Posted on 09/01/2015 7:58:07 AM PDT by Jane Long
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell undercut threats by fellow Republicans to hold the budget process hostage in an effort to defund Planned Parenthood, saying conservatives do not have enough support in Congress to cut off the group now under fire from abortion opponents.
Instead, the Senate’s top Republican said he is focused on funding the federal government when U.S. lawmakers return next week and will work with President Barack Obama to avert a shutdown, which last paralyzed the government in 2013.
On the possibility of tying measures that kill funding of the women’s health group to federal spending bills, McConnell told Kentucky station WYMT: “We just don’t have the votes to get the outcome that we’d like.”
“The president has made it very clear he’s not going to sign any bill that includes defunding of Planned Parenthood, so that’s another issue that awaits a new president hopefully with a different point of view about Planned Parenthood.”
Some Republicans have threatened to push for cutting off the group’s federal support, perhaps tying that demand to several must-pass tax-and-spending measures set to come before Congress after its long August vacation.
Lawmakers will return to Washington on Sept. 8. Left unresolved, failure to pass those bills could push them to the brink of shutdown by as early as Oct. 1
Congress must pass legislation to fund the U.S. government before the current fiscal year ends Sept. 30, although it could pass a stopgap measure to keep the government operating at current spending levels.
While Republicans control both chambers of Congress, they must pass legislation that Obama, a Democrat, will sign in to law.
Planned Parenthood has been under fire since an anti-abortion group, the Center for Medical Progress, recently started posting secretly recorded videos online. The center says the tapes show Planned Parenthood engaged in illegal sales of fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood counters that the videos were distorted and that it did nothing wrong.
The center Tuesday released a related video and, in a letter dated Aug. 31 to McConnell and other top lawmakers, urged Congress to continue investigating the group.
Republicans are pushing for increased military spending for fiscal year 2016, while Democrats want increased domestic spending. [ID:nL1N11118B]
“Our Democratic friends want to spend more on everything, we’d like to spend more on defense,” McConnell said on WYMT. And so there will be a kind of grand negotiation here in the fall.”
And this is the same GOP that promised a year ago to defund Obamacare if we gave them the Senate.
You can bet McConnell has made sure the republicans lack the votes, as a member of the progressive liberal democrat/rino communist uni-party that is his job.
Yep...the commies have infiltrated the GOP.
You are missing that Obama will reject such an allocation and put the country at risk of a deadly government shutdown, and by God there will be no government shutdown under these bwave Wepubwicans.
Slaughtered babies being sold for money is perfectly fine, but a government shutdown is literally Lucifer ruling this Earth, and it will make John Boner cry.
How can they even show their faces?
Fixed it.
Isn’t it time to get a backbone and get the necessary votes
the way Lyndon Johnson used to?
“While Republicans control both chambers of Congress, they must pass legislation that Obama, a Democrat, will sign in to law.”
No they don’t. Instead of sending one large appropriations bill to the president for signature, they can send hundreds of smaller bills funding individual departments or programs. Obama can choose to sign these individual bills or veto them. Should he veto the bill, he is choosing not to fund the program or department. The Republicans can blame him for not funding women’s health if he chooses not to sign an HHS bill that doesn’t include spending for Planned Parenthood.
The reality is, the GOP does not want to fight a fight they can win. It is a matter of tactics and messaging. Neither the leadership, nor the Congressmen and Senators who keep electing Boehner and McConnell wish to try. They are all willing accomplices.
There - fixed!
SHOCKING.
Now, how many of the ‘can’t defund it’ votes are getting paid from PP in some way. Or have kin who are.
?
They are all willing accomplices.
Yes and agree to your every point.
We are being played like fiddles, by the GOPe.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of them...on BOTH sides...are being compensated, in some sick way, by PP.
“I think McConnell fought long and hard on this, for about 2.3 seconds.”
NEVER use the word “fight” and McConnell in the same sentence. Yertle has too much sand in his vagina to “fight” for anything but free tampons.
HE would be held to account for the shutdown, I believe, not the Reps.
Can you see: "Obama shuts down the government so he can sell the parts of dead babies?"
Enjoy the perks of the Senate Majority Leader. Come November, 2016 you’ll be lucky to find a parking place. And we thought Harry Reid was bad!
Your last sentence has me running for the bleach to wash my mind of that mental image.
Sid ‘Vicious’ gets this one right.
You can't tell me Boehner and McConnell aren't aware of how the base feels; they simply don't care.
BS, we control the budget, no budget can pass with Planned Parenthood funded unless we put that in there.
The GOPE will blame conservatives for any shutdown before it allows Obama to be blamed, and yes, Obama will shutdown the government if even one penny is missing, thus even one penny will not be missing.
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