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These people are disgusting.
Despite pleas by children’s advocates and testimony that babies will die, Republicans on the state Senate Finance Committee stripped funding for an infant-death reduction initiative that officials say is reducing Memphis and Tennessee’s high rates of infant mortality.
The committee voted 7-4, on straight party lines Thursday night to reject an effort by Senate Democratic Leader Jim Kyle of Memphis and others to restore the state budget funding for the governor’s Office of Children’s Care Coordination and the grants it administers across Tennessee.
Republicans hold a 19-14 Senate majority, and the budget alternative they first unveiled May 11 has called for cutting the program’s $4.6 million budget in half for the fiscal year that starts July 1, then eliminating it entirely the following year.
If you’re wondering why Republicans would appear to not care about saving infant lives, here’s a clue.
Deborah Clubb, executive director of the Memphis Area Women’s Council, said the committee’s vote “will shut down all of the effort that began five years ago … to address the horrific rate of dying babies in Shelby County.”
“It’s bizarre that fish hatcheries in East Tennessee stand a better chance of being funded than programs that directly impact our infant mortality rate, saving African-American babies, through funding by the Governor’s Office of Children’s Care Coordination,” Clubb said.
“African-American babies are dying at three times the rate of Caucasian babies.”
These hypocrites are the same scum who scream and yell about the sanctity of life when it comes to embryos but have no problem withholding funding for a program with a proven track record in saving infant lives. They had no problem doing all they could to block health insurance reform even with the knowledge that the broken system kills one American every 12 minutes of every day of every week of every month of every year. They don’t care. They really don’t. It appears that if an initiative is not beneficial to big business or rich then it doesn’t hold much interest for Republicans.
Whether one is a conservative or liberal, this story should bother you. And if it doesn’t, then please explain how the actions of these Republican politicians are not tantamount to murder?
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