US Senate passes bill to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding

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.

FreedomWorks CEO Adam Brandon said his organization was happy to see the bill passed through the reconciliation process, which allowed a simple majority vote.

Throughout the day, the mainstream media has been reporting that the Senate was expected to vote in favor of repealing ObamaCare and stripping Planned Parenthood of federal funding.

The bill, which was adopted Thursday by the Senate but is certain to be vetoed by Obama, also contains a provision that defunds all federal assistance to the nation’s largest women’s health care organization. Republicans have somehow convinced themselves that right-wing activists will be impressed by Congress going through the motions and forcing the president to veto a dumb repeal bill that has no real-world implications whatsoever.

“The Republican-led Senate is spending the last few hours of its unimpressive working year to attack the health care services American women and families in every single state rely on”, said Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee national press secretary Lauren Passalacqua.

Senate Republicans have overwhelmed Democrats in a vote to end Planned Parenthood’s federal funding.

The bill goes even further than the version passed by the House by ending the law’s Medicaid expansion and subsidies and getting rid of the tax increases imposed under the law.

Democrats said some Senate Republicans will face retribution from voters. It’s a moment Republicans have hungered for since the landmark health law was passed five-and-a-half years ago with not one GOP vote. Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of IL called the vote “political posturing” and a “waste of the time of the Senate”.

Senators voted 90-10 to pass an amendment by Sen. He cited a series of edited videos released earlier this year that appeared to show Planned Parenthood employees selling fetal body parts for profit.

Senators blocked efforts by Democrats and by Collins to remove the language targeting Planned Parenthood. Collins said her amendment would have prohibited the use of federal funds for abortions, except in the cases of rape, incest or where the life of the mother is considered at risk. “I’ll take that to the polls and we’ll talk about it until the cows come home”.

Conservatives like FreedomWorks CEO Adam Brandon were ecstatic that Senate Republicans moved to take healthcare away from almost 20 million Americans, “Under pressure from Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and thousands of conservative activists across the country, Senate Republicans finally got the message and acted to repeal the ObamaCare disaster”.

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) stated: “Are we doing this for partisan reasons?”