Senate votes to end funding for Planned Parenthood

According to The Hill, the bill now heads to the House and then to President Obama where he will likely veto. It will now go to the House of Representatives, which passed a different version of the legislation in October.

The measure passed 52 to 47 after the Senate voted to significantly strengthen the bill originally passed by the House and brought straight to the floor by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

The bill is not expected to become law. This is the first time the Republican-controlled House and Senate have used a procedure aimed at bypassing a filibuster by Senate Democrats’ to get a bill to the president’s desk.

Democrats sought to score political points by offering an amendment sponsored by Sen.

“What they’re doing on this reconciliation is just going nowhere”, said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday.

Democrats countered that Republicans were wasting time with more political show votes. “Everyone knows the result”.

The Senate rejected an amendment introduced by Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic California senator, that would “would deny people on a federal terrorism watch list the ability to purchase guns”, as Politico describes it, 45 to 54. Mike Lee, R-Utah, threatened to oppose the bill because it does not fully repeal the Affordable Care Act. Obama said at the time that the law has helped tens of millions of Americans and is here to stay.

Collins and King both voted against the so-called Budget Reconciliation Act late Thursday evening and both senators issued statements denouncing the Senate’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood programs. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “We have a mandate, I believe, to repeal this awful law”. And it would end taxes the law imposed to cover its costs, including levies on higher-income people, expensive insurance policies, medical devices and indoor tanning salons.

They had complained the Affordable Care Act repeal was not deep enough but Senate GOP leaders made changes to satisfy them and were confident they would back the bill, especially because pro-life groups adamantly support defunding Planned Parenthood and the candidates are courting those pro-life voters. Democratic and moderate Republican lawmakers failed in their efforts to strip that language out of the bill through the amendment process. That would drive up premiums, prompting healthy policyholders to drop coverage, causing still more rate increases, the government contends. “This bill repeals as much of in that failed law as we can under arcane Senate rules and the confined guidelines of the budget”, Cruz added.

“Recently, we have seen horrific videos further demonstrating that Planned Parenthood has an appalling disregard for human life”, Toomey said. The GOP seized control of the Senate during the 2014 midterm elections when Republicans took seven Senate seats that were previously held by Democrats.

In August, Donnelly was one of only two Democrats to vote in favor of a Senate measure to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding. “While I support women’s health, there is no reason why taxpayers should be providing hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies each year to this organization”.

“Collins has consistently opposed defunding Planned Parenthood because it provides important family planning, cancer screenings, and basic preventive health care services for millions of women across the country”, Clark said.