GOP targets funding

Focus is Planned Parenthood

WASHINGTON — Republicans plan to strip Planned Parenthood of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding as part of their rapid push to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care policy, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday.

Ryan said a defunding measure would appear in a special fast-track bill that is expected to pass Congress as soon as next month: “Planned Parenthood legislation would be in our reconciliation bill,” he said at a news conference, in response to a question about plans to defund the organization.

Reconciliation is a special congressional procedure allowing legislation to bypass a Senate filibuster, meaning it would need only a simply majority of senators to pass rather than a 60-vote supermajority.

Ryan made his comments two days after a special investigative panel formed by Republicans issued a report recommending that Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, lose its access to Medicaid reimbursements and federal family-planning funds. The GOP report also recommended the Congress allow states to exclude abortion providers from their own Medicaid programs.

The group reported receiving $553 million in government funding in 2014, about half of its total revenue. Congress has barred federal funding for abortions since 1976, but health providers that offer abortions are eligible to use federal funds for other services.

The defunding measure would take away roughly $400 million in Medicaid money from the group in the year after enactment, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and would result in roughly 400,000 women losing access to care.

“Defunding Planned Parenthood is dangerous to people’s health, it’s

unpopular, and it would leave people across the country without care,” said Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards. “They cannot afford to have basic reproductive health care attacked. Planned Parenthood has been here for 100 years and we’re going to be here for 100 more.”

A 2015 reconciliation bill that repealed major parts of the Affordable Care Act also included language defunding Planned Parenthood. That bill passed both houses of Congress and was vetoed by Obama.

Republicans expect President-elect Donald Trump to sign the coming reconciliation bill. Trump sent mixed signals during the campaign about the organization. He said “millions of women are helped by Planned Parenthood,” but he also endorsed efforts to defund the group. Trump once described himself as “very pro-choice,” but now opposes abortion rights.

Republicans currently have a 52-48 Senate majority, but it appears it will be a tough task for Democrats to convince enough GOP senators to oppose a defunding bill.

Only two Senate Republicans opposed the bill when it passed in 2015: Susan Collins

of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois; Kirk is no longer in the Senate, and Collins alone could not block the bill.

Asked Wednesday about party efforts to tie the effort to defund Planned Parenthood to Affordable Care Act repeal, Collins said, “that’s of concern to me as well, but I don’t want to prejudge what’s in the … bill.”

Most GOP lawmakers have long opposed Planned Parenthood because many of its clinics provide abortions. Their antagonism intensified after anti-abortion activists released secretly recorded videos in 2015 showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing how they sometimes provide fetal tissue to researchers, which is legal if no profit is made.

A supporter of the defunding effort said it may not have much of an effect on the number of abortions performed in the country, but that federal dollars to Planned Parenthood indirectly support abortion.

“A lot of the ongoing support in the structural finances for Planned Parenthood goes to build the buildings, the infrastructure that provides abortion,” said Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla.