No adding a few more Republicans to the Senate will not change the equation

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Last Thursday, the GOP-controlled Senate passed an appropriations bill funding the most problematic departments of government in a way that is indistinguishable from the sort of bill that would pass under a Democrat Senate. Indeed, every Senate Democrat supported it, while only six Republicans opposed it (several more were absent).

Rather than spending their August recess forcing major votes on immigration, national security, and terrorism and holding marathon late-night sessions to force confirmation of more Trump nominees, senators passed a funding bill for the Labor Department, Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education that increased spending from even the omnibus levels. As we warned a few weeks ago, it spends tens of billions more than Trump requested on each department. Also, they had the temerity to tie funding of controversial programs within these departments to the military in the same bill.

As we all know, HHS is the primary funder of abortions among the government departments, and this bill funded Planned Parenthood. Now, most senators will hide behind the fact that they voted (all but Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins) for Rand Paul’s amendment to defund Planned Parenthood. Don’t buy the excuses. Once Paul’s amendment was defeated, they should have opposed final passage of the bill. Yet 40 Republicans went on to vote for the final bill with the funding. As an aside, phony “pro-life Democrat” Joe Manchin not only voted for final passage but against Paul’s standalone amendment.

This was also the first time since the inception of Obamacare that Republicans directly funded every iota of Obamacare through a specific HHS appropriations bill, aside from the general “catch-all” continuing resolutions and omnibus bills. That Republicans love Obamacare (and always have) is not surprising, because on Friday, 10 Republican senators introduced legislation protecting the core mandates of Obamacare. Some of them are very prominent: Thom Tillis, Lamar Alexander, Charles E. Grassley, Dean Heller, Bill Cassidy, Lisa Murkowski, Joni Ernst, Lindsey Graham, John Barrasso, and Roger Wicker.

Read the rest from Daniel Horowitz HERE.

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