Congressman Mike Pence told fellow Republicans in Congress today that they need to step up efforts to fight Senate Democrats who are holding up a long-term budget bill that would de-fund Planned Parenthood.
Today, members of the Senate are expected to vote against a House-approved bill that cuts the federal budget and contains pro-life riders stopping taxpayer funding of abortion in certian cases and revokes funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business. They are also expected to vote against stopping debate on a bill Senate Democrats floated that keep the abortion and Planned Parenthood funding.
In an interview with Fox News this morning, Pence said:
The American people know that the federal government is going broke and for Harry Reid to not only defend the Cowboy Poetry Festival, but to say that finding $61 billion in savings in this fiscal year is somehow reckless and irresponsible, it shows that liberals here in Washington have a fundamental disconnect with what the overwhelming majority of people in this country know: we’ve got to start making the right choices right now to put our fiscal house in order and House Republicans are ready to make that fight.
Republicans are just really keeping our word that we’d find those savings in this fiscal year and we also kept our word to defund ObamaCare, we also saw a bipartisan majority vote to defund Planned Parenthood. What I just told my colleagues at a House Republican Conference is, ‘It’s time to pick a fight.’ The American people know this is just a down payment. This is just a start. We have to win in this small battle if we’re going to win in the big battles that lie ahead on debt ceiling, on budget, and on fundamental government reform.
Asked about the new controversy involving NPR and undercover video footage showing the liberal taxpayer-funded network’s top offical making controversial comments about conservatives, Pence added:
It would be more right, though, if we seized this time of a fiscal crisis to say it’s time to end public funding for NPR, it’s time to end public funding for Planned Parenthood of America, these organizations that have a particular viewpoint, that advance a particular liberal viewpoint, ought to do what every other policy organization in this town does and that is raise their own resources to advance their own agenda.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting gets a reasonably small percentage of its revenue from taxpayers. They get an awful lot in the form of corporate grants. This is not about getting rid of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It’s saying, ‘In a time where we have a $14 trillion national debt and we’re running a $1.65 trillion deficit, now is the time to ask these organizations like Planned Parenthood and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, ‘Come on, you’ve got to stand on your own. Particularly when your biases are this clear and in the open.’
Pence’s comments have already motivated conservative and pro-life activists who want Republicans in the House to be more aggressive in their negotiations with the pro-abortion Senate Democrats, who are to blame for likely stopping the House-passed pro-life bill later today.
