The Seattle Times - Rep. Suzan Delbene Wants To Shut Down Gop'S $1M "Political Theater'

News Article

By Nicole Brodeur

Politicians are a lot like teenagers. They usually only call people like me when they need something. A sympathetic ear, a recommendation or -- most often -- money.

Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (D-Medina) reached out the other day because she wants a committee on which she serves cut off and shut down. Now.

DelBene sits on the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives -- a panel formed by House Republican leaders in response to videos that purported to show Houston Planned Parenthood doctors haggling over the price of aborted fetal tissue.

The videos went viral last year, but were later discredited. A Texas grand jury cleared Planned Parenthood. Instead, after reviewing the footage for two months, it indicted the pair who made it (members of an anti-abortion group called the Center for Medical Process) on felony charges -- tampering with governmental records.

They also charged the head videographer with the same misdemeanor that he had alleged -- the purchase or sale of human organs. He is accused of offering to buy fetal tissue in an attempt to get Planned Parenthood employees to make a deal.

Still, the House select panel carries on, without clear rules or a specific agenda, and with DelBene and her Democratic colleagues screaming into a conservative wind.

And you and I are footing the $1 million bill.

I admit this caught my attention because it has to do with Planned Parenthood, but that is just one facet of the madness-making. This panel is wasting money and time, with majority members pushing their own agenda -- the very offenses that go to the heart of why taxpayers are so enraged with The Other Washington.

"There's no evidence of illegal activity, so why are we here?" DelBene asked the other day, when I sat with her and her panel colleague Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky D-Ill. (Schakowsky was in Seattle to keynote the Washington State Association for Justice's spring conference.)

"There's no rationale for it in the first place," Schakowsky lamented. "It's a misuse of taxpayer dollars to continue this investigation. This is far from an objective and fact-finding effort."

Their conclusion: The GOP majority on the panel -- led by Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn -- is out to defund Planned Parenthood and clinics that provide abortions. They want to end family-planning services. They want to instill fear in doctors who work in the clinics, and researchers who use fetal tissue in seeking vaccines and cures for diseases like multiple sclerosis.

"This really isn't a committee that is supposed to be investigating Planned Parenthood," DelBene said. "This is a committee with its own agenda, and that agenda is to oppose women's health."

Indeed, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote last month that Blackburn participated in a protest against Planned Parenthood at Georgetown University. The next morning, she showed up at her committee hearing and said, "My hope is that both parties can work together."

Right.

The meetings are called with almost no notice -- certainly not enough to call witnesses. And those brought in by Republican members support the GOP agenda. One of Blackburn's witnesses compared fetal-tissue research to the experiments of Nazi scientist Josef Mengele.

"Witnesses know nothing about the evidence," DelBene said. "They are there more based on their ideology."

Moreover, Republican members insist on collecting the names of the people whose work is connected to Planned Parenthood clinics, which raises privacy concerns.

"They won't commit to preserving confidentiality," DelBene said. "This is where people's lives can be at stake."

As a result, doctors doing the research fear their names getting out, and being threatened. At least one researcher is considering shutting down his program, DelBene said.

DelBene and Schakowsky are also concerned about the constant repetition of inflammatory language, like "baby body parts," which they believe fuel extremists like Robert Dear, accused of killing three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic in November. ("I am a warrior for the babies," Dear said during one court hearing.)

So why do DelBene and Schakowsky continue with what DelBene has called "political theater"?

"We feel so strongly the obligation and the opportunity to stand up for women and scientific research," DelBene said. "That's why we're there."

I admire that, and am grateful.

But why is there a "there" at all? That's the million-dollar question.

Source