Chaffetz Destroys Cecile Richards over Funding, Salaries, and Cancer Screenings

“… Helping these women. And I’m proud of her for doing that. My mother, she passed away when I was 28 years old. She fought cancer for more than ten years. She had breast cancer. And I miss her. I lost my father to cancer as well. Cancer in this country kills about 1,500 people a day, a day. And yet our federal government only spends about $5 billion to fight it. If they were shooting 1,500 people a day, if there were rockets coming, if we’d be fighting this with everything we have got. And as I said before [I] came to Congress and I’m saying it here today, as fiscally conservative as I can possibly be, we don't spend enough on cancer. We don't spend enough. We need to spend more.

“I would quadruple the amount of money if I had my chance to fight cancer and win. And the reason I’m passionate about the hearing today is we got a lot of healthcare providers who I think in their hearts know that they're trying to provide good. The question before us is, does this organization -- does Planned Parenthood really need federal subsidy? Does it need federal dollars? Every time we spend a federal dollar, what we're doing is we are pulling money out of somebody's pocket and we're giving it to somebody else. What I don't like, what I don't want to tolerate, what I don't want to become numb to is wasting those taxpayer dollars. And as best I can tell, we're had to have a hearing here, this is an organization that doesn't need federal subsidy. For the year ended June 14th -- June of 2014, I should say, Planned Parenthood reported $127 million in revenue over expenses. They had $127 million more in revenue than they had in expenses. Yet between 2005 and 2013, in large part under Ms. Richards’ leadership, there was a 53 percent reduction in cancer screenings, 42 percent reduction in breast exams and breast care. I don't understand why. I don't understand why. Let me give you a sense of the numbers that we're talking about here. Government dollars from taxpayers going to Planned Parenthood is roughly $528 million. $450 million of that comes in federal funds. Roughly $390 million comes in the form of Medicaid. There’s be a lot of bluster today about shutting down the government over Planned Parenthood. The funding amount that we're talking about under Title 10 is $60 million. [indecipherable] I just told you that last year -- last year they had more than $100 million in revenue without expenses. And we're talking about $60 million. Roughly 4.6 of their total revenue.

“Planned Parenthood is an organization with massive salaries. Ms. Richards makes nearly $600,000 a year. The affiliate -- the person that runs the affiliate of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota makes roughly $450,000 a year. I could be here for a long time listing out some verily exorbitant salaries. This is also an organization that seems to have exorbitant travel expenses. [In] 2013, they spent more than $5 million in travel, first class tickets, private chartered aircraft. Roughly, they are spending $14,000 a day on travel. That's a lot. That's money that isn't going to women's healthcare. In 2012 and 2013, spent roughly $600,000 on blowout parties, chocolate champagne events and salt and pepper came and performed a concert, all kind of celebrities and other hoopla. These are things they lost money doing, according to their tax record. In the past three years, they spent more than $67 million on fund-raising. They're pretty good at it. That's partly my point. They're pretty good at fund-raising. They don't necessarily need taxpayer dollars to go pay for it. And this part I really hope we do get have a deeper discussion about. We may not learn everything that we need to, but over the past five years, more than $22 million has been transferred from their 501(c)(3) to 501(c)(4) organizations as well as PACs. This is advocacy, it's lobbying, it's get out the vote. In one case in Alaska, it was about redistricting. Ladies and gentlemen, that has absolutely nothing to do with providing healthcare to young women who need a breast exam or need to get a mammogram. None of that money goes to that. It's a political activity. I was, I guess, naive but surprised that you could take 501(c)(3) money and simply give it to the 501(c)(4), shared employees. If you look at Planned Parenthood and the other organizations that’s underneath, you are going to find shared employees, shared facilities, mailing list, shared assets. It's a political organization. That's something that needs to be ferreted out.

When you start saying, they have to have federal money, they have to have federal money, over the past five years, they spent more than $32 million sending money overseas. Didn't even come to the United States of America. Didn't affect people in low income situations. They're so flush with cash, they started sending and giving out money overseas. I don't understand that. We have USAID, we have the State Department, we have all kinds of foreign aid. We don't need Planned Parenthood foreign aid. But that's what we got. And their desire for more of taxpayer dollars is just insatiable. There are going to be discussions today I’m sure about the video or videos. Let me just explain that. I know I’ve gone over time. But we're going to have to address it one way or the other, so let me address it. I think it was legitimate to look at all of the videos, all of the videos. So we issued a subpoena to get ought of the videos. Now, in California, there's a court case where there's a temporary restraining order that doesn't allow the producers of these videos to release them publically. So we actually sent a letter asking for the videos. Democrats, I think the record reflects, didn't want us to ask for the videos. They wanted to take that language out. Nevertheless, we moved forward and actually went to the extraordinary step of subpoenaing, something I think that actually both sides of the aisle should support. If you want the totality of the record, let's send a subpoena for all the videos.

Now, with a temporary restraining order in place, there's conflict between the legislative branch and the judicial branch. And so what we're seeing here is they on one hand have a restraining order, can't send the videos, on the other they have duly issued subpoena from the United States Congress. That is going to have to work itself out. There has been discussion about the producer of this video coming and testifying before Congress. I don't know which direction we're going to go to that. The first step though, is seeing all the videos. All the videos. Democrats have said, well, they have been doctored, they have been edited even though they haven’t even necessarily seen them. Then they have videos they want to show that show that. Well, the reason that they're out there is that they are publically available. There is more to this story, there is more that needs to come out. But that's going to have to play itself out. The prime thrust of this hearing today is about the finances. That we were very clear and blunt in our -- in what we were talking about in terms of what we're trying to accomplish here today. I have great latitude to members. They can ask what they want to ask, what the focus of what we're doing today is how this organization is funded and how they spend their money. If they're going to accept taxpayer dollars, they are going to have to withstand the scrutiny of Congress asking tough questions about how they spend the money. That's the direction when I’m coming from today. If there's more clarification needed, please let me know.”