Last updated on 2011.09.25
You don't have to be a Teabagger to acknowledge that the federal government has a debt problem. You don't have to be a Teabagger to recognize that we don't have money to throw at programs that don't work.
But you do have to be a Teabagger (cf. Allen Unruh) to cry that the federal government spends too much money and then ask Uncle Sam to increase spending by $550 million over five years on abstinence education.
That's what we'd get from H.R. 2874, the Abstinence Education Reallocation Act. The main sponsor of this bill is Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL), who would have taken default over letting Uncle Sam spend any more money back in August. But apparently spending $550 million that we don't have on abstinence-only education programs that produce worse outcomes than comprehensive sex ed.
Rep. Hultgren's bill has one co-sponsor so far, fellow GOP freshman Rep. James Lankford (R-OK). Let's see if South Dakota's fundagelical freshman Congresswoman Kristi Noem joins that list... or if the weight of her purported fiscal conservatism and scientific evidence can keep her from wasting our money on her pals the Unruhs.
Abstinence of several kinds may be good personal policy, but has proven to be lousy ineffective public policy. Primary beneficiaries are not students, but the promoters of the program.