cover of being for student loans, they now are attacking women’s health in the most cynical fashion.” (Rep. George Miller of California.)
--“The way to pay for this assistance for students is not to shut down health for the women of this country.” (Rep. Rob Andrews of New Jersey).
--“House Republicans have demonstrated their complete disregard and contempt for women’s health.” (Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois)
We are not going to get into an argument about whether the preventive health fund is a good or bad thing — Democrats say it provides steady funding for preventive health, Republicans say it is a “slush fund” to get around regular appropriations — but we do think it would be useful to examine how much money in this fund goes to women’s health programs.
The Facts
First of all, it makes a difference whether you look at the current fiscal year (2012) or proposals for the next fiscal year (2013). In the current fiscal year, there is very little money specifically allocated to women’s health programs.
Take a look at this list (http://www.hhs.gov/open/recordsandreports/prevention/index.html) on the Department of Health and Human Services website, and you will see there is nothing specifically aimed at women, except perhaps $7 million for breastfeeding. Pelosi mentioned childhood immunization, and that’s there, but that’s more for children than women. But cervical cancer, breast cancer, birth defects — nope, unless you label programs on obesity and tobacco as preventing birth defects.
Indeed, a year ago, when the White House decried a previous effort by Republicans to kill the fund, its official statement (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/112/saphr1217h_20110413.pdf) made no mention of women’s health. “By concentrating on the causes of chronic disease, the Affordable Care Act helps move the Nation from a focus on sickness and disease to one based on wellness and prevention,” the statement said.
Women make up about 50 percent of the population, so what Democrats are doing is essentially relabeling preventive health programs aimed at all Americans as affecting primarily women. A fact sheet provided by Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill made that case, arguing that “a higher proportion of women of child-bearing age are overweight or obese compared to men and women of younger or older ages.” He said that some 60 percent of the $1 billion in the fund for 2012 “benefit women and their children.”
Moreover, Hammill said that Pelosi was not trying to say these programs were in the fund now, only that they exist currently and would be funded through the fund in the future.
We are not sure if that is clear from her comments. Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck, meanwhile, says that the speaker “was responding to Democratic charges about cutting breast and cervical cancer” services when he said not “a dime” in the fund went to women’s health. “If you want to take his literal meaning to go beyond the breast and cervical cancer that he was asked about, I concede that 0.7% of funding has gone to a women-specific program (breastfeeding),” Buck said. “But if he was exaggerating, it clearly wasn’t by a whole lot.”
Still, the picture gets more complicated when you consider fiscal 2013 funding. That’s because, in President Obama’s budget, the administration proposed moving $260 million in funding for cervical and breast cancer prevention into the fund. It’s only a proposal, but that is why administration officials defend raising the women’s health issue in a statement (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/112/saphr4628h_20120427.pdf) on the more recent legislation.
“Women, in particular, will benefit from this Prevention Fund, which would provide for hundreds of thousands of screenings for breast and cervical cancer,” the statement said.
(Note the use of the word “will”.)
“For FY 2013, the Administration has felt forced to propose PPHF funding for certain large, indispensable prevention programs that it hasn’t proposed PPHF funding before – such as the breast and cervical cancer screenings for women program and the program to prevent and detect birth defects – in order to save these programs and ensure they continue to exist,” Hammill said. “They have been forced to do this because since January 2011 House Republicans have been systematically working to cut the vital Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill.”
However, we think an ordinary person would think Pelosi’s remarks made it seem as if the funding proposed for 2013 is actually happening right now. It’s unclear if the administration’s plan will be accepted by Congress, but budgetary stalemate actually works to Obama’s advantage. If the Congress is unable to allocate the funds based on its own priorities, that authority passes to the administration, as it did for the 2012 fiscal year. (That, in effect, is how the fund gets labeled “a slush fund” — Congress gave up its authority.)
Hammill argues that women are more adversely affected by cuts to government programs, and so it makes sense to keep the focus on the impact on women. He forthrightly defended the use of the phrase “assault,” saying “One would have to be living under a rock not to notice a clear assault on women and children under the Republican leadership.”
“I don’t think this is a gray area,” he said. “I think we are on solid ground here. ...Leader Pelosi’s statement is clear and factual.”
The Pinocchio Test
This is a good example of politicians using obscure details of the budgetary process to score political points.
From Pelosi’s statement, one could imagine a wholesale “assault” to strip funding for women’s health programs. But in fact, there are virtually no specific programs aimed at women currently in the fund. In the future, the administration hopes to add such programs, but that is not the reality today, as evidenced by the fact the administration never raised this concern last year when the GOP-led House also voted to kill the preventive health care fund.
Pelosi could have raised concerns about perceived cuts in preventive health. She could have also noted that women benefit greatly from such efforts. But she — and fellow Democrats — went too far to label this “an assault on women’s health.” Maybe evidence of that will emerge through the regular appropriations process—at which point we could revisit this ruling — but for the moment this smacks of political opportunism.
We wavered between one and two Pinocchios but ultimately this fits with two on our scale: “Some factual error may be involved but not necessarily. A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people.”
Two Pinocchios
http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/WashingtonPost/Content/Blogs/fact-checker/StandingArt/pinocchio_2.jpg?uuid=shYSCEniEeCn1tWe_T6KGA
Now Anderson Cooper
CNN Catches Dems for False Accusation, but Networks Missed the Story
By Matt Hadro (http://newsbusters.org/user/matt-hadro) | May 04, 2012 | 15:05
12 (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matt-hadro/2012/05/04/cnn-catches-dems-false-accusation-networks-missed-story#)
Change font size: A (http://javascript<b></b>:changeFontSize(1)) | A (http://javascript<b></b>:changeFontSize(-1))
CNN's Anderson Cooper twice nailed Democrats in the last week for falsely accusing Republicans of waging war on women's health, but the three major networks either ignored the story (ABC) or skimmed over the details without fact-checking the Democratic accusations (CBS, NBC).
Cooper aired a critical "Keeping Them Honest" report on April 27 and another one on Thursday May 3, refuting Democratic complaints that Republicans were unfairly targeting women's health through preventative care cuts. On the weekend of April 27-29, NBC and CBS covered the preventative care cuts but simply aired soundbites from both parties without investigating the validity of the Democratic accusations. [Video below the break. Audio here (http://newsbusters.org/sites/default/files/2012-05-04-CNN-AC360-Dems.mp3).]
The cuts came when House Republicans passed a bill to keep the student loan rates the same, and paid for it by nixing preventative care funding in ObamaCare. Democrats, led by Minority Leader Pelosi, cried foul and accused the Republicans of unfairly targeting women in the cuts.
Cooper found this claim to be unsupported by the numbers, since the preventative care funding included items that benefitted all the public, not items specifically for women like mammograms or prenatal care. Furthermore, the "women's health" money that would enter the fund next year, reported Cooper, amounts to a negligible amount -- "two-tenths of one percent" of the entire fund.
"Does that add up to a war on women? The cuts under today's bill are drastic, there's no doubt about it," Cooper reported. "But do they target women specifically as the Democrats are now saying and attacking the Republicans on? And the evidence doesn't seem to support that."
Cooper then grilled one of the Democratic congresswomen who had cried out at the GOP, asking her "How can you claim this is specifically an assault on women's health?" He also told her that she had voted to take money from that same preventative care fund to pay for the payroll tax cut. "But if the Republicans had then said that was a war on women by the Democrats, would that have been accurate?" he asked.
Meanwhile, ABC ignored the conflict altogether and NBC and CBS simply reported what both parties had to say, thus giving some credence to the Democrats' false charge. On April 27, both NBC Nightly News and CBS Evening News played the clip of Pelosi charging Republicans with taking money from "women's health."
A partial transcript of Anderson Cooper's report, which aired on April 27 on Anderson Cooper 360 at 8:00 p.m. EDT, is as follows:
[8:00]
http://newsbusters.org/sites/default/files/2012-05-04-CNN-AC360-Dems2%20dos.jpg
ANDERSON COOPER: We begin tonight, "Keeping Them Honest," with a fight over student loans. Specifically with Democratic charges that the Republican solution to this problem pays for it by waging war on women's health. That it's part of what they're calling, the Democrats are calling, the GOP war on women. Now, is that a fair accusation? Stay tuned on that.
(...)
COOPER: But the bill they passed today is paid for by eliminating preventative care funding in the Health Care Reform act. House Democrats wanted to tax oil companies. That's how they wanted to pay for it. Some members, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and others, also calling the GOP funding plan another attack on women.
(...)
COOPER: So "Keeping Them Honest" on this issue, who's right?
Well, we looked at what the House bill eliminates. It's called the Prevention and Public Health fund. About a billion dollars this budget year. The categories include tobacco prevention, HIV screening, nutrition programs, hospital and infection control, immunization, increases in the number of doctors and doctors' training. But no line items for things like mammograms, pap smears, prenatal care, any other specific women's health issues with the exception of breast-feeding.
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We found a report from the Center for Disease Control, the CDC, that says low-income breast and cancer screening programs would be jeopardized if the prevention fund is eliminated. That's absolutely true.
Currently though, those services are paid for under a different program but are scheduled to come into the prevention fund next year. "Keeping Them Honest," though, that's only about two-tenths of one percent of the billion dollar fund. So, it's a tiny, tiny fraction. Does that add up to a war on women? The cuts under today's bill are drastic, there's no doubt about it. They do a lot of things, none of them especially good for public health. That's not the argument.
But do they target women specifically as the Democrats are now saying and attacking the Republicans on? And the evidence doesn't seem to support that. There's also this. House Democrats who now oppose the cuts didn't always consider the prevention fund off-limits.
"Keeping Them Honest," in fact, they agreed under Republican pressure to use some of the fund to pay for an extension of the payroll tax cut earlier this year. And when Minority Leader Pelosi was asked why it was okay then but not okay now, she answered, and I quote, "Good question, and all the more reason why we shouldn't be taking any more money out of it." She went on to say, she didn't favor doing it then, but said it was the only way to get the tax cut done.
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COOPER: (to Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.)) How can you claim this is specifically an assault on women's health?
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COOPER: But with all due respect, Republicans are saying -- they could say the exact same thing about you, that if you're serious about making a compromise, don't politicize this and say – attack the Republicans saying this is a war against women, when it doesn't seem like there's evidence to back it up.
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COOPER: But congresswoman, no one ever acknowledges that their side also politicizes things, and you seem unwilling to do that as well. You say Republicans are politicizing it. I just want to ask you one more time. Are Democrats at all politicizing this?
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COOPER: It was the President, though, who opened up the idea of taking money from this fund earlier this year to pay for the payroll tax, which was also what you voted for.
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COOPER: But if the Republicans had then said that was a war on women by the Democrats, would that have been accurate?