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The federal government’s authority to spend money on discretionary programs expires at midnight on Sept. 30 — just a week from Wednesday . As we write, no one can be sure that Congress will pass a law keeping the government funded beyond that date and thereby enable it to avoid a partial shutdown. In the Senate, Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) reportedly has a plan that would permit his caucus to stage a symbolic vote against Planned Parenthood without risking a shutdown. The bigger problem is in the House, where Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) is struggling — once again — to rein in far-right conservatives who are willing to pass a funding bill only if it reflects their priorities, in this case, by “defunding” Planned Parenthood. That is, they prefer grandstanding, on behalf of a cause most Americans don’t support, to governing the country. (9/22)

The CBO found that the one-year defunding would produce about $235 million in federal savings, barely a rounding error in the federal budget, but that the real costs would be borne by low-income and rural women. In human terms, the CBO's bottom line is that as many as 650,000 women, chiefly in low-income neighborhoods or communities "without access to other health care clinics," would lose at least some access to care. The measure would hamper Planned Parenthood's ability to provide low-income women with "contraceptive education and counseling; pregnancy diagnosis and counseling; cervical and breast cancer screening; and education, testing, and referral services associated with sexually transmitted diseases." Several thousand unwanted pregnancies and births would occur. (Michael Hiltzik, 9/22)

It's hard to understand a strategy in which no paths lead to victory, so it's hard to figure exactly what Congressional Republicans are aiming for in their latest attempt to shut down the American government. Latest, because this kind of thing has become a biennial affair in Washington D.C., something that should be food for serious, pessimistic thought in and of itself. This time, women's health organization Planned Parenthood is the putative cause, a GOP claim that would carry much more weight if this kind of thing hadn't become a stock move in the Republican playbook. (Nancy Kaffer, 9/22)

Republicans who want to use the coming government funding fight to defund Planned Parenthood — a strategy that GOP leaders have denounced as hopeless folly — like to argue that the GOP won’t take the blame if the government does shut down. Senate Dems would filibuster, or President Obama would veto, any government funding bill that defunds Planned Parenthood. So Republicans can argue that Obama and Dems are refusing to fund the government because of their commitment to keeping Planned Parenthood in business, even after the fetal tissue videos shocked the country. (Greg Sargent, 9/22)

Fiorina’s dishonesty is flagrant and unapologetic. Called on her misstatements, Fiorina doesn’t cede ground, she attacks critics. Exhibit A is her evocative description, at the most recent GOP debate, of a nonexistent Planned Parenthood video. ... The sting video, released by an anti-abortion group, features a former technician for a fetal tissue procurement company describing how a Planned Parenthood employee “taps the heart and it starts beating,” then instructs her to remove the brain. As Factcheck.org concluded, “The video does contain images of what appear to be intact fetuses, but they don’t fit Fiorina’s description.” (Ruth Marcus, 9/22)

Fiorina's description of what takes place in the videos has come under withering attack. Sarah Kliff of Vox.com labels Fiorina's version of the scene as "pure fiction." Politifact says it is "mostly false." And they have a point. The exact scene, exactly as Fiorina describes it, is not on the videos. But anybody who has watched the videos would find Fiorina's account pretty accurate. (Jonah Goldberg, 9/22)