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The Senate parliamentarian—the person who reviews legislation and determines if it can be moved under Senate rules—has told Republican leadership that the House Trumpcare bill has an anti-abortion provision that is unlikely to be allowed.
The parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, has flagged language that would bar people from using new refundable tax credits for private insurance plans that cover abortion, according to Senate sources.
If Republicans are forced to strip the so-called Hyde Amendment language from the legislation, which essentially bars federal funds from being used to pay for abortions except to save the life of a mother or in cases of rape and incest, it may doom the bill. […]
The abortion language that conservatives want in the healthcare bill may run afoul of a precedent set in 1995, when then-Senate Parliamentarian Robert Dove ruled that an abortion provision affecting a state block grant program failed to meet reconciliation requirements, according to a source briefed on internal Senate discussions.
One GOP source identified the parliamentarian’s objection to the Hyde language along with Republican infighting over how to cap ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion as two of the biggest obstacles to passing a bill.
Don't believe it. McConnell wants this bill to pass, and apparently has already pressured moderates into accepting the Medicaid cuts. He's not going to let this get in his way of repealing Obamacare.
One way around it would be restructuring the existing tax credits and sending that subsidy through an existing federal government program which is already subject to the Hyde amendment restrictions on federal funding for abortion provision, like Medicaid or the Federal Employee Health Benefits program. It doesn't seem terribly likely that doing anything to add anything to Medicaid to prolong its existence. A simpler and likelier path would be for McConnell and Republicans to overrule the Parliamentarian and just pass it anyway.
However, it is an obstacle for Republicans we can continue to exploit—any problem they have with this bill has to be used against them. If you have a Republican senator or senators, call them through the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell them we will make sure their political life is on the line with this vote.