Far from maintaining the Hyde Amendment limitations on federal abortion funding, the Harry Reid (D-NV) “manager’s amendment” on which cloture has now been invoked in the Senate would begin to tear down the firewall that individual taxpayers now enjoy in various federal programs not to participate in abortion funding; establish a line-item process so that employees in many states will see a special “abortion debit” on their pay check stubs; create new health insurance plans offered through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), one of which will almost certainly offer …
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) may have announced that he expects to vote for Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) health bill this afternoon, but that leaves Reid with just 59 votes. He needs to get all three of the following holdouts to sign on the dotted line by Christmas: Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) As we have thoroughly documented before, there are nearly two dozen abortion funding prohibitions in current federal law that reflect two basic principles: 1) that, except in situations involving the life of the mother, rape and incest, the …
While most eyes in Washington are on the massive health care reform bills, Congress is ever so slowly making policy changes via other legislative vehicles, including the Omnibus Appropriations bill being readied for enactment before December 18. This Omnibus Appropriations bill includes six of the 13 annual spending bills the Congress must approve to keep federal agencies running, and it commits $447 billion to a variety of program increases – bringing the new spending total for non-defense, non-veterans discretionary programs to a level 85 percent higher than just two years …
The Senate’s 54-45 vote last evening to table the Hatch-Nelson abortion funding limitation sets the two chambers of Congress on a collision course with one another – with Democrats driving both vehicles involved in the collision. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) led the way in devising and debating his bipartisan amendment, which would have extended the long-time Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) abortion funding policy and applied it to the insurance plans that will be subsidized under the bill. Conscience protections become yet another banner of liberty trampled by the health …
After a sneak-through Saturday night vote to make Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care bill open for debate, the Senate comes back on Monday to decide how much more involvement the federal government will have over the private health care sector — one-sixth of the nation’s overall economy. With a record-breaking 2,074 pages, there are plenty of provisions in the Senate health care bill that most Americans probably aren’t aware of. Here are some of the highlights that Heritage has noted in the past week: The Senate bill breaks …
Last night Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) released the version of health care reform he hopes will be considered on the Senate floor. The new bill devotes eight of its 2,074 pages to policy governing abortion in the structure of state health care exchanges and the public option it creates. Rather than retain the House-passed Stupak-Pitts abortion funding limitation adopted with 240 votes, Reid reverts to a variation on an amendment the House deleted that would both foster coverage of elective abortion and diminish the conscience rights of insurers …
Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK) tells the New York Times: The worst thing we could do in a recession is raise taxes, and this bill does just that. … Finally, I do not believe that the possibility for taxpayer-funded abortion has been clearly and emphatically removed from this legislation. Boren is dead on. The House bill raises taxes by $700 billion at a time when our unemployment rate is already 10.2%. And contrary to the President’s promise, the current House bill also enables taxpayer funding for elective abortions. No wonder Speaker …
