Obama Pro-Abortion Health Care Reconciliation Bill Expected Monday, Then Summit
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
February 19, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Democrats in Washington are continuing to push for the controversial reconciliation strategy to railroad the pro-abortion government-run health care bill through Congress. And Republicans continue blasting the upcoming health care summit as a charade and "infomercial" for the bill.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is reportedly writing a revised health care bill that can be attached to a budget bill and receive approval in the Senate on a majority vote.
The idea behind the Obama bill, or a corrections measure that allows the House to adopt the pro-abortion Senate bill, is to rely on the reconciliation process to get around the Republican filibuster and make it so only 51 votes are needed to approve the bill.
As LifeNews.com reported, Obama officials said the bill may be ready by the weekend and now they have updated their prediction by saying it will be posted on the Internet on Monday morning.
"It will be a reconciliation bill," the new York Times quoted a top Democratic staffer as saying. "If Republicans don’t come with any substantial offers, this is what we would do."
One Capitol Hill Democrat told the Times abortion remains "a wild card," but pro-life advocates would be surprised if the Obama bill contained the Stupak amendment that appears in the House bill and bans abortion funding. The Senate measure contains massive abortion funding and other pro-abortion problems.
Democrats are relying on a strategy to build public support for the pro-abortion health care bill by putting together a White House health care summit, but Republicans aren’t taking the bait and saying the event is for show.
"We’re one week away from the ‘bipartisan’ White House health care summit, and Washington Democrats are scrambling to salvage their massive – and quite partisan – government takeover of health care," House Minority Leader John Boehner said yesterday.
"We don’t need a six-hour infomercial for the latest Democratic backroom deal. We need to start over on real health care reforms to lower costs. That’s what the American people want, and what they deserve," he added.
So far, the only Republican to publicly announce that he’ll show up for the summit has been Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee ranking member Mike Enzi, a pro-life Republican from Wyoming.
It is also unclear whether Democrats will have enough votes in either the Senate or the House to get the reconciliation measure through.
The Senate has 11 Democrats considered potential no votes and Obama and his pro-abortion allies must keep at least two of that group for the bill to pass.
The numbers in the House are potentially more perilous.
Democrats, who now hold 255 of the House’s 435 seats, drew only one GOP vote for the bill the first time around and Republican Rep. Anh Cao of Louisiana says he is a no vote on the Senate bill because it funds abortions. Rep. Bart Stupak also has a group of 10-12 lawmakers who are potential no votes as well.
Also, since the first House vote, one Democrat who voted for the bill has resigned, one has died and a third plans to leave office late next week.
And some of the changes made to the Senate bill may lose other members for other political reasons.
Once a final bill and legislative plan is hatched, pro-life groups are expected to pull out all the stops to oppose any measure that has abortion funding.
Leading pro-life advocates have said Obama has made false promises to Americans about not wanting abortion funding in the health care bill.
"The president promised from the get-go to maintain the national consensus that rejects public funding of abortion. He has yet to live up to it," Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser says.
She said the health care summit is a great time for Obama to retreat on demanding the government-run health care bill fund abortions.
"So in this new conciliatory mode, if he ignores the 80-percent consensus opposing abortion coverage in healthcare, the most intractable and divisive issue thus far, he reveals what many have suspected from the beginning – that abortion ideology is more precious to this president than his top domestic priority," she adds.
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