Free Republic

A few weeks after Congress passed critical spending legislation that fully funded Planned Parenthood and the Affordable Care Act, Republicans this week will take a symbolic stand by once again trying -- and failing -- to repeal the law. "We owe it to the American people to take our best shot at repealing Obamacare, and that's what we'll do next week," Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) said Saturday in the Republican radio address. ...

South Dakota may join 30 other states in expanding its Medicaid program if federal officials approve a plan Gov. Dennis Daugaard is set to outline to the nation’s top health and human services administrator in Washington on Tuesday. The Republican governor is meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell to explain the plan, and the federal government has so far been more open to discussions than in the past, said Tony Venhuizen, chief of staff to Daugaard. The proposal, which is in its early stages, would make about 48,500 South Dakota residents newly eligible for the program. It’s...

Days after a federal judge issued an injunction against President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) urged Senate Republicans to abandon their defunding efforts and pass a clean Homeland Security funding bill. “We have to fund Homeland Security,” Rubio reportedly said on Wednesday, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We can’t let Homeland Security shut down.” He reportedly “noted that Obama has threatened to veto any bill that would reverse his executive actions on immigration, including the measure to pay for Homeland Security” and “the Senate doesn’t have enough votes to pass the bill that ties the two...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said on Thursday he doesn't like being called "spineless" or a "squish" by critics, and he vowed to prove his mettle to lawmakers who bopposed his re-election earlier this week. Boehner was re-elected Speaker of the House on Tuesday even as 25 members of his own Republican party declined to support him, the biggest such intra-party rebellion against a speaker candidate since 1859. His detractors, many of them on the right wing of his party, say Boehner is too prone to compromise with Democrats. Boehner said that portrayal is false....