GOP Picks Reconciliation Targets: Obamacare and Planned Parenthood

Fi­nally, the ques­tion of how Re­pub­lic­ans will use budget re­con­cili­ation is be­ing answered.

Both the House En­ergy and Com­merce and Ways and Means com­mit­tees will mark up re­con­cili­ation le­gis­la­tion this week, with the end goal of even­tu­ally put­ting bills from all five rel­ev­ant House and Sen­ate com­mit­tees in­to a pack­age that can pass in the up­per cham­ber with only 51 votes—and then head straight for Obama’s veto pen.

The En­ergy and Com­merce bill con­tains a pro­vi­sion de­fund­ing Planned Par­ent­hood for one year, re­dir­ect­ing the $230 mil­lion in sav­ings to com­munity-health cen­ters. It also re­peals the Af­ford­able Care Act’s Pre­ven­tion and Pub­lic Health fund, which saves about $12 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to seni­or com­mit­tee staff.

The Ways and Means bill elim­in­ates ma­jor pieces of the ACA, ren­der­ing it es­sen­tially moot. In­cluded are re­peals of all of Re­pub­lic­ans’ most-hated pieces of the law: the in­di­vidu­al man­date, the em­ploy­er man­date, the med­ic­al-device tax, the “Ca­dillac” tax on high-cost health care plans, and the In­de­pend­ent Pay­ment Ad­vis­ory Board.

A third House com­mit­tee, Edu­ca­tion and Work­force, will also con­trib­ute a piece to the re­con­cili­ation pack­age. The two Sen­ate com­mit­tees with jur­is­dic­tion are Fin­ance and Health, Edu­ca­tion, Labor and Pen­sions.

“We … will take steps to pro­tect tax­pay­er dol­lars from pro­grams and or­gan­iz­a­tions that do not live up to the stand­ards and pri­or­it­ies of the Amer­ic­an people,” said En­ergy and Com­merce Chair­man Fred Up­ton in a state­ment. “As this com­mit­tee con­tin­ues to in­vest­ig­ate Planned Par­ent­hood and its af­fil­i­ates, the flow of tax­pay­er dol­lars should end.”

Budget rules al­low for a re­con­cili­ation bill to con­tain mul­tiple pro­vi­sions in dif­fer­ent areas, as long as they all fall with­in the jur­is­dic­tion of the five rel­ev­ant com­mit­tees.

Sev­er­al steps of the re­con­cili­ation pro­cess re­main, but it seems that as the dust is set­tling, the the fu­ture is be­com­ing more clear: Con­gress will pass a con­tinu­ing res­ol­u­tion that funds both the gov­ern­ment and Planned Par­ent­hood un­til Decem­ber, and then at some point it will pass a bill that both re­peals ma­jor pieces of the Af­ford­able Care Act and de­funds Planned Par­ent­hood. Obama, of course, will veto the bill.

Spe­cif­ics aside, the pro­ced­ur­al tool will be used as a way for con­gres­sion­al Re­pub­lic­ans to gain a small, if largely sym­bol­ic, vic­tory after a long sum­mer of fall­ing on the los­ing side of in­tense par­tis­an de­bates in the health care arena. If all goes ac­cord­ing to plan, it will al­low the GOP to point to con­crete ex­amples of what it has done as the ma­jor­ity party in both cham­bers of Con­gress, but also of what could be­come law un­der a new pres­id­ent with dif­fer­ent val­ues in 2017.

Re­con­cili­ation first be­came a sub­ject of fierce de­bate as Con­gress waited for the Su­preme Court to de­cide King v. Bur­well, a case chal­len­ging sub­sidies giv­en un­der the ACA on fed­er­al ex­changes. Had the Court ruled against the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion, it would have blown a hole in the law and threatened the health cov­er­age of thou­sands. Sev­er­al plans to tem­por­ar­ily ex­tend sub­sidies while re­peal­ing big pieces of the law began emer­ging in the Sen­ate, in­tro­duced by Re­pub­lic­ans but dis­missed as non­starters by Demo­crats. Re­con­cili­ation came up as a way to put the “King fixes” on the pres­id­ent’s desk without the as­sist­ance of Demo­crats.

But the Su­preme Court sided with the ad­min­is­tra­tion and the law was left in­tact, leav­ing Re­pub­lic­ans with the sud­den di­lemma of what came next—if any­thing—in their re­lent­less quest against Obama­care. The an­swer quickly emerged: The GOP, for the most part, punted to 2017 and the pos­sib­il­ity of a Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­ent who will sign a re­peal bill.

But be­fore that, they said, re­con­cili­ation could be used to put an Obama­care re­peal in front of the pres­id­ent, as con­gres­sion­al Re­pub­lic­ans had prom­ised the voters who sent them to Wash­ing­ton they would. While it seemed widely un­der­stood that this was the most likely use of the budget tool, however, lead­er­ship re­peatedly em­phas­ized that there was no rush to use it.

“It’s still open. No fi­nal de­cision has been made,” Sen. John Bar­rasso told re­port­ersin early Ju­ly. “Had the Su­preme Court ruled the oth­er way, there would have been an im­me­di­acy to have to use re­con­cili­ation with re­gard to a King de­cision, but since the de­cision went the oth­er way, that im­me­di­acy isn’t there. So re­con­cili­ation is still a use­ful tool, and I ex­pect it to be used.”

And then came a new con­tro­versy: fed­er­al fund­ing of Planned Par­ent­hood. Less than a month after the Af­ford­able Care Act sur­vived its second Su­preme Court chal­lenge, a series of sting videos tar­get­ing the wo­men’s health care or­gan­iz­a­tion stirred an­oth­er bit­terly par­tis­an fight on Cap­it­ol Hill. The videos al­legedly show Planned Par­ent­hood selling fetal tis­sue, which is il­leg­al. The or­gan­iz­a­tion denies the al­leg­a­tions, say­ing that it only donates the tis­sue for med­ic­al re­search and is re­im­bursed for over­head costs. Sev­er­al con­gres­sion­al in­vest­ig­a­tions are un­der­way.

But simply in­vest­ig­at­ing the or­gan­iz­a­tion and its activ­it­ies is not enough for most Re­pub­lic­ans, who want to see the or­gan­iz­a­tion lose its fed­er­al fund­ing. A group of right-wing con­ser­vat­ives in the House, joined by pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate Sen. Ted Cruz, began call­ing for a de­fund pro­vi­sion to be in­cluded in a must-pass spend­ing bill, even if that led to a gov­ern­ment shut­down.

GOP lead­er­ship, on the oth­er hand, learned from the shut­down in 2013, in which Cruz played a lead­ing role as well. Not only was the party suc­cess­ful in its at­tack against the Af­ford­able Care Act, but it also shouldered the blame for a 16-day shut­down that en­raged many Amer­ic­ans. Both House and Sen­ate lead­ers have in­sisted the gov­ern­ment will not shut down again this year.

To pla­cate con­ser­vat­ives, however, lead­er­ship said a strip­ping of Planned Par­ent­hood fund­ing should in­stead be put in a re­con­cili­ation bill. House Speak­er John Boehner dis­cussed this al­tern­at­ive with House lead­er­ship in a meet­ing just a day be­fore he an­nounced his resig­na­tion last week. He resigned amid pres­sure from the House Free­dom Caucus, whose mem­bers were threat­en­ing to try to oust him as speak­er if the spend­ing bill pro­cess didn’t go their way. His resig­na­tion re­moves that threat, clear­ing the way for a short-term, clean spend­ing bill to pass through the House and thus avert­ing a shut­down.