Next Monday afternoon, the Senate will vote on a "clean" stop-gap funding bill to keep government operating after October 1, a funding bill that includes Planned Parenthood money. Provided Mitch McConnell can keep presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Rand Paul bottled up, that bill should pass the Senate.
Then House Speaker John Boehner has to get to work on it, which is now complicated by his impending resignation. Thursday night, prior to his shocking announcement Friday morning, leadership cobbled together a plan—promising that they'll get a Planned Parenthood defunding bill on President Obama's desk to veto by using reconciliation, the budget tool that only requires 51 Senate votes. Now he just has to sell it, a matter that will be confused by his departure.
Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., emerged from Boehner’s office Thursday afternoon insisting Republicans would lose close to 50 votes on any bill that doesn’t strip funding for the embattled women’s health organization, meaning leaders would have to rely on Democrats to keep government open beyond Sept. 30, when current funding expires. […]
An aide with GOP leadership said Boehner and other leaders are committed to “making sure we advance the pro-life cause,” “significantly ramping up our oversight and investigative activities” and “sending more pro-life measures to the Senate and urging [senators] to vote on them.”
Accordingly, markups of a reconciliation bill in the House committees of jurisdiction would begin next week, senior Republican aides confirmed to CQ Roll Call.
Leadership also said there would be a vote on a separate bill next week that would allow states to exclude providers that perform abortions, such as Planned Parenthood, from Medicaid contracts.
Now that's all a little bit up in the air. But since he is staying until October 30, this plan
should still be in place, since they've only got a few days to work all this out. Boehner's leaving also gives him all the room he needs to negotiate with Democrats to get a clean funding bill passed and to leave the hard-liners in the dust. But that's going to partly depend on who in the leadership team is angling to replace him and whether
they think they need the hardliners.
Aside from all the palace drama, this does clarify what this is really about—taking health care away from low-income women. It's also pretty clear that no matter what Boehner does, he's going to have those 50 or so Republicans who want nothing less than a shutdown and a more direct confrontation with President Obama. They are being whipped by Heritage Action against what they say is a "show vote," since Obama would just veto it. Shut down, they contend, is the only way to make this happen. With or without Boehner, that's been their position all along.
Which is all depressingly familiar if you followed the lead up to the October 2013 shutdown. In the words of the immortal, recently passed Yogi Bera, it's deja vu all over again.
Sign if you agree: Democrats must stand strong. No cuts to Planned Parenthood. No government shutdowns.
