On the off chance your dumb ass was still walking around thinking, "Those tea party politicians are slimming the size of our gummiment to save my tax dollars!" here's your daily reminder that austerity is just right wing government expansion in disguise. Meet Texas Republican Bill Zedler, who, after failing to get additional reporting requirements for abortion clinics passed through the Texas legislature last session, is now having the Texas Department of Healthand Human Services do it for him.
Via the Dallas Observer, Zedler is having the DHSH
require women and their doctors fill out and submit to the state detailed questionnaires about their abortions, a laundry list of information that included details about the woman's educational history, previous abortions, her method of contraception, the reason for the abortion, how she was paying for it and the age of the father of her fetus, among other things.
Zedler's amendment to require this reporting failed in the Texas legislature—lemme repeat that, FAILED IN THE "CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS HAVE BOTH HOUSES AND THE GOVERNOR'S MANSION" Texas legsialture—because even Zedler's right wing cronies didn't see the need for additional reporting from abortion clinics, and that's saying something.
Zedler's not letting failure stand in his way. He has petitioned the DHSH to require the data anyway. No one knows why the DHSH complied, and Reality Check was unable to get answers:
It's important to remember that Bill Zedler requested that DSHS put in place these new reporting requirements despite the repeated failure to pass a law mandating them. RH Reality Check therefore wanted to know whether the DSHS had reason to believe there were problems with existing reporting requirements, or reason to suspect that individual doctors were not reporting complications or hiding wrongdoing from DSHS. So far, the DSHS has not given RH Reality Check any indication that it believes that the existing requirements were inadequate, faulty or otherwise insufficient.
Put aside how you feel about abortion: this is blatant expansion of government bureaucracy for purely ideological purposes. No, it's not the evil federal gummiment that's expanding, but I find it hard to buy that increasing the size of state government to pointlessly punish health care providers somehow doesn't violate the austerity philosophy that currently rules the right.
The next time you hear a Republican going on and on about the size of government, repeat to yourself: austerity is just right wing government expansion in disguise.
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