A Promise the GOP Can Still Keep

“I’d say a lot of people want liver,” said Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services, in an undercover video released by the Center for Medical Progress. “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact,” said Nucatola, who added that the most difficult thing to get out intact is “the calvarium—the head is basically the biggest part.” At a lunch with undercover activists posing as buyers from a biotech company, Nucatola sipped wine, nibbled on a salad, and explained that Planned Parenthood’s nonprofit affiliates charge $30 to $100 “per specimen” because they “want to break even. And if they can do a little better than break even, and do so in a way that seems reasonable, they’re happy to do that.”

Hillary Clinton called the videos “disturbing,” and in early August 2015 a majority of the Senate voted to defund Planned Parenthood—an effort first championed in the House in 2007 by then-congressman Mike Pence. The GOP Senate was thwarted by a Democratic filibuster, so many voices in the Republican party, not just the conservative movement, said more drastic measures were necessary.

“I don’t like a government shutdown,” John McCain said in an NPR interview. “But this is a clear case of totally improper use of taxpayers’ dollars. I have an obligation to the taxpayers of Arizona.”

“If [Democrats] want to stand before the American people and say that they support this practice of dismembering unborn children, then that’s their privilege,” McCain added.

There was not a government shutdown—indeed, there was good reason to believe a shutdown would have been a counterproductive failure—but Senate Republicans did lay the groundwork to defund Planned Parenthood by figuring out a way to include the provision in a budget reconciliation bill, which couldn’t be filibustered by Senate Democrats. Congress passed that bill in December 2015, but President Obama vetoed it.

Now that Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House, budget reconciliation remains the only realistic hope for avoiding a Democratic filibuster of any measure to defund Planned Parenthood. “We think reconciliation is the tool because that gets it into law,” House speaker Paul Ryan said about the effort to defund Planned Parenthood this spring. “Reconciliation is the way to go.” But the budget reconciliation bill was stopped in its tracks on July 28 when John McCain gave his decisive thumbs-down, killing the so-called “skinny repeal” that would have made a handful of changes to Obamacare and redirected Planned Parenthood’s federal funding to community health centers.

McCain’s vote shouldn’t be seen as a betrayal of his pro-life principles because the Planned Parenthood provision was entangled in a complex debate about health care policy. Some critics derided McCain as voting to win praise from Democrats and the media, but there were legitimate concerns regarding policy and process that could have reasonably justified a “no” vote. Even New Jersey congressman Chris Smith, perhaps the most committed pro-life member of Congress, voted against the House’s “repeal-and-replace” bill this spring because he thought its Medicaid reform was too extreme.

After McCain cast the deciding vote to kill “skinny repeal,” he called on Congress to come up with a bipartisan solution to Obamacare’s problems. It may be overly optimistic to think Democrats will be interested in any solutions for Obamacare other than a bailout for insurance companies. At the very least, McCain and his GOP colleagues should remember that there are some principled disagreements between Democrats and Republicans on which there will be no compromise.

Congressional Democrats today believe, almost uniformly, that liberty entails the right to abort an unborn child at taxpayer expense. Elected Republicans today believe, almost uniformly, that liberty does not permit the intentional taking of innocent human life.

McCain’s speech upon his return to the Senate following his diagnosis of cancer was widely praised in the press for its calls for bipartisanship, but McCain was at his best when he testified to the principles that make America great. “We are the servants of a great nation, a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” McCain said. “What greater cause could we hope to serve than helping keep America the strong, aspiring, inspirational beacon of liberty and defender of dignity of all human beings and their right to freedom and equal justice?”

If McCain and the rest of his pro-life colleagues want to honor their commitment to the dignity of all human beings and cut off federal subsidies to abortionists like Planned Parenthood, they will only be able to do so through a budget reconciliation bill that can’t be filibustered.

Though the “skinny repeal” measure died, the reconciliation bill is still viable—but only for a limited period of time. Legislative experts aren’t entirely in agreement on when the reconciliation bill expires, but many have suggested it will die at the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

There’s no reason for Republicans to let the fiscal year end without passing a reconciliation bill that keeps their pro-life promises. They can defund abortion providers and attempt to cut off subsidies to Obamacare plans that cover elective abortion (though it’s unclear the Senate parliamentarian will permit the latter measure). The bill would need to achieve a minimal amount of deficit reduction required by reconciliation rules, but it wouldn’t necessarily need to include big changes to Obamacare. Most of the Obamacare provisions in the “skinny repeal” bill—increasing Health Savings Accounts limits, suspending the employer mandate and the medical device tax, expanding the state waivers program—were largely uncontroversial and could be enacted without disrupting the health care system. The only controversial piece of the so-called skinny bill was the repeal of the individual mandate. Absent other regulatory changes, that last provision would lead to further market destabilization, and there can be good-faith disagreements about whether such destabilization is unacceptable or a price worth paying to free people from an unconstitutional and burdensome mandate.

But there is no good reason for Republicans to break their pro-life promises. If they can’t reach consensus on Obamacare by the end of September, they needn’t let the budget reconciliation bill go to waste. They can address Obamacare through regular order and a bipartisan bill, or they could write a new Republican-only reconciliation bill for next year. But at the very least Republicans ought to honor their commitment to the right to life this year. They don’t need to shut down the government to do it, they just need to pass a bill.