Week ahead: GOP leaders coalesce around plan to avert shutdown
House Republicans are coalescing around a plan to avert a government shutdown over Planned Parenthood — just in time for the Oct. 1 deadline.
At the same meeting where Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced his coming resignation, House GOP leaders on Friday said they are planning a vote on a short-term spending bill that will continue to fund Planned Parenthood.
{mosads}At the same time, they will start the fast-track reconciliation process, a budget tool, to defund the healthcare provider, as well as repeal parts of ObamaCare. The House is also stepping up its oversight of the group and pushing new anti-abortion-rights legislation.
Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) said that a committee markup on the reconciliation measure could come during the week. Lawmakers said they did not know which parts of ObamaCare would be targeted, saying it depended on parliamentary rules that only allow the process to be used for spending and revenue, and require a measure that reduces the deficit.
The House vote on the “clean” spending bill is expected to come Tuesday or Wednesday, according to one lawmaker in the room, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). The Senate is also expected to pass a clean measure that includes funding for Planned Parenthood early in the week — the same version that’s expected to pass the House.
Massie, who is among several dozen conservatives who supported a hardline strategy over Planned Parenthood, said he would still vote against the bill, but is no longer expecting a shutdown.
The measure is expected to get Democratic votes, more than making up for the conservatives who will vote against it.
But there will still be plenty of drama. On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing in which Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards will appear before Congress for the first time since the group came under fire this July.
Richards is currently the only witness slated to testify, though Democrats on the committee have urged Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) to also invite the anti-abortion activist behind the controversial videos on fetal tissue, David Daleiden.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the committee’s top Democrat, wrote to Chaffetz again on Friday, calling on him to subpoena Daleiden, the 26-year-old founder of the Center for Medical Progress, to testify.
“Republicans have been letting Mr. Daleiden off the hook even though his group’s potentially illegal actions form the very foundation of the congressional investigation itself,” the Maryland lawmaker wrote in the letter.
The same day of the Planned Parenthood hearing, another GOP panel will be turning its attention to federal dollars spent on failed ObamaCare exchanges.
The House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee, led by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), will be investigating the millions of federal dollars that have been poured into state exchanges that were ultimately scrapped in favor of a federally run marketplace.
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