By By Rebecca Shabad and Peter Sullivan - 08-04-15 20:52 PM EDT
The topic set to dominate this year’s August recess is increasingly looking like abortion — and funding for Planned Parenthood.
A fifth undercover video circulated on Tuesday, showing a Planned Parenthood official discussing revenue from fetal tissue and the cost of “intact” fetuses.
Separately, GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump said he’d support a government shutdown to block funding for Planned Parenthood, almost ensuring the hot-button topic will come up at Thursday’s first GOP debate.
Republican presidential candidates and lawmakers are likely to face new pressures over their recess to cut off funding for the group when they return to Washington in September.
“You will certainly have Republican lawmakers, and Democrat lawmakers, asked when they go back home, ‘Are you going to fund Planned Parenthood in the fall?’ ” said Dan Holler, a spokesman for the conservative group Heritage Action. “It’s going to be really hard for those lawmakers to look their constituents in the eye and say ‘yes.’ ”
A similar situation unfolded in
August 2013, when conservative calls to defund ObamaCare grew over the five-week-long break, culminating in a 16-day government shutdown.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is determined to prevent that from happening this time.
“Let me say it again, no more government shutdowns,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
McConnell had touted a stand-alone bill to defund Planned Parenthood as a way to respond to the outrage over the videos released by the Center for Medical Progress. But a procedural vote on that measure failed on Monday, raising questions from Planned Parenthood’s opponents about whether additional actions should be taken.
Asked Tuesday whether attaching defunding measures to a continuing resolution (CR) was “off the table,” McConnell shifted the discussion to congressional investigations.
“We are in the majority, we intend to engage in vigorous oversight, both in the House and the Senate,” he said. “The abuses of Planned Parenthood are not over. The investigation has just begun.”
The threat to defund Planned Parenthood has already drawn a presidential veto threat and would almost certainly culminate in a showdown with Democrats eager to return to the politics of government shutdowns.
But it could be difficult for McConnell to avoid the fight — especially if activists continue to fan the flames over Planned Parenthood. The Center for Medical Progress says it’s planning to release more videos in the coming weeks.
McConnell’s No. 1 goal all year has been to show that a GOP Senate can function, and he’s sought to engineer a series of legislative victories in order to build the best case possible for voters to keep the GOP in charge of the upper chamber next fall.
GOP strategist Ford O’Connell said Republicans don’t want to get blamed for a shutdown, but that presidential candidates have “got to demonstrate to the base of the Republican Party that you’re willing to go to the wall” against Planned Parenthood.
Trump raised the bar on Monday when asked on “The Hugh Hewitt” show if he would support a shutdown over Planned Parenthood funding: “Well I can tell you this: I would,” the real estate magnate replied.
Budget experts question whether McConnell can control the issue.
“I think there’s a very good chance of a government shutdown,” predicted Steve Bell, a former aide to Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee who is now senior director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
“He doesn’t have the votes, in my opinion, to pass a CR without addressing the issue,” Bell said of the majority leader. “It’s not like he’s going back on his word. He’s facing a new reality.”
Another veteran of congressional budget battles, Stan Collender, said this week that he’d put the chances of a shutdown at 60 percent.
“Don’t take today’s McConnell quote too seriously,” said Collender, executive vice president at Qorvis MSLGROUP. “He has to say that for public consumption, but as the debate on the [Defense] appropriation shows, he doesn’t have control of the Senate floor except on noncontroversial issues.”
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