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The reaction to Tuesday’s announcement that Governor Bob McDonnell has applied for federal funds for abstinence-centered education has been intense (see Washinton Post Virginia Politics Blog). As you would suspect, Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia have opened rhetorical fire on the governor, as have several leftist blogs and commentators. If you read the comments at the end of newspaper articles (and unless you have a thick skin I wouldn’t) you would think the decision to help our teenagers delay sexual activity until marriage is a conspiracy to bring back chastity belts.

You may be running into some of the same misinformed rhetoric in your circles, much of it based on false claims or outright deception. Of course, those who profit from risky sexual behavior, Virginia’s abortion industry, are viscerally opposed to the idea that teenagers can control themselves. One legislator who works closely with Planned Parenthood and NARAL carried this message (see Norfolk Virginian-Pilot):

The reality is with teenagers their hormones come into play, and abstinence-only doesn’t always work.

Then again, if they can be taught effective ways of postponing sexual activity it cuts into the abortion industry’s profits.

But the primary argument has been that “abstinence education doesn’t work,” “parents don’t support abstinence education,” or “it’s naive to think that teenagers can be abstinent.” None of those arguments, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, are correct. In fact, this year a study paid for by HHS, and its own recent survey, found that abstinence education is highly effective and widely supported by parents and teenagers (Washington Post).

The HHS survey released late last month (see here) found that 70 percent of parents agreed that it is “against [their] values for [their] adolescents to have sexual intercourse before marriage” and that “having sexual intercourse is something only married people should do.” Adolescent beliefs, according to the survey, were similar.

More interestingly, HHS buried the survey results and was forced to release it to the public only after a deluge of Freedom of Information Act requests (as reported by Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential). Why, one must ask, would HHS not want people to know the results of taxpayer funded research — results that show Americans want and support abstinence before marriage?

Let’s face it, the battle over sex education is indeed a battle of worldviews and a battle for the hearts, minds, and bodies of our children. The fact is that abstinence centered programs do work and they are making a difference — science is showing that. It’s up to us to get the word out.

We hope that if you haven’t already, that you please thank Governor McDonnell for taking this strong stand on abstinence education funding by clicking here to e-mail his office. Abstinence opponents are well-funded and are on the attack. We have to show the governor that the families of Virginia appreciate his action. Please contact him today.

On May 16, we were one of the first blogs to pick up on something Governor Tim Kaine told fellow members of the Democrat National Committee, as reported in the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

I am trying to juggle two pretty challenging jobs. It’s not an easy time to be a governor.

This, after assuring the public in January he could easily do both jobs. But his current humility and sought-for compassion appear in contrast to the fun he’s having at someone else’s expense (we don’t know how much tax money is involved because he won’t respond to Freedom of Information Act requests), travelling to several of the nation’s hot spots — although not all of his trips are known since he hasn’t disclosed his DNC itinerary, either.

Here’s what he told the Florida Democrat Committee in Miami on May 30 (see video here):

We did have a good time today being here. We actually got two hours here at the pool. I mean, this (the hotel) is a nice place! I was walking out there with no shirt on and shades.

So, Governor Kaine has gone from doing his patriotic duty, to being worn down by the challenge, to having a blast pool side in Miami and other fun places, all within a few weeks. But, to be honest, he doesn’t look any worse for the wear. Or should that be, “where”?

The General Assembly is barely under way, yet already there is urgency in the air. Most people think this session will be dominated by the budget and the revenue surplus that has been squandered, putting our state finances in a deficit. Complementing the budget debate is a very important issue and one of our very top priorities this session: Budget Transparency and Accountability, which entails putting the state budget online in an easy-to-search format.

How can we control spending when no one knows how much is spent, where it is spent and on what it is spent? Lawmakers from both chambers readily admit that unless they are on the powerful money committees, they don’t know where our money goes because after it is appropriated, it gets funneled around and through departments and agencies in forms of grants and contracts that make it virtually impossible to track. In fact, lawmakers themselves have to file several Freedom of Information Act requests just to discover the purpose of one  check.

Without an accountable, easy-to-use online tool, how can anyone track the many thousands of tax dollars the commonwealth doles out to nefarious organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, under cryptic “education” grants? How to uncover the millions of wasted tax-dollars on earmarks and political paybacks for non-essential services to special interest groups or district-friendly pork barrel projects?

Not only will an online budget — easily searchable in a Google-like format — help legislators make informed decisions on how to budget billions of your hard-earned tax dollars, it will allow hundreds of thousands of citizen watchdogs to point out the waste in government spending. In short, this is a just concept of open and good government; of sunshine; of the people having oversight of their government, as the Founders intended.

We were informed early this week that the Senate bill creating online budget accountability, SB 936, might come up as early as Wednesday, January 21, in the Senate General Laws Committee. The patrons are Senators Ken Cuccinelli (R-37, Fairfax) and Chap Peterson (D-34, Fairfax), but despite this same bipartisan support last year, the committee defeated it with bipartisan votes. Lawmakers of both parties, and their bureaucrat allies, who are more interested in the accumulation of power via the purse and the secrecy of the budget’s intricacies, are determined again this year to arrogantly deny the families and people of Virginia their rights to know what their government does with their hard-earned tax money.

However, this year, with an overspent government desperately trying to “find money to cut” and with the twin backdrops of an election year and federal bailouts to banks and businesses that have refused to account for what they’ve done with our tax money, the time is ripe for accountability in the commonwealth’s finances.

The “Google Government” bill, SB 936, may come before the Senate General Laws Committee as soon as this Wednesday, January 21. Don’t let opponents of open government kill this bill quietly, early, when few are paying attention.

It is urgent for you to write members of the Senate General Laws Committee (click here) and to find others to do so as well — all the better if one is your senator — and let them know you want the ability that the citizens of several states already have, to conveniently research how and where your money is spent. Amazingly, President-elect Barack Obama’s one major accomplishment in the U.S. Senate, was to partner with Oklahoma’s conservative Republican Tom Coburn, to put all federal contracts online.  

If the behemoth that is the federal budget can be put online, so, too, can Virginia’s.

Yesterday, we posted information about our efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, and abortion in Virginia, through grants it receives through the state budget. One of the challenges we face is actually finding the expenditures. You see, there isn’t a line item in the budget that says “Planned Parenthood.” The money is distributed by local health clinics from money appropriated to the Department of Health. At least the money we know about.

An example of the difficulty in finding the truth came just last year when we sent Freedom of Information Act letters to every school board in Virginia concerning contracts with Planned Parenthood. The City of Richmond schools responded that they had no contract with Planned Parenthood but, just days later, we learned from Planned Parenthood that they were holding workshops in Richmond City Schools. Who is paying for this has yet to be determined, but we’re working on it.

Several years ago The Family Foundation introduced legislation that was an attempt at making state budget expenditures more available to citizens. The legislation, sponsored by Senator Walter Stosch (R-12, Glen Allen), resulted in Commonwealth Datapoint (click here), a Web site where one can look through every check written by the state.

But plan on spending a lot of time, because while everything is there, it is about as user-friendly as Windows Vista. 

Last year, Senators Ken Cuccinelli (R-37, Centerville) and Chap Petersen (D-34, Fairfax) and Delegate Ben Cline (R-24, Amherst) introduced legislation that would make the budget Web site more user-friendly, including a Google-like search engine. That legislation was killed in committe in both the House and Senate. Senator Edd Houck (D-17, Spotsylvania), a member of the Finance Committee, was particularly offended by the idea that taxpayers should have the right to hold him accountable for budget decisions. Similar legislation will be introduced again this year by those same legislators.

As the Commonwealth now deals with a spending surplus of at least $4 billion, finding where we can save money is extraordinarily important.  Most legislators will tell you that there isn’t much waste in state government or any more “trimming of the edges” that can be done. While it would be great to take their word for it, the fact that we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Planned Parenthood gives us doubt.

The way to righting this large ship of state begins here: It cannot be done without knowing exactly where and how government spends our hard-earned money; it cannot be done if we continue to sit in darkness while extreme organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, are provided with taxpayer bailouts.

In short, online budget transparency is a just concept of open and good government; of sunshine; of the people having oversight of their government, as the Founders intended. This year’s legislative battle will be one of the bureaucrats and politicians who put power (via the purse) over the people’s right to know.

Who will win? Rather, who has the will to win?

In the past three budget years, you have sent nearly $200,000 to the nation’s largest private abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, which, by the way, makes millions of dollars nationally.

Between 2006 and 2007 you paid for more than 300 elective abortions (not involving rape or incest).

Federal law requires Virginia pay for low-income abortions in cases of rape and incest. The Commonwealth, however, has decided to go beyond the requirement and fund “elective” abortions as well — hundreds of them. This taxpayer support of elective abortion is unnecessary and must end.

Likely, those numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. The Commonwealth of Virginia hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with information regarding how much taxpayer money is going to Planned Parenthood and to fund abortions, requiring multiple Freedom of Information Act requests from The Family Foundation and legislators. The real numbers are yet to be determined.

But whatever the case, taxpayer funding of these entities must stop!

For several years, The Family Foundation and our many pro-family partners, have worked to put an end to taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood in Virginia. In 2008, we came ever so close and, for the first time, had budget language pass both the House and Senate that would have done just that, only to see the language left out of the final budget. We will work once again in 2009 to eliminate this funding.

Planned Parenthood, a national political behemoth, had an income in its last fiscal year of more than $1 billion. Incredibly, nearly one-third of that income comes from you, the American taxpayer. In its last annual report Planned Parenthood reported more than $330 million in government — i.e., taxpayer — grants.

What is this money used for?

Planned Parenthood is the largest private provider of abortion in the United States, performing more than one quarter of all abortions, or nearly 300,000 in 2006. As the national abortion rate has gradually declined in recent years, Planned Parenthood’s abortion number continues to increase by double digits.

It is an organization that works everyday to end abstinence education in our schools and to replace it with their own agenda, a so-called comprehensive sex education program that results in more kids engaging in risky behaviors, more sexually transmitted diseases among our teenagers, more teenage pregnancy and, yes, more abortions — from which it profits.

It is an organization that supports the barbarity of partial birth abortion. It is an organization that fears beyond imagination the thought that a woman contemplating an abortion might have the opportunity to view an ultrasound of her unborn child.

It is an organization that does not need a “bailout” from the taxpayers (which is what we’ve provided it all these years).

As lawmakers face a $4 billion spending surplus and complain about not being able to balance the budget, they can start with the unnecessary taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood and elective abortions. The Family Foundation will support budget amendments this year that do just that.