On Thursday, the Senate rejected Sen. Rand Paul’s amendment which would have stripped Planned Parenthood of its federal funding, 45-48. Republicans enjoy a slight majority in the Senate, so it’s disappointing to see that not only did the bill fail, but not even all Republicans in the Senate voted for it, even though three Democrats weren’t in chambers to vote on it, making the passage of a pro-life bill seemingly easier. Paul needed 60 votes for the amendment to pass.
It’s not unusual for Democrats to refrain from voting against legislation that would defund Planned Parenthood. After all, they are not only (typically) pro-choice and pro-big government, but so many of them receive funds from Planned Parenthood. During the 2016 cycle, Planned Parenthood’s PACs gave approximately $5,000 each to two Republican members of the House and one member of the Senate. The rest of the nearly $1 million spent that year went to Democrats in Congress.
Planned Parenthood receives upwards of $500 million annually in federal funds through Medicaid. (Some reports show they raked in $1.5 billion over three years.) The Justice Department is in the middle of investigating the organization for allegedly profiting off the sale of aborted fetal tissue. Committees in the House and Senate have investigated Planned Parenthood for the same thing. The House Oversight Committee announced, when it investigated the organization in 2015, that it needed no federal funds to function, it could operate on its own just fine. At the very least, pro-life advocacy aside, any true conservative should not advocate taxpayer dollars funding an organization that doesn’t need it.
If you add to this combination, the pro-life issue, and one must come to the conclusion that Republicans say they are pro-life and pro-limited government but they aren’t. The fact that some Republicans voted against a bill that would remove federal funding from Planned Parenthood shows just how much they are willing to get into office on a conservative platform, but once there, fail to actually support that. After his amendment failed Thursday afternoon, Paul told reporters Republican leadership “favors bloated government spending more than they care about Planned Parenthood.”
If Republicans continue to run on a platform of conservative ideas, including being pro-life and limited government, but once in office fail to actively support either, conservatives in those districts should act accordingly and vote them out of office during the next election. The only way for conservative concepts to take root in Congress, particularly something as basic as defunding a mammoth organization like Planned Parenthood, is for politicians there to act on the principles they say they believe and vote accordingly.
If they’re not going to, they shouldn’t represent conservatives in Congress at all.
[Also read: Vulnerable red-state Democrats vote against defunding Planned Parenthood]
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
