{"id":31178,"date":"2015-09-25T08:03:16","date_gmt":"2015-09-25T15:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/mcconnell-moves-ahead-with-bipartisan-stopgap-spending-bill\/"},"modified":"2015-09-25T08:03:16","modified_gmt":"2015-09-25T15:03:16","slug":"mcconnell-moves-ahead-with-bipartisan-stopgap-spending-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/mcconnell-moves-ahead-with-bipartisan-stopgap-spending-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"McConnell moves ahead with bipartisan stopgap spending bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON<\/strong> \u2014 The Senate\u2019s top Republican moved swiftly to avoid a government shutdown in six days, pushing legislation that would keep agencies operating without a contentious fight over money for Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n

The action of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., followed a decisive Senate vote blocking a bill that would have stripped Planned Parenthood of its taxpayer funding while keeping the government running through Dec. 11.<\/p>\n

The vote was 47-52, falling short of a majority and well shy of the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster led by Democrats. Eight Republicans, several of whom support abortion rights, voted with 42 Democrats and two independents to kill the measure.<\/p>\n

McConnell immediately offered a bipartisan stopgap spending bill free of the Planned Parenthood dispute that\u2019s expected to easily clear the Senate next week by a wide bipartisan margin. He has for almost a year promised that Republicans controlling Congress won\u2019t repeat the government shutdown of two years ago.<\/p>\n

In the House, GOP leaders called a meeting of their fractious rank and file for Friday morning to discuss whether to accept the Senate\u2019s move or reject it at the risk that continuing the fight over Planned Parenthood would lead to a government shutdown.<\/p>\n

The White House signaled President Barack Obama would sign the measure, called a continuing resolution, into law \u2014 if the House steps aside from the fight tea party Republicans want over \u201cdefunding\u201d Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we all know we\u2019re going to have a clean CR,\u201d said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, using congressional code. \u201cThe House is going to figure out what the House is going to do but we can\u2019t shut down the government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking at the White House, Obama reminded Congress of the need to keep the government open.<\/p>\n

Honoring public health workers for their efforts to combat Ebola, the president said such organizations \u201cneed support from Congress in order continue to excel in their mission so I hope that Congress chooses to keep our government open and operating so that heroes like this can keep working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Planned Parenthood has long been targeted by Republicans, but their efforts have intensified after the release of secretly recorded videos that raised questions about its handling of fetal tissue provided to scientific researchers.<\/p>\n

The group says it is doing nothing wrong and isn\u2019t profiting from such practices in violation of federal law.<\/p>\n

The vote to block the stopgap spending bill was widely expected. And on Thursday, the White House issued a statement that Obama would veto it in any event, arguing that it \u201cwould limit access to health care for women, men, and families across the nation, and disproportionately impact low-income individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Senate\u2019s vote, and the bipartisan measure that followed, cranks up the pressure on the GOP-controlled House. There, GOP leaders have been stymied in their hopes to pass a temporary spending bill known as a continuing resolution.<\/p>\n

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has only shaky control over his fractious caucus, and tea party Republicans are adamant about using the must-pass measure to carry provisions to defund Planned Parenthood, even at the risk of a partial government shutdown.<\/p>\n

GOP leaders like Boehner have counseled privately that it\u2019s a doomed strategy and want to avoid a repeat of the 2013 closure, which hurt the party politically.<\/p>\n

McConnell appears to enjoy support from a majority of the Republican rank and file.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d rather it defund Planned Parenthood, but if the votes aren\u2019t there, I don\u2019t see the point of having a standoff,\u201d said Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate GOP\u2019s campaign committee.<\/p>\n

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who is using his rivalry with GOP leaders in Washington to help define his presidential campaign, vowed to fight the legislation.<\/p>\n

Sending such a measure to the GOP-controlled House just a day or two before a potential shutdown seems aimed at giving Republican leaders in the House the push needed to roll over recalcitrant tea partyers opposed to a bill that fails to take on Planned Parenthood. Conservative hard-liners including Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, were summoned to Boehner\u2019s suite but would not comment on his plans.<\/p>\n

But a GOP leadership aide, requiring anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said GOP leaders were considering immediately crafting a separate filibuster-proof budget measure that would permit Republicans to deliver to Obama a measure to take away almost $500 million a year in taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, most of which goes to provide health services to the poor via the Medicaid program.<\/p>\n

The measure also contains $700 million in emergency funding to fight western wildfires.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Nancy Benac and Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 The Senate\u2019s top Republican moved swiftly to avoid a government shutdown in six days, pushing legislation that would keep agencies operating without a contentious fight over money for Planned Parenthood. The action of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., followed a decisive Senate vote blocking a bill that would have stripped Planned Parenthood of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-31178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31178"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=31178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}