Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) says the Senate will vote quickly after President-elect Donald Trump takes office to repeal Obamacare, the pro-abortion government-run health care program. Trump has vowed to repeal President Obama’s controversial program and a Republican-led Senate is on board.
McConnell announced the agenda Tuesday, after meeting with Vice President-elect Mike Pence and Senate GOP colleagues over lunch.
“We’ll be moving to the ObamaCare replacement,” as soon as the Senate convenes in January, McConnell said, referring to repeal legislation that is expected to pass with a simple majority vote under special budgetary rules.
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a member of McConnell’s leadership team, said Republicans will consider an array of measures to replace President Obama’s signature healthcare law.“There’s going to be an important discussion of all the alternatives,” he said of ideas Republicans favored in 2009 such as allowing insurance companies to sell plans across state lines, which Democrats shelved.
The Senate is scheduled to convene on Jan. 3.
Democrats, on the other hand, are still stubbornly clinging to the system that’s put America on a path to economic implosion.
“We’re not going to repeal or help [Trump] repeal Obamacare,” new Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) vowed.
But it will take more than tough talk to stop the repeal process. With the GOP still holding the slimmest of Senate majorities, undoing the bulk of Obamacare with just 51 votes can be accomplished through the rare but effective budget reconciliation process.
Leading pro-life gro9ups wants Planned Parenthood defunding added to the reconciliation bill to repeal Obamacare.
SUPPORT PRO-LIFE NEWS! Please help LifeNews.com with a donation during our Year-End Support Campaign!
“Republicans managed the feat last year, sending a bill to the president’s desk that not only hollowed out the health care law but also defunded the lion’s share of taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood. Despite the ongoing scandals at Cecile Richards’s group and the gloomy forecast for Obamacare, the president vetoed the package, making him solely responsible for the forced partnership between taxpayers and the culture of death. This time around, the White House’s pens will be used for a different purpose — to sign the proposal into law,” says Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.
He added:
If House and Senate leaders follow the path of 2015, they’ll draft a bill to repeal significant portions of Obamacare’s most onerous provisions, like the premium subsidies for health plans in exchanges (which would also stop subsidies for health care plans with abortion!), and end the financial penalties for the individual mandate and employer mandate. Although it wouldn’t upend the HHS mandate, the pre-existing conditions requirement, or some other insurance market reforms, it decimates Obamacare, leaving a shell that would almost immediately force the system’s collapse. If people aren’t forced to buy insurance (individuals or employers) then the law is effectively unraveled — and if the subsidy rug is pulled out from under it, then insurers will begin to design their own plans.
As far as America’s largest abortion business is concerned, the reconciliation approach would cut about 80 percent of Planned Parenthood’s government funding since they receive roughly $400 million a year in mandatory programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and SCHIP. Instead, that money would be redirected to community health care clinics that don’t perform abortions but do offer effective, honest, and comprehensive care for women.
In a letter to congressional leaders, FRC stressed the need to use the same blueprint:
“With a pro-life president and pro-life majorities in the House and Senate in 2017, Congress should again pass these provisions in a new budget reconciliation bill and send it to President-elect Donald Trump for signature into law. Then, President-elect Trump can follow through on his firm pro-life campaign promises regarding the repeal of Obamacare and ‘defunding Planned Parenthood as long as they continue to perform abortions, and reallocating their funding to community health centers that provide comprehensive health care for women.’” The pro-life community stands united in its desire to see legislation signed into law to stop funding for abortion providers and to remove Obamacare provisions which subsidize plans with elective abortion coverage.”
During the week leading up to the presidential election Trump’s final argument included a promise to repeal Obamacare. As he has pledged before, Trump made repealing Obamacare a central part of the reason he asked voters to support him at the polls.
For 17 months, I’ve traveled this country and met countless Americans from every walk of life. Your hopes have become my hopes and your dreams have become my dreams.
I’ve been inspired on this journey by the millions of you who came to cheer a simple idea: that we can make America great again.
Real change begins with immediately repealing and replacing job-killing Obamacare — Americans are experiencing soaring double-digit premium hikes, insurers are leaving, doctors are quitting, jobs are fleeing, and deductibles are through the roof.
We will repeal and replace catastrophic Obamacare with new reforms that dramatically expand choice, substantially lower costs, and significantly improve the quality of care. And we will end the offshoring of American jobs.
