Is Your Congressperson Lying To You About The 20 Week Abortion Ban?

Photo Source: Flickr Creative Commons, by Andrew Howe. Buy the book at Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Politicians-Essential-Excuse-Book-Remedies/dp/0578116243/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422372184&sr=8-1&keywords=the+politician%27s+essential+excuse+book

Is your Congressperson trying to lie their way out of the decision to pull the vote on the bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks?

Maybe.

Public Catholic readers have contacted the offices of their various Congresspeople, and it sounds like they are getting a pack of lies and obfuscations in reply to their questions. These Congresspeople are relying on the fact that law-making is an arcane art to most people. They know that you don’t know how to wend your way through the procedural morass.

After all, big-time special interests pay lobbyists astronomical sums to do that for them. It’s a specialist’s work, and the “school” to learn it has a high entrance fee. That’s why lobbying firms are so laden with former elected officials. Elective office is the school that teaches how law is made.

Political science classrooms are all taffy and sugar pills. They won’t teach you how to do the real deal. In fact, the things you learn there will make it harder to do the real deal if you ever get elected, because you’ve got to unlearn everything you thought you knew.

If I wanted to make the most money I could, I would take my considerable knowledge of the legislative process and put myself out as a hired gun, which is a lobbyist who works for the doh-re-me. But I’m the sort who can only work for what I believe, and when I believe it, money doesn’t matter.

Guess I’m doomed to be poor.

In the meantime, I try to teach Public Catholic readers a bit of what I know. I do this so you won’t be bamboozled so easily, so that you can get tough with your elected officials and insist that they do what they told you they would do when they asked for your vote.

This makes partisan true believers antsy because the reality is that political parties are nothing like the way they present themselves to their rank and file followers. They’re selling you a lie.

Repeat after me: Political parties are about getting power and keeping power. Everything else they say is up for grabs in the interests of getting power and keeping power.

Fortunately, the power they crave resides in your hands. They need your vote. That’s why they take the trouble to lie to you. So they’ll get their vote.

It appears that at least a few Congressional staffers are doing the old political doo-dah with their pro life constituents about the decision to pull the bill banning abortions after 20 weeks from the calendar last Thursday.

Will the bill come up again? Will we actually pass a law and send it to the president? That, my friends, depends on you. You need to make it clear to these folks you elected that they will pass this bill and send it to the president, or, next time they come asking for your vote, things may not be so pretty.

Here, for your delectation, is last Thursday’s floor activity in the House of Representatives of the United States of America. Notice, they passed a bill that would stop the use of federal monies for abortion, which is what the news reports said they did. A bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks was not heard or voted on.