Senate Expected To Pass Bill To Defund Planned Parenthood, Repeal Health Law

However, the White House has said that President Obama will veto any bill that eliminates funding to Planned Parenthood.

However, Republicans disagree. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the Affordable Care Act has increased health care costs, limited patients’s ability to choose their doctors and hurt the middle class. “I think Democrats have a particular responsibility to the millions their law has hurt already to help pass (the repeal)”, he said. With Republicans lacking the two-thirds House and Senate majorities needed for a successful override, debate on the measure became a political messaging battlefield as both parties looked toward the 2016 presidential and congressional campaigns.

“So the fact that we blow off a day, two or three in the closing hours of this session for this political posturing, which is doomed to a presidential veto, is a waste of the time of the Senate”, said Democratic Sen.

This vote is the first time that the Senate has successfully voted to strip Planned Parenthood’s federal funding, sending it instead to more worthy health care centers that serve low-income women and their families. But since it was done by a machine-gun-toting white American targeting an organization they detest, they have clammed up, except to say that we would all be safer if more people carried guns.

Planned Parenthood has denied that it broke any laws and accepted illegal compensation. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, who threatened to vote against the measure if it wasn’t strong enough.

Lee said Wednesday he supports the measure, saying the bill came as close to repealing the health law as Senate rules allow and “lays the groundwork for Obamacare to be erased from the books altogether”. They show Republicans directly confronting the president, getting legislation to his desk that he doesn’t like – something they weren’t able to do when Democrats controlled the Senate a year ago.

“Everybody knows (repeal) is a gesture in futility”, said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., before the vote.

Collins’ bill didn’t gain support and the bill backed by McConnell to cut off all funding was eventually defeated in a 52-47 vote. The bill would also take away the federal dollars that Planned Parenthood receives.

Democrats in the Senate have blocked some 61 previous Republican attempts aimed at rolling back the landmark 2010 legislation created to provide health care for millions of uninsured Americans. It’s been a longer and harder undertaking than many Republicans had expected. “The 325,000 lives it destroys every year are 325,000 reasons to redirect taxpayer funds to groups that provide health care without taking innocent lives”.

The Senate bill also repeals the over-the-counter medicine tax, the prescription drug tax, an annual fee on health insurers and the tax on indoor tanning services.