President Obama will veto a bill repealing large pieces of his healthcare law and blocking federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the White House said Wednesday morning.
The Senate is voting on amendments to the bill, which is the culmination of a major Republican effort this year to pass an Obamacare repeal bill and send it to the president’s desk, even though Obama has long threatened to veto it. Congressional Republicans have voted to repeal the law many times, but this is the first time lawmakers are using a process called budget reconciliation, which requires only a simple Senate majority to pass.
The House has passed a version of the legislation and would have to re-approve it after it is amended by the Senate. The Senate is expected to hold a final vote Thursday.
Republicans are finally coalescing around the bill after sharp disagreements over exactly which parts of Obamacare to include in it and whether to also use it to broadcast their dislike of Planned Parenthood, a women’s health provider that also performs the most abortions in the U.S.
Because the law had to abide by budget reconciliation rules, there was uncertainty over which sections of it to include and which to leave out. The final Senate bill would repeal many of the law’s taxes and its mandates for individuals to buy insurance and for employers to buy it. Republicans also added in a last-minute provision to roll back the law’s Medicaid expansion after two years.
Eliminating those big pieces of the law would be a big ding to Obama’s chief domestic legislative achievement. The legislation would “take away criticial benefits and healthcare coverage from hard-working middle-class families,” the White House said.
“Repealing key elements of the Affordable Care Act would result in millions of individuals remaining uninsured or losing the insurance they have today,” the White House said.
Republicans say that while the law has expanded coverage to many formerly uninsured Americans, the insurance plans are often unaffordable for the low-income people who buy them. The party has many other objections to the law as well, saying it forces people to buy a product they might not want.
