This time last year, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) spoke to all who would listen about the health care legislation that Republican leadership crafted: “This is the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obamacare. It really comes down to a binary choice.” Now, however, Ryan faces a binary choice himself — one that he and his leadership colleagues seem intent on deflecting.
Ryan can support an Obamacare bailout, or he can support the pro-life movement. He cannot support both.
Theoretically, Congress could include provisions codifying pro-life protections preventing taxpayer funding of abortion coverage (i.e., the Hyde amendment) as part of any Obamacare “stability” package. But as a practical matter, the chances of enough Democrats supporting such provisions to result in their enactment comes to a nice round number: Zero-point-zero percent.
The deafening silence emanating from Republican leaders on the life issue speaks volumes to both their knowledge of the problem, and their intent of how to handle it. Ryan desperately wants to bail out Obamacare, going so far as to promote a ridiculous budgetary gimmick that should make Ryan, in his former role as Budget Committee Chairman, laugh out loud in its absurdity.
If Republican leaders considered the life issue a red line they cannot, and will not, cross, to pass an Obamacare bailout, they would have said so months ago. By and large, they have not done so, instead issuing only mealy-mouthed statements that “we have been working on it.”
Such statements constitute, in plain English, a cop-out. When the issue presents a binary choice, as here, Congress has little to “work on”—the Hyde amendment either appears in the bill, or it doesn’t. A cynic might argue that the “we have been working on it” statement means that Republican leaders consider the life issue a political problem to game their way around, rather than a moral principle that they must uphold first, last, and always.
Republicans would likely use two gambits in an attempt to placate the pro-life movement. The first would involve President Trump issuing an executive order purportedly to keep taxpayer dollars from funding abortion coverage. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) proposed this idea back in October — after a reporter got Alexander to admit that he never even considered the issue of taxpayer funding of abortion coverage when drafting his “stability” bill.
WATCH: @March_for_Life & @SBAList condemn Alexander-Murray health compromise bc of abortion funds. I question both senators & @chrisjacobsHC pic.twitter.com/P3A5S2sb0T
— Jason Calvi (@JasonCalvi) October 19, 2017
But executive action cannot trump the statute itself. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said the week Obamacare passed that the law “forces taxpayers to pay for abortions,” and only another law will change that dynamic.
As Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner observed in March 2010:
This bill expands abortion funding to the greatest extent in history. I have heard that the president is contemplating an executive order to try to limit this. Members should not be fooled. Executive orders cannot override the clear intent of a statute. … If an executive order moves the abortion funding in this bill away from where it is now, it will be struck down as unconstitutional because executive orders cannot constitutionally do that.
As I noted in December, this inherent limitation on executive orders applies as equally to Republican presidents as it does to Democratic ones. It has no bearing on whether or not the occupant of the Oval Office adheres to pro-life principles, for the executive cannot make the law — only Congress can impose restrictions on taxpayer funding of abortion. If this Congress does not impose those restrictions, then any new dollars ipso facto would represent taxpayer funding of abortion coverage.
Republican leaders may also embrace the political tactic of a “headpat vote.” This gambit would bring to the floor two separate bills — one containing the Obamacare “stability” funding, and a separate, stand-alone bill codifying pro-life protections for that funding. While that concept might sound reasonable at first blush, the pro-life community would find the outcome unacceptable — the Obamacare funding would remain on a “must-pass” bill headed straight to the president’s desk, while the pro-life restrictions would die in the Senate by failing to get the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.
This procedural gimmick would represent the worst of the Washington “swamp,” allowing Republican politicians to echo John Kerry in 2004 by taking both sides of an issue: “I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” Moreover, it would demonstrate that, when the chips are down, Republican leaders view the life issue and community as something to be bargained away, or appeased through meaningless political tokenism, rather than as a moral imperative and matter of first principles.
In the end, the pro-life community has witnessed enough political double-talk, most notably by Democrats attempting to claim Obamacare does not fund abortion coverage, to see through any procedural gimmicks Republican leaders might propose. The question of whether Republicans support taxpayer funding of abortion coverage in Obamacare really does come down to a binary choice. Here’s hoping that Republicans choose the side of life.
