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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.”
Perfect feeding the alligator scenario.
Ditch doesn’t understand the virtue of doing it anyway. if you don’t have the votes, then you have an issue. “Getting things done” is fine if you’re moving the ball in the right direction, but sometimes you just have to play confrontation politics.
The American people favor defunding — try it and if you lose, campaign against those politicians who stopped it.
Instead, Ditch is using the only tactic Republicans know — preemptive surrender.
Midge’s tactics are solely to benefit the Dims, and to keep the UniParty’s club status quo.
How about just publicly washing your hands and claiming to be innocent of the blood of these children.
All the body parts they can eat.
Republicans Lack Votes To Defund Planned Parenthood: McConnell
Requies repair:
Republicans Lack BALLS To Defund Planned Parenthood: McConnell said coming out from under his desk. What a useless bunch.
Yes
Force each and every Senator on the record as to how they vote.
McConnell would need to drop his drawers to prove that he’s not gelded.
Short of that, I’ll just call him ‘corrupt.’
Hold the vote. Put the entire Senate on record!
They DO NOT want the vote, they want the issue.
Both parties in Congress have gone out of their way to keep abortion legal.
Even the Partial Birth Abortion ban only outlawed certain procedures. It is still 100% legal to murder a baby up to the moment of birth, they simply inject poison into the baby's heart so there's no partial birth.
Hold the vote. Put the entire Senate on record!
This needs to be FB’d and tweeted to EVERY Senator....especially dirty rat McConnell!
It looks like the Can’t-Do-Nuffin’ Party is still in total retreat in the Senate.
When this FReepathon finally ends, I’m going to learn how to tweet!!
I despise McConartist!
It’s his duty to hold the vote!
"In which we will get our pants taken off", McConnell continued.
Set your Wayback machine to last year when many freepers trotted out the ‘any Pub is better than a Dem, Principle is the problem and you hare America and love Obama if you don’t support the GOP memes.
You cannot be a freeper and been on this site without seeing it repeated across multiple threads daily in the election runup.
I'm pretty sure that senior members of BOTH parties feel that their duty is to maintain power for senior members of BOTH parties.
The two parties no longer have opposing ideologies, they have a friendly rivalry and every so often they trade power and see who can do the most damage.
To answer one of those pics...
Obviously FR was targeted quite a while ago by the GOP/Rove. Look at all the leftist garbage doing everything in their power and having succeed in minimizing every actual conservative, created strife, destroyed fundraising due to it all and to top it off, CONTINUES to push leftism through their plants here at all opportunity.
I’m sure you’re right, but I’ve just sent McConnell a scathing email.
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