The ObamaCare Slush Fund

By STEPHEN MOORE

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE

19 AUGUST 13

Last week, the Obama administration revealed that three Planned Parenthood affiliates would be among the groups receiving federal dollars to educate Americans about the Affordable Care Act. The announcement did not go unnoticed by conservative Republicans who want to defund ObamaCare.

The three groups, based in Iowa, Montana and New Hampshire, will receive a total of $655,000 in federal funds. More than a hundred other organizations will also get money. An affiliate of the left-leaning Urban League received a $565,000 grant, for example. The Obama administration defends the grants by noting that some of the money went to groups affiliated with the Catholic Church and others with a more conservative orientation.

But GOP Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee, a pro-life advocate, says that the Planned Parenthood grants are tantamount to “the federal funding of abortion providers.” Since ObamaCare was first debated in the House in 2009, Republicans have tried to block federal funds from flowing to Planned Parenthood, one of the nation’s primary abortion providers. With these grants, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius seemed to be saying to Republicans, “in your face,” as one GOP leadership aide put it.

Republicans, along with some Democrats, were angrier still at where the money is coming from. Originally, the Obama administration said it would spend $54 million on this so-called Navigators program, but the amount was recently upped to $67 million. The extra $13 million will come from ObamaCare’s Prevention and Public Health Fund (PPHF). That the administration is sliding funds around so easily from one purpose to another confirms for many ObamaCare skeptics that the $12.5 billion dedicated to the PPHF is essentially a slush fund to pad the budgets of leftwing advocacy groups.

The administration’s decision to use ObamaCare dollars for whatever purpose it wishes is especially ironic given the sequestration debate, where the White House has argued that it doesn’t have the authority to move money from one account to another. This was the administration’s excuse for the temporary shutdown of air traffic control towers at busy airports this spring. The administration said it needed specific legislative authority from Congress to restore the funding of many essential services. But it has not sought such authority when it comes to funding what it wants with ObamaCare appropriations.

Part of the problem, which Congress may now try to fix, is that the language of the statute creating the PPHF is vague. The law says that money may be used for programs “to improve health” or “help restrain the rate of growth” of health-care expenses. Republican Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan wrote a letter earlier this year to Ms. Sebelius complaining that some ObamaCare grants “appear to fund lobbying activities contrary to the laws” governing the use of federal funds. Even Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, a Democrat, has objected to the use of preventive health dollars for unrelated projects as “an outrageous attack on an investment fund that is saving lives.”

The latest Navigator funds are certain to intensify such investigations into the cozy relationship between groups that lobby for ObamaCare, such as Planned Parenthood, and groups that then get funds for carrying out the law. My Republican sources on Capitol Hill tell me that Congress is asking the General Accountability Office and the Inspector General at HHS to investigate whether these taxpayer funds are illegally financing liberal activities to lobby for ObamaCare’s political survival. This story isn’t going away.