Ted Cruz: Democrats are Leading the GOP

North country Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is calling for Congress to avoid a government shutdown at the end of September, a position that places her at odds with the most conservative members of her own Republican party.

The organization has been under fire for weeks after secretly-taped videos produced by an anti-abortion group recorded Planned Parenthood officials discussing the use of fetal tissue harvested from abortions.

In addition to moving efforts to defund Planned Parenthood through the budget process, House GOP leaders also plan to send additional anti-abortion legislation to the Senate and try to put pressure on Senate Republicans to vote on these bills, according to a senior House GOP leadership aide. They are expected to block the community health center ban bill Wednesday. Allowing Planned Parenthood to continue to receive our tax dollars based on some “20-week elective abortion standard of pain” is not only lame, it is immoral.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has set up a showdown vote for Thursday on a bill financing government agencies through December 11 but also blocking Planned Parenthood’s federal funds for a year. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate GOP’s campaign committee. The Republican leadership, nervous about the political ramifications of a shutdown, are frustrated by conservatives – like Cruz – who want to stare down Democrats.

In response to the threat of shut down, the white house has said, “That is a game of chicken with our economy that we can not play”.

Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican who’s running for president, said Tuesday, “The only way to actually defund Planned Parenthood is to include it on must-pass legislation” such as a government spending bill. “And before we give more funding to them, I’d like to see those questions answered and so would my constituents”, said Representative David Craig.

How high government spending would soar under Cruz plan depends on the number of Planned Parenthood’s current patients who would no longer be able to care for their reproductive health. That suggests he soon would press ahead with a short-term measure free of the Planned Parenthood dispute. Planned Parenthood faces mounting criticism amid the release of videos by a pro-life group and demands to vote in the Senate to stop funding.

The cut in federal funding would save $450 million annually in money going directly to Planned Parenthood, but most of that savings comes from Medicaid reimbursements that would be reabsorbed elsewhere by the system.

From 2010 through 2014, the nonprofit spent $6.6 million lobbying the federal government. And when Democrats in the Senate tried to derail a bill to fight human trafficking because it included these same protections, Republicans stood resolute in our conviction that the American people should not fund a practice so many fundamentally oppose.

The letter makes no mention of the battle over Planned Parenthood.