The Senate voted Thursday to preserve language banning taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood in a bill gutting Obamacare. Assuming House passage later, congressional Republicans would vault to a veto battle with Obama that they know they’ll lose but think will delight conservative voters. Republicans had a favorable Senate race map during that election, but are expected to encounter a much more hard challenge in 2016, when the majority of the so-called competitive Senate seats are in states that Obama won when he was running for president.
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It is not an understatement to suggest that Mitch McConnell’s decision to push an Obamacare repeal bill may end up costing Republicans their Senate majority. Senate Republicans will get their completely worthless Obamacare repeal bill, but it is going to cost them dearly. This is the first time the Republican-controlled House and Senate have used a procedure aimed at bypassing a filibuster by Senate Democrats’ to get a bill to the president’s desk. Citing secretly recorded videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing such sales, some abortion foes have accused the organization of illegally providing the tissue for profit. “We’ve reached a pretty scary time in our nation’s history where we have Americans writing and calling their elected representatives saying they need relief from their own government”, said No. 2 Senate Leader John Cornyn of Texas. Patty Murray, Washington Democrat, that would replace language defunding Planned Parenthood over its abortion practice with text that sets up a fund to protect and secure women’s health clinics, a response to a post-Thanksgiving shooting in Colorado that killed three people.
The Senate seems poised to pass a bill that will gut parts of Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood for a year. “The constraints of reconciliation prohibit a repeal of the entire law”.
In the end, Cruz and Rubio voted “yes”. The federal funding is mainly paid out to the health service provider to reimburse it for treating people who use Medicaid. The Senate voted to reject an attempt by Democrats to prevent the cuts to Planned Parenthood. Despite the millions spent in PR, the president’s disaster of a health care law hasn’t made it out of the basement of public opinion in months. All three ultimately voted for the measure.
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According to Planned Parenthood’s annual report, 42% of its services go toward STD testing and treatment, 34% is contraception care, and 20% is cancer treatment and other women’s health needs.
