Posted on 09/30/2015 7:36:54 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz unearthed a pretty big nugget on Tuesday when he revealed Planned Parenthood spent $40M on travel, parties, and office space. The Hill has a round up of Chaffetz’ report released during a House Overnight and Government Reform Committee hearing (emphasis mine).
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) on Tuesday accused the organization of racking up “exorbitant travel expenses,” including first-class flights, charter travel and entertainment costs that included $622,706 on “blowout parties” with celebrity guests…
Some of the themed parties had names such as “Gathering of Goddesses and Gods,” “Chocolate Champagne” and “Murder Mystery,” according to a report released by the committee during the hearing Tuesday…
The committee’s report also noted Planned Parenthood’s real estate holdings, including $34.8 million for its corporate office space near Madison Square Garden in New York City in 2011. In 2015, it sold a 72,000 square-foot condominium to Brookfield Property Partners for $69.6 million.
That’s a LOT of money and it shows Planned Parenthood has some pretty good financial advisers to boot. There’s something else the hearing showed, which was Planned Parenthood would have plenty of money even if all their federal cash was suddenly cut off. Planned Parenthood gets about $700B in nongovernmental funds, and Legal Insurrection’s Kemberlee Kaye found they do a nice job at keeping expenses low.
Not helping their give us ALL the tax money case was the revelation that Planned Parenthood raised $127 million over their expenditures last year. When asked how the $127 million was spent, Richards stammered, began listing expenses until she was corrected, and struggled as she attempted to explain how the organization spent their multi-million-dollar overage.
Unfortunately, the narrative from the left on the hearing will be the rapid-fire exchange between Chaffetz and Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards on how much she makes in a year. Here’s Talking Points Memo’s YouTube video of the questioning, under the ominous title of “Rep. Jason Chaffetz Repeatedly Interrupts Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards.”
The Huffington Post is also pushing the “Chaffetz was mean to Richards!” narrative, especially after New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney accused Chaffetz of “beating up on a woman.” But this isn’t the case. Anyone who’s ever watched Chaffetz when he gets rolling knows he will keep pressing a point regardless of the sex of the person he’s questioning. Check out his questioning of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen last year.
If anything, Chaffetz is showing how much he respects Richards by treating her exactly like he’d treat any other person. But that’s not what the left is going to push because they’re not interested in talking about respect, they just want to make it seem like Chaffetz hates women. Which is ridiculous because Chaffetz was trying to prove how much Planned Parenthood actually wastes government funding by paying Richards over $500k a year. If Planned Parenthood were a private organization, which didn’t get $528.4M in funding from the government, it’s doubtful Chaffetz would push this so hard.
The bigger question in all this is whether or not the government should be involved in health care at all. Guttmacher Institute reported in 2012 the federal government spent over $2B on family planning client services in FY2010. Most of the cash comes from Medicaid, but the rest came from the Title X Family Planning Program. So is there a way for the government to do entitlement reform? Yes, but it won’t be easy. Congress’ decision to target Planned Parenthood for defunding isn’t a bad idea, but the government should be willing to take the next step and defund all medical programs. States do contribute to family planning and women’s health organizations so there’s nothing stopping them from doing it either, although it might not be fiscally sound. It’s going to be more difficult to get the federal government out of health care with Obamacare, Medicaid, and Title X (the latter two have been around for over four decades), but it’s something Congress should consider. The way the debt keeps rising, the tipping point’s gotta happen at some point, right?
This (the executive branch and CONgre$$) is the most evil government in the history of the republic, after what has been revealed to us about Planned Pre-Meditated Pulling Apart Babies for Profit. We are FORCED to pay for these deceivers…this death cult.
Plunder and death…the calling cards of criminals, socialists, and totalitarians. Witness history. Witness current events.
ZERO REPRESENTATION on fundamental aspects of life, liberty and the slaughter of the innocent.
“a child is born with no state of mind, blind to the ways of mankind…
…god is smilin’ on you but he’s frownin’ too”
…”it’s all about money, ain’t a damn thing funny”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4o8TeqKhgY
I’m glad someone is standing up...I know Mike Lee (Utah) is standing behind Cruz...don’t know where Hatch is hiding....
Just think how many free mammograms they could have provided with that money.
This is hard earned money forcibly extorted from working families by the federal government and handed over to leftist abortionists who use it for their own pleasure and enjoyment.
When we say defund Planned Parenthood do we mean “Remove PP from the rolls of authorized Medicaid providers”? Isn’t that how most federal dollars get to Planned Parenthood—as reimbursements for medical procedures provided to Medicaid patients?
You would thin PP is toast, but it is one of the pillars of progressive liberal democrat/rino communist uniparty, it will be sustained with or without federal funding.
Unless a whole bunch of people in the organizational structure are put in prison, how many think that will ever happen, by past observation it can be assumed that we will maybe see one or two low level operatives get lightly reprimanded in some form, but I seriously doubt it will go much further than that.
I would love to be surprised and to be wrong on this.
Planned Parenthood gets about $700B in nongovernmental funds...
Um, no.
From the looks of Carolyn Maloney, her parents needed Planned Parenthood back when she was conceived. Not only is she ugly on the outside, if you turned her inside out it would look even worse!
Yeah, but seriously? You’re going after PP for “waste and fraud” when they are in the murder business? And they say, “Oh, we’re sorry, we’ll be more efficient in our killing.” Then what is Chaffetz’s answer.
Here’s another outrage:
Taxpayer funds go to them and they turnaround and send money to 100% Dem candidates.
So it’s a Dem funding scheme to boot.
Well since I live in Utah, the next time he is home I will ask him, how about that?
At least he’s doing something....
Don’t get me wrong, I love this guy. But surely it seems odd, to you, does it not that he is focusing on waste and fraud instead of, well, what PP really does?
They reported a profit of a billion dollars. they don’t need the half billion we gave them from tax monies.
Also baffled by that number.
“Planned Parenthood gets about $700B in nongovernmental funds”
Seriously?
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