GOP presidential candidates vow to defund Planned Parenthood

While Hillary Clinton defends organization amid video controversy

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GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES VOW TO DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD

STEVE FORBES: Well in the case of a Planned Parenthood, it’s been the policy of the federal government thanks to Congress since the 1970s that the federal government does not fund abortions. They may allow it, but they can’t fund it. Planned Parenthood has a roundabout way of doing it, money is fungible. This goes to the 1970’s law, no funding for abortions. Sabrina and Lizzy are right here, you have health centers that can use this for things like cancer, not abortion.

RICH KARLGAARD: Well it would be interesting, Barbara Boxer go out and fundraise for something she believes in, that a growing majority of Americans find disgusting. To Hillary Clinton’s point on a war on women, you have to assume that some aborted fetuses are baby girls. We now know that the majority of fetuses aborted around the world are baby girls.

ELIZABETH MACDONALD: Yes defund it. This is a disgrace, they dishonor themselves. It is not fetal tissue, these are babies. Listen, I am for women’s health. I am for over-the-counter birth control without a doctor’s prescription. But what Planned Parenthood did here is abhorrent. So there are other women’s community centers that can handle mammograms, cervical cancer, screenings and the like. I think that Planned Parenthood has hit the end of the road right now.

SABRINA SCHAEFFER: Oh absolutely, I think anyone who’s had a child can’t imagine it being discussed as a line item, it’s disgusting. But I think that EMac makes a really important point which is if you really care about women’s health, there’s plenty of other women’s health organizations that can address real issues, especially for low income women, and we should be talking about repealing and replacing ObamaCare so we have an actual market for healthcare, and we can actually afford treatments and procedures for women.

JOHN TAMNY: Even if they didn’t violate the rules, you should defund it simply because government should not have an opinion one way or the other on abortion. That’s the first thing. Secondly, Planned Parenthood wouldn’t disappear if it was defunded. It can still be a vibrant private organization and that’s the point those who want Planned Parenthood should not want the federal government to fund it simply because it discredits in the eyes of voters. This should be private.

BRUCE JAPSEN: I think we need to keep the funding coming. Now listen, when we had the Obamacare debate and a few people lost their healthcare, people are saying that the president lied because you couldn’t keep your doctor. Now, you’re saying that you have 700 health centers that women and men are going for cancer screenings and whatnot, and you’re saying if you have your health center you can’t keep it.

REPORT: 60 PERCENT SAY KIDS TODAY WILL BE WORSE OFF FINANCIALLY THAN THEIR PARENTS

STEVE FORBES: Absolutely, I’m old enough to remember the 1970’s. A malaise decade, an America in decline. In the 1980’s thanks to Ronald Reagan we came roaring back and ended up leading the world, inspiring the world. We can do it again. One of the things, even though Gov. Kasich gave that wonderful thing, and Senator Rubio, the candidates in the debate on Thursday night passed up the opportunity to hammer home how do we revive the American economy in the way that Ronald Reagan hammered home in the 1980’s and criticizing President Obama for trashing the American economy. Reagan hit Carter hard in the 1980’s. You’ve got to make that issue foremost, and I don’t think they really did it on Thursday night.

RICH KARLGAARD: I agree with Steve, they didn’t put many specifics to it. You know, if we had just grown one percent per year since World War II, the economy would be twice as large as it is today with a $34 trillion economy. The average per capita wealth would be twice as much. It’s just amazing what growth does, and we wouldn’t be at each other’s throats as much as we are today as we were in the 1970’s.

ELIZABETH MACDONALD: I agree. You know, under the Obama administration, Hillary would do the same. It’s about redistributing to get to economic growth, and they’re not doing either of that. Watch who is saying that, five percent economic growth. We can tax and spend our way to prosperity, we should have smaller government. Tax policies are ruining U.S. cities. These are Democratic platforms dating through the 1960’s through the 90’s, so that was the narrative. By the way, I bet Bush was right. Most of the time we have four percent growth through 2007.

SABRINA SCHAEFFER: No, I think we absolutely can. I think the poll numbers suggest that Americans are ready for a different narrative. I think it’s terrible that the White House perpetually paints America as a land of income inequality and a place where women are mistreated, a place where racism persists in a terrible way. I think that the country is very much ready, but it needs to be more than political platitudes it needs to be real economic policy reforms like Steve suggests. And I think that Republicans especially need to actually get out of the trenches and get in on it on an emotional level. I don’t want to talk about budget deficits if I’m a voter, we need to talk about what this means.

JOHN TAMNY: Well this reminds me of Groundhog Day, I can find polls in 1970’s saying kids were going to perform better than their parents. I graduated from college in the early 90’s, and they said that about my generation, they’re saying the same thing about Millennials, they’ve said this all before, it always happens after an economic downturn, of course we’re going to turn this thing around. What the politicians missed in the debates is with economics and prosperity, answers are easy. If you simplify a few basic policies you can get abundant growth, I don’t think the clown show the other night understands this.

BRUCE JAPSEN: Well one way when they had the Congress and the White House, is to when they expanded Medicaid with ObamaCare. What I liked about Kasich and Rubio is that they were forward looking. Kasich said listen, we’re giving the prisoners medication to get clean of drugs, and get back to work. And the thing with Rubio, I was stunned to see a Republican candidate know that Amazon is a big retailer. I’m sure Mike Huckabee thinks its Walmart.

PRESIDENT’S CLEAN POWER PLAN FUELING FIERCE DEBATE

STEVE FORBES: Yeah, like ObamaCare was going to lower healthcare costs and you can keep your doctor. Germany has gone the Obama route and it’s been a disaster. Spiegal Magazine, a German magazine, talked about energy being a luxury good. Energy poverty is electricity rates have now been three times what they are in the U.S. The went whole-hog on wind power and they like, and now they found out that power is now back up because wind power and solar power is not reliable, so they had to have redundancies, they had to have a backup.

RICH KARLGAARD: You know coal is 30 percent of electricity generation today, and natural gas is 35, so if you want to wipe out the 2/3rds source of electricity you’re doing to get a triple price increase.

ELIZABETH MACDONALD: Even Bill Gates said the cost of these moves would be beyond astronomical.

SABRINA SCHAEFFER: Yeah, it’s going to hurt American businesses and consumers and most importantly it’s not going to have an impact on the environment. We have to remember that the U.S. only puts out five percent of carbon emissions around the world. Even if we eliminated emissions entirely, we’d have a miniscule impact on the environment. This is just absurd.

JOHN TAMNY: Absolutely. Artificially high prices are going to destroy the jobs. As Steve points out, this is going to destroy the jobs. Germany tried a modified version of it and it tripled the cost of electricity.

BRUCE JAPSEN: Well we have abundant natural gas, and that’s one of the things that people don’t talk a lot about. Ok but we reducing the coal production that we have here. And this policy gives states some latitude on what they can do and how they can do it, how they can achieve these numbers.

STOCKS

ELIZABETH MACDONALD: IQ US Real Estate Small Cap ETF (ROOF)

JOHN TAMNY: American Express (AXP)