Agenda economics

Politics | House bill long on social spending, short on bipartisanship | Timothy Lamer

Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images

If the oath-of-office flub was the first gaffe of the Obama years, then the second occurred four days later on Jan. 24. Asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos to defend the $200 million in funding for family planning that Democrats had put in their economic stimulus bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried to make the case that contraception would stimulate the economy. The funds, she said, would "reduce [the] cost" to states for children's health care and education.

Republicans pounced on the babies-are-a-costly-problem rhetoric as an example of their main problem with the bill: In the guise of "stimulus," the bill would merely advance the liberal social agenda, grow the government, and reward liberal interest groups—all without doing much to help the economy.