Washington, D.C. is the only city in the country that has its budget controlled by Congress. Instead of local leaders deciding how to use taxpayer funds, D.C. residents have to put up with the injustice of watching their public services become a political bargaining chip for national politicians.

Now House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is once again trying to advance a conservative social agenda through D.C.’s budget — ironically under the guise of giving the District more autonomy:

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has drafted a bill that would give the District more freedom to spend its own money — with a catch.

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has included in his measure a provision that would prohibit the District from spending its own taxpayer funds to pay for abortions for low-income women except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.

…[T]he inclusion of the abortion language could doom the bill from the start. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and other officials were furious when President Obama and congressional Republicans cut a deal on a spending bill in April that included a similar temporary prohibition. [...]

Issa’s “carrot” is actually a coercive proposition: give us what we want now or we’ll hold you hostage again in the future. Right now, D.C. often has to wait for months for budget approval while Congress entangles its finances with “unrelated squabbles over the federal budget and government shutdown threats.” To avoid a government shutdown this past spring, Republicans dropped their demand to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood in exchange for a rider banning D.C. from spending its own locally-raised dollars to subsidize abortion for poor women.

Democrats essentially sacrificed the District’s rights to avoid other cuts — which is easily done because D.C. is disenfranchised with no formal voice or votes in congressional negotiations. Obama reportedly told House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) during the deal, “John, I will give you D.C. abortion.” Outraged, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and several members of the City Council were arrested at a protest shortly after that spending bill was approved.

Issa’s bill would allow D.C.’s leaders to escape the tedious congressional budget approval process — but only if they surrender more of their control first, and give up what Republicans would try to get from the process anyway. It’s an unpromising way to begin a new era of D.C. autonomy — by giving much of it away.

At an town hall campaign event in Kansas today with Gov. Sam Brownback (R), Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) declined to take a stand on the controversial anti-choice Personhood Amendment, which Mississippi voters rejected this month. Kansas is at the front lines of the war on a woman’s right to choose, but when Perry was asked if he supported the personhood amendment there, the White House hopeful gave a lengthy, rambling answer touting his anti-choice bona fides, but never taking a stand on the issue in question. Watch it:

The fact that even someone as conservative as Perry — along with other GOP presidential candidates like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) — won’t stand on the amendment underscores how radical it is. The amendment would define life as beginning at conception, thus potentially outlawing certain forms of birth control. Mississippi’s conservative Republican governor, Haley Barbour, also expressed concern about the amendment, as did Catholic bishops and other religious leaders.

Nonetheless, GOP front runner Mitt Romney suggested he would be open to a something along the lines of a personhood amendment when he said he would “absolutely” back a constitutional amendment that defined life as beginning at conception.

This afternoon, the Energy & Commerce health subcommittee reported out a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Care Act’s long-term health program as Republicans sought to portray the administration’s decision against implementing the measure — known as CLASS — as an indictment of the entire health care law. They also warned that leaving the program intact would allow a “silent killer” to threaten the nation’s budgetary outlook.

“I strongly disagree with them and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who want to suggest that we can leave this program on the books so that I guess at some future date — maybe when the political atmosphere is a little bit better — that the program can be resurrected,” Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) said. “I don’t want to resurrect Dracula, I want to drive a stake through its heart,” he added. Watch it:

The Department of Health and Human Services announced in October that it did not believe Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had the discretion necessary bring the program in compliance with the health care law’s sustainability provision, which stipulates that CLASS has to remain solvent for a period of 75 years. But significantly, administration officials and many Democrats also oppose repealing the measure outright, arguing that it represents an important first step towards reducing the nation’s long-term care crisis and could eventually be modified into sustainability. Under today’s system, Medicaid has evolved to become the nation’s primary payer for long-term services “and supports, financing nearly half (43 percent) of all spending on long-term care services.” The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that by mid-century 16 percent of anticipated federal revenues will be used to fund care for the baby-boom generation.

During today’s hearing, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) — the ranking member on the subcommittee — criticized Republicans for not offering any solution to the nation’s long term care crisis and took umbrage at their suggestion that Democrats added the program to the law in order to bolster the measure’s deficit reduction projection. Describing such arguments as “disrespectful to the disabilities community and to the people like Sen. Kennedy who worked on it for so many years,” Pallone said the CLASS program was designed to minimize beneficiaries’ reliance on Medicaid for long-term care insurance. The whole idea “was to have people while they were working to establish a cash benefit, that they were going to pay while they were working, that was put in to a trust fund and made available to them once they’re disabled,” he said. “It was very much a notion of personal responsibility and not relying on the government.”

The Associated Press’ Will Weissert reminds us that for all his bellyaching about the growing size of the federal government and commitment to uprooting this or that or some other federal agency, Rick Perry has made a career out of pumping federal dollars into Texas:

Perry sought and received $24.2 billion in stimulus funding for Texas while saying the program was bad federal policy. He helped secure more than $100 million to protect against drug violence and illegal immigration on the Mexican border. The governor also endorsed his state’s request for money under President Barack Obama’s new health care law, though he now promises to help repeal the measure should he win the White House. [...]

Perry opposes the Obama administration health care overhaul, though Texas state agencies have received $56.9 million in Health and Human Services Department grants alone as part of it. The governor wrote a letter to Washington in August 2010 supporting a $1 million federal grant proposal that Texas wanted to explore setting up a related statewide health care exchange.

In 2009 and then again in 2010, Perry publicly complained about the “strings attached” to the federal dollars associated with increasing Washington’s contribution to the Medicaid program, but ultimately took — even requested — the money. Earlier this year, Texas asked for a federal waiver to reroute “federal funds the state would otherwise lose — an undesired consequence of expanding managed care — to subsidize hospitals’ uncompensated care costs” and finance “projects to help the uninsured.” The initiative received a warm reception by Democrats and consumer advocates, but could obviously add up to a political liability for Perry. His 2010 book, Fed Up!, rejects any whiff of federal money — and the rules that come with it.”