Breaking: House Votes to Repeal ObamaCare & Defund Planned Parenthood – Fight Moves to the Senate

The House of Representatives has just voted to repeal ObamaCare and defund Planned Parenthood.

This is a tremendous pro-life, pro-freedom victory for all Americans.  We’ve been fighting for this for the better part of a decade.

We're very pleased that the House has followed through with one of President Trump's key promises to America: the repeal and replacement of Obamacare. We have advocated for an ObamaCare repeal for a long time, and today the House acted – your voice was heard.

With the passage of the replacement bill, we have also taken a big step toward defunding Big Abortion. The measure that has just cleared the House defunds Planned Parenthood – ending the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars a year in taxpayer funds to this abortion giant. With the passage in the House, our attention now turns to the Senate, where a new battle begins. We remain committed to ensuring that Americans receive health coverage they can afford and bringing an end to the long-standing use of taxpayer dollars to fund Planned Parenthood.

Here are some of the basics (we will have more detailed analysis in the days ahead).

First, the bill repeals ObamaCare, gutting the pro-abortion, anti-freedom healthcare debacle as much as possible through the reconciliation process (more on that below). It takes the ballooning, costly IRS tax/penalties down to $0 – effectively crippling the individual mandate and the employer mandate and beginning the process of dismantling the abortion-pill mandate (something further dismantled by today’s religious liberty Executive order).

The bill also provides critical opt-out provisions to States allowing them to opt out of a lot of the worst features of ObamaCare.  The bill also provides the most significant entitlement reform we’ve ever seen, giving the states far more power over Medicaid spending.

Second, the bill defunds Planned Parenthood. It takes nearly a half a billion dollars – your money that for years you have been forced to subsidize the largest abortion provider in the nation – away from the abortion mill.

As we explained before here is how the defunding works (and you can read more here):

Planned Parenthood gets more than $527 million in federal funding, the vast majority of which comes through Medicaid reimbursements. Under the terms of this bill, Planned Parenthood would be prohibited from receiving those taxpayer dollars.

While the House vote is a tremendous, long-awaited victory, the fight is far from over.  Now the fight moves to the U.S. Senate.

Because this measure was passed through something called the reconciliation process, the Senate only needs a majority vote – it is filibuster proof – to put this critical legislation on the President’s desk.

As we’ve explained before:

The advantage of budget reconciliation for major legislation (such as the Clinton-era welfare reform or ObamaCare) is that it makes the legislation filibuster-proof and only requires 51 votes in the Senate. This is why President Obama used it to pass ObamaCare initially, which means that that the Trump Administration, Speaker Ryan, and Leader McConnell can use the same process to repeal ObamaCare.

It is time for leadership in the Senate. It is time for action. The process to get to this point has been tenuous. The Senate must immediately take this bill up and pass legislation that both houses can agree on to repeal pro-abortion ObamaCare and defund Planned Parenthood.

The time for posturing and postponement is over. It is time to lead.  It’s time to keep a sacred promise to the American people.