If Words are Stricken from the Congressional Record, Were They Ever Uttered in the First Place?

You know the saying: "If a tree falls in the forest but nobody heard it fall, did it make a sound?" Well what if a Senator says something on the floor of the Senate, his words are recorded, and then those words are quietly removed from the record at a later time? Did he actually utter those words?

Ask Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) who said the following during debate over the FY2011 budget deal: "Everybody goes to clinics, to hospitals, to doctors, and so on. Some people go to Planned Parenthood. But you don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does." Realizing that the Senator was way off in his accounting, Kyl's staff walked back Kyl's statement a few hours later noting that his remarks were "not intended to be a factual statement but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives millions in taxpayer dollars, does subsidize abortions." And several days later, Kyl's office had his remarks removed from the Congressional Record altogether.

Hat Tip: Political Wire