Government shutdown avoided; now what for social conservatives?

A shutdown of the federal government was averted at the eleventh hour last night, as House Speaker John Boehner, Pres. Obama, and Senate Democrats reached an agreement to cut $38 billion from the budget after realizing that their numbers were only a couple of billion apart anyway. The big story (since the culture wars have always sold more papers than number-crunching fights, even in the era of the anti-spending Tea Party) was the fight over cutting funding for Planned Parenthood. The New York Times reported that Democrats won that one, with a largely symbolic (since it will be defeated by Senate Dems) separate vote on the measure scheduled for sometime next week.

The Times seems to think social conservatives ought to be elated that they figured so prominently in this budget fight in the first place, and relieved to see that they have Speaker Boehner's ear. Yet in the end they didn't. "Even veteran anti-abortion Republicans, like Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, indicated a willingness to compromise, not wanting the party to be accused of shutting down the government over divisive social policy and diluting its new emphasis on cutting spending," the Times reported. In a press conference yesterday, after much tough-talking about Planned Parenthood, the speaker told reporters there was "only one reason we do not have an agreement yet, and that is spending." Ultimately, he refused to make the impasse about abortion or abortion spending; rather, he played to the average Tea Partier, concerned only with "spending" in the aggregate.

Which leads me to what I think is the crux of the issue: the absurdity of narrating the whole show-down in terms of numbers. $38 billion in cuts, $61 billion in cuts, $36 billion in cuts... in the absence of much real information about what is being cut and the probable consequences, office-holders have consistently talked about the amount rather than the substance of the cuts. The cuts to Planned Parenthood and NPR funding were almost the only specifics discussed, and in the end, the issue was "spending," again in general, as though government were one big fatty hamburger, and all we need to do to lose weight is eat a smaller portion of it. Unfortunately, that has been the main message of the Tea Party all along - we don't care how you do it, just cut it.

The problem is that social conservatives do care - or should care. In this show-down pro-lifers cared about one particular cut - Planned Parenthood funding. (I have my disagreements with that particular fixation, but that's not the point here.) Here in South Carolina, though, pro-lifers (both Republicans and Democrats) have objected to cuts to disabilities funding. Not all cuts are created equal. Some government spending helps families afford to care for children that have been carried to term rather than aborted. Some government spending gives women hope that they can raise their special needs children to have some hope of a dignified life, with care and (if applicable) job training in adulthood. Some government spending helps families navigate the tricky waters and high cost of adopting an otherwise-unwanted baby. Some government spending helps create an environment in which life - beyond conception and beyond birth - can be valued.

Obviously, Republicans and Democrats (even those who are deeply pro-life and have a social conscience about such things) disagree vehemently about the government's role in reducing the rate of abortion - what is can and should do. But even pro-life Republicans skeptical of the ability of government to effect change (although isn't that what efforts to make abortion illegal are all about? But I digress...) ought to acknowledge that there are different kinds and targets of government spending, and some may help and others hurt their cause. It's not just about the numbers.

In that case, I think social conservatives, as well as Democrats, have a duty to criticize the way this budget fight has proceeded and ask that officials be forthcoming about what's behind the numbers, and that voters do a little digging themselves and not just evaluate their representatives on the basis of how many billions of dollars they voted to cut. The Times quoted Rep. Steve Chabot of Ohio, a pro-life Republican, as saying that "for some, people... abortion is more important. For some people, spending is more important. For me, it would be hard to say one over the other.” Since when did our politics become "abortion versus spending"? That's a ludicrous, superficial, and sad dichotomy, and to the extent that the Republicans are selling that choice to social conservatives, they might as well sell them some beach-front property in Arizona while they're at it.

- KPE