Speaker Mike Johnson: Tax Dollars “Will Never Be Used to Pay for Abortion. Period.”
They’ve only been in session a week, but it’s already been a rocky new year for Republican leaders. Despite a big win on appropriations that brings Congress one step closer to avoiding a government shutdown, virtually everything has been overshadowed by the stormy clouds of the health care debate. First, President Trump dropped an atomic bomb on his party with his sudden “flexibility” on taxpayer-funded abortion. Then, 17 members of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) majority decided to become the first Republicans ever to vote for the expensive failure known as Obamacare. But as the speaker knows better than anyone: since when has the GOP made anything easy?
Not in his tenure, to be sure. The last handful of days have been head-scratchers, he admits. Partnering with Democrats to prop up a program that has been a complete and utter disaster points to the intra-party dysfunction Johnson is dealing with. It was a “disappointing outcome [Thursday] night,” he admitted to Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill,” but “not entirely surprising,” he was quick to add.
Both parties are frantic to bring health care costs down in an election year, he acknowledged. Maybe the swing-state Republicans thought it would help to seem supportive of extending the tax credits. But that doesn’t change the fact that this entire situation is a crisis of the Democrats’ making. The whole idea of subsidies — pouring money into a sinking Obamacare ship — was the Left’s idea. It “was a Democrat creation [during COVID], and one that they set the expiration date on.”
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The Republican Party, Johnson reminded people, “has never, ever played any role whatsoever in what I think is the monstrosity of Obamacare. The people who designed Obamacare in the Obama administration, this is more than 15 years ago now, designed it to implode. They were the architects of it [and] the advocates of [a] single-payer [system]. They want the government to run everything, every aspect of our lives. And that includes health care,” he warned. “But we know by experience and by the facts and the evidence that every time this is tried around the world, it turns into a disaster.”
Conservatives don’t want that, the leader insisted. “We want individual freedom in the marketplace. We want choice in the marketplace. We want high-quality care at [a] lower cost. And Obamacare has provided exactly the opposite. The premiums are up in some categories by over 80%. So, adding additional subsidies, throwing more money at a bad program is a terrible policy idea,” the Louisianan argued. “… What we’re trying to do is the opposite. We want to reform that system to make it affordable again. And simply adding more subsidies to insurance companies drives premiums up even further and exacerbates the problem.”
So it was all the more puzzling that 17 moderate Republicans crossed the aisle to support an unpopular boondoggle on what is essentially a dead-end messaging bill. “I was disappointed that we had [a] small number of Republicans who joined on with the Democrats,” Johnson admitted. But the reality is, “It was a show vote. It’s not a lawmaking exercise. That exact measure has already failed in the Senate. So I think it will be over after this.”
As for the more serious problem, Trump’s sudden openness to taxpayer-funded abortion, Johnson cautioned, “I wouldn’t read too much into what he said. That was off the [cuff]. He was sort of riffing when he was with us, and he talks about a lot of ideas in terms of negotiations. The president is a dealmaker, as you know, and he desperately wants to bring down the cost of health care. And we do as well. And there are impediments to doing some of this. We obviously are the party of life. We are a nation that has to defend the sanctity of human life. And we will continue that as a theme.”
Johnson was quick to point to Trump’s record as “the most pro-life president in the modern era” to reassure voters who are questioning his shakiness on Hyde. But he also recognizes that even a whiff of compromise on taxpayer-funded abortion would be a betrayal of the highest order. “… I made a statement after the conference, and I’ve stated it many times since. … We are going to defend the sanctity of life, and the protections are sacrosanct here. And in layman’s terms, what it means is [that] taxpayer funding will never be authorized to pay for abortion. Period. Full stop, end of sentence. And that’s never going to change here.”
As for the 230-196 “show vote,” as the speaker called it, most people recognize Thursday’s outcome as a messaging moment. “[It’s] more of a symbolic and political victory than a substantive one,” The Washington Times reiterated.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) stressed that same point to Perkins on Thursday’s “Washington Watch.” “The Senate’s not going to take it up because they already tried to take up the identical measure before the holiday. And it failed. … So I’m sure John Thune is not going to waste Senate time on bringing up the exact same measure that failed once in the Senate. … I think this is going nowhere,” especially, he underscored, without a fireproof wall against taxpayer-funded abortion.
“Every party is going to give a little bit. But the Democrats, again, [are] adhering to an extremist position, which is insisting on public funding for Obamacare subsidies even though they cover abortion,” Harris added. “I mean, the bottom line is it’s just a non-starter. … [W]ithout Hyde amendments, it’s just not going anywhere.”
LifeNews Note: Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand, where this originally appeared.
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