Senate Republicans are once again taking pro-lifers for a ride and expecting to get away with it.
Just months after swearing up and down that the trillion-dollar budget deal agreed to in July was the only way to protect pro-life priorities in the year-end spending fight, Senate Republicans have done nothing to stop that very assault by their Democratic counterparts.
The Senate spending bill on the Department of State and foreign operations, recently <a href="https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/FY2020%20SFOPS%20Appropriations%20Act,%20S.2583.pdf">reported</a> out of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, both Republicans and Democrats supported the inclusion of language that directly violates the progress President Trump has made on the <a href="https://khn.org/morning-breakout/trump-administration-expands-mexico-city-policy-to-include-groups-that-dont-perform-abortions-but-support-ones-that-do/">Mexico City Policy</a>, which prevents U.S. taxpayer dollars from going to foreign organizations that fund or promote abortion overseas.
The language, <a href="https://www.shaheen.senate.gov/news/press/in-committee-approved-funding-bill-shaheen-boosts-funding-for-anti-opioid-grants-pfas-research-and-federal-support-to-improve-mental-health-services-for-law-enforcement">added by</a> Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), is designed to do an end-run around the Trump administration’s ban sending taxpayer money to foreign abortion providers by adding a nearly $60 million increase to U.S.-based groups that fund abortion overseas.
Groups that are eligible to receive these taxpayer dollars include <a href="https://www.pathfinder.org/focus-areas/safe-abortion-care/">Pathfinder International</a>, <a href="https://www.popcouncil.org/research/safe-abortion-and-postabortion-care">Population Council</a>, <a href="http://fpconference.org/2016/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/EngenderHealth-FactSheets.pdf">Engender Health</a>, and <a href="https://path.org/resources/womens-right-to-choose-partnerships-for-safe-abortion-in-nepal/">PATH</a>. All of them list abortion services as key missions.
That Senate Republicans would allow this on a voice vote — the type of vote that is not recorded, and usually reserved for non-controversial amendments — is bad enough. But worse, it is a <a href="https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/can-white-house-and-gop-senators-protect-pro-life-policy/">blatant violation</a> of the “handshake agreement” in the <a href="https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Bipartisan%20Budget%20Agreement%20July%2022%202019.pdf">budget deal</a> which barred the inclusion of so-called “poison pill” amendments.
While the term “poison pill” was left undefined, it was largely considered to include amendments that were deemed explicitly partisan by one side. Specifically, the deal <a href="https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Bipartisan%20Budget%20Agreement%20July%2022%202019.pdf">prohibited</a> higher spending levels for accounts unless “agreed to on a bipartisan basis by the four leaders with the approval of the president.”
Lest there be any doubt, this Shaheen-style increase to abortion funding has already been clearly shown to be partisan. In June, the Democrat-controlled House voted on an <a href="https://lesko.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2207">amendment</a> by Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) that would have barred the increases in the Shaheen amendment. Every single House Republican, as well as two House Democrats, <a href="http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2019/roll324.xml">voted</a> to restrict the money.
But now, Senate Republicans want to allow it.
And not to stop there, Senate Republicans are apparently also fine with language in the <a href="https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/FY2020%20SFOPS%20Appropriations%20Act,%20Report%20116-126.pdf">bill’s report</a> prioritizing funding toward “family planning/reproductive health” — phrases long deemed by the pro-life community to be synonymous with abortion.
Both of these provisions are obviously in violation of the budget deal. And any attempt by Senate Republicans to shush the pro-life movement, to tell them “we’ll deal with it in conference” (when the House and Senate reconcile their different versions of the same bill), should be treated as suspect.
Pro-lifers have seen this move before. Indeed, the blatantly bad faith with which Senate Republicans are treating the pro-life movement is egregious, but hardly surprising.
As I <a href="https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/15/requiem-for-the-pro-life-movement/">wrote a year ago</a>, using the pro-life cause as an excuse to pass bad bills — while not intending to actually address any of their priorities — has become de rigueur for Republicans in power.
And this budget deal is turning out to be no different. Senate leadership pressed pro-lifers that this “handshake agreement” <a href="https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/can-white-house-and-gop-senators-protect-pro-life-policy/">was the only thing</a> standing between them and a total abolition of the abortion protections in law. Keeping abortion restrictions in place, pro-life groups were told, was contingent upon <a href="https://www.sba-list.org/newsroom/press-releases/sba-list-celebrates-house-passage-budget-agreement">pro-life support</a> of the bill.
Except, once again, it was merely a manipulation for Senate Republicans to get support from the conservative base in the short term, in order to sell them out a few months later.
Pro-lifers have to stop taking these assurances at face value. This is the same set of Republicans that had majorities in the House and Senate for two years, with a Republican in the White House, and managed to accomplish (or even to try to accomplish) approximately nothing on behalf of the pro-life cause. Worse still, they <a href="https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/01/do-nothing-republican-senate-goes-home/">shouted down</a> anyone in their conference who attempted to try.
Love him or hate him, President Trump has done more for the pro-life cause than any other Republican president <a href="https://www.sba-list.org/trump-pro-life-wins">in history</a>. And rather than supporting him in those efforts, Senate Republicans seem intent to undermine him — and, in a twisted bit of cynicism, to use the pro-life movement as cover to do so.
If the pro-life movement in Washington is to have any lasting impact, it has to start with a hard-earned distrust of the leaders who seem intent on manipulating them, time and time again.
&nbsp;
Rachel Bovard spent a decade working for Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) She was also director of policy services at the Heritage Foundation. She currently serves as the senior director of policy at the <a href="https://www.conservativepartnership.org">Conservative Partnership Institute</a>.

unborn child

BOVARD: Senate Republicans Are Betraying Pro-Lifers

Abortion

Republican Party

U.S. Senate

Among his many exhortations to conservatives is Russell Kirk’s insistence that they be guided by the principle of prudence. Prudence, properly understood, requires the ability to be self-critical — to avoid an unmoving fealty to outmoded dogmas, to re-examine assumptions, and, most of all, to have the courage and foresight to correct course if and when things have gone wayward.
Leading lights on the Right gathered last week under the banner of “national conservatism” to apply some prudent self-examination to the now well-trodden path of the traditional conservative consensus. It was a necessary effort, and one that may prove to be transformational.
The “consensus,” as it was once described, is hardly without its cracks. At the <a href="https://nationalconservatism.org/">National Conservatism Conference</a> last week, the orthodoxy that has defined the Right for the last 40 years — philosophical allegiance to the three-legged stool of markets, moral values, and military might — was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49750/hammer-national-conservatism-conference-josh-hammer">visibly and profoundly challenged</a>.
That it was challenged so enthusiastically and with such intellectual rigor suggests that there is, in fact, an ascendant movement afoot.
It arises out of an acknowledgment that there is a rootlessness in America today that conservatism, as it has been traditionally defined, has left unaddressed. &#8220;Fusionism,&#8221; the prevailing political consensus between traditional social conservatives and economic libertarians, has made America rich, but it has also left us morally bereft.
All of this provided the context for a deeply resonant <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPAUQKY9Jyw">closing speech</a> by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). The new Republican senator from Missouri has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/43923/hammer-judicial-crisis-networks-open-attack-sen-josh-hammer">made quite a name for himself</a> by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47899/hammer-senator-josh-hawley-most-important-freshman-josh-hammer">vigorously vetting</a> lifetime judicial nominees and unapologetically <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49361/hammer-josh-hawleys-bill-taking-big-tech-josh-hammer">taking Silicon Valley giants to task</a>.
But Hawley&#8217;s philosophical roots have not had much public exposure in Washington, D.C. Hearing them was worth the wait.
The senator did not hesitate to make his mark as the clear embodiment of this self-critical, self-aware, shifting consensus on the Right.
“For too long now,” Hawley opened, “this country has been badly led &#8230; by a political consensus forged by a political class that has lost touch with what binds us together as Americans.”
In a statement that left little room for doubt about where Hawley stands on the need to cling to old shibboleths, he declared the great divide was “not between Trump supporters and Trump opponents, or between suburban voters and rural ones, or between Red America and Blue America,” but between “the political agenda of the leadership elite and the great broad middle of our society.”
In a searing indictment of the current political arrangement, the senator did not mince words:
<blockquote>Because in this bargain, foreign competitors get to make the goods, and we just buy them. And then they buy up American companies with the profits. And yes, in this bargain there are lots of jobs — jobs on Wall Street, or in Hollywood, or in Silicon Valley.
Because the truth is, the cosmopolitan economy has made the cosmopolitan class an aristocracy. At the same time, it has encouraged multinational corporations to move jobs and assets overseas to chase the cheapest wages and pay the lowest taxes.
And it has rewarded these same corporations for then turning around and investing their profits not in American workers, not in American development, but in financial instruments that benefit the cosmopolitan elite.</blockquote>
The elite have benefited at the expense of middle America — which is left with flat wages, lost jobs, and declining opportunity. “Is it any surprise,” Hawley pondered, “that in the last half century, as our leaders have pursued a program that the American middle does not espouse, does not support, and does not benefit from, that public confidence in American government has collapsed?”
It should not surprise anyone who has paid attention to how President Trump was elected. Salena Zito and Brad Todd wrote an <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Great-Revolt-Populist-Coalition-Reshaping/dp/1524763683">entire book</a> about it, based largely on interviews with voters from both parties who pulled the lever for Trump. Both parties had let them down, they said. Not only that, but these voters felt disrespected, unheard, and belittled.
Trump was a disrupter, with allegiance to no one, and an allergy to being pushed around by orthodoxies on any side — the orthodoxies which Hawley identifies on the Left as “champion[ing] multiculturalism that degrades our common identity,” and on the Right as “celebrat[ing] hyper-globalization and promis[ing] that the market will make everything right in the end, eventually &#8230; perhaps.”
So what is to be done?
The new consensus that Hawley sets forth includes support for policies ranging from more investment in middle America, upending “the economic concentration that stifles small producers and family enterprises,” removing mountainous college debt as a barrier to entry to the modern workforce, an immigration system that “rewards and nourishes American labor,” and trade policies that prioritize American workers over cheap foreign goods and “arbitrage schemes by the great corporations.”
In just a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/49681/watch-josh-hawley-defends-americas-heartland-molly-prince">20-minute speech</a>, Sen. Hawley set himself at the head of a vanguard that presents a new way for conservatives to think about old problems.
It was also personally meaningful. I grew up in a small, rural town in upstate New York plagued by low wages and low expectations — offset only by high rates of heroin addiction. By the time I graduated high school, I had lost classmates to suicide, overdose, and murder. In the seventeen years since then, I have heard many on the Right appeal to me on the basis of our shared, and deeply held, principles.
But I can mark Hawley’s speech as the first time in my life that I’ve heard a Republican so forcefully and intentionally address the very real problems of the impoverished, rural communities that truly do not care about the corporate tax breaks or the Mueller investigation.
It is time for conservatives to acknowledge that while our principles remain steadfast, their application — and the political consensus that guides them — is in need of self-critical review.
Josh Hawley may be the senator best positioned to do this. His fearlessness in subjecting the old assumptions to rigorous evaluation is breathing new life into our increasingly rusty and irrelevant Congress. And his embodiment of the commitment to the foundations of conservatism with a profound understanding for grievances that animate the populists makes him one of the most intellectually interesting and relevant policymakers to watch.
Like he did so many things, Russell Kirk anticipated this. His adage to all of us would seem appropriate to where Josh Hawley has the potential to take conservatism: “Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.”
Rachel Bovard is policy director at <a href="http://www.conservativepartnership.org/">Conservative Partnership Institute</a>.

BOVARD: Josh Hawley Is Quickly Becoming One Of The Most Important Conservatives In America

Conservatism

Josh Hawley

Nationalism

One unanticipated side effect of the political moment we are currently living through is that it has made all participants very honest — particularly Democrats and leftists.
The party that, for years, eye-rolled at allegations of socialism is now practically <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/the-squad-revives-their-feud-with-pelosi-be-aware-when-you-single-us-out-that-were-women-of-color">being run</a> by a self-identified Democratic Socialist. Democratic candidates for president are <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/26/democrats-clash-over-eliminating-private-health-insurance-at-first-debate.html">open</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/_waleedshahid/status/1090090751525117952">eager</a> to eliminate private health insurance, embracing a position even further to the left than systems in the United Kingdom and Canada. All 10 candidates in the second Democrat debate last month went <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-in-debates-democrats-move-toward-open-borders">on record</a> supporting open borders. And Bernie Sanders earnestly <a href="https://twitter.com/ArthurSchwartz/status/1138980759577010177">believes</a> that most Americans actually want to pay more in taxes.
In just the latest episode of truth-telling this week, Planned Parenthood is finally giving up its long-running charade as a women’s health organization and is admitting that it is merely a for-profit abortion advocacy group.
The organization publicly dismissed its president over “philosophical differences.” Those differences, according to a letter posted by the ousted head, Dr. Leana Wen, stem from the fact that Wen apparently thought she was working for a women’s healthcare organization that also performed abortions — rather than an abortion advocacy organization with an overtly political agenda.
“I came to Planned Parenthood to run a national healthcare organization,” Wen <a href="https://twitter.com/DrLeanaWen/status/1151233772181999616">said</a> in her resignation letter. “The new board has determined that the priority of Planned Parenthood moving forward is to double down on abortion rights advocacy.”
This is a startling admission from Planned Parenthood, which for years has insisted that it is, first and foremost, focused on an all-encompassing view of women’s health. “This is health care,” claimed a recent public relations campaign. The group has maintained for years that abortion only constitutes 3% of its services.
In Wen, Planned Parenthood found an <a href="https://twitter.com/DrLeanaWen/status/1150414899018788864">unapologetic advocate</a> for <a href="https://twitter.com/DrLeanaWen/status/1082660449429188612">abortion services</a>. However, she also reportedly balked at the rapacious way the organization wanted to advocate, and celebrate, abortions — in addition to its emphatic embrace of a deeply progressive over-arching philosophy. <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emaoconnor/leana-wen-out-planned-parenthood-president">According to reporting from BuzzFeed</a>, Wen routinely deleted the word “sexual” from the phrase “sexual and reproductive healthcare” in Planned Parenthood press releases and documents, and resisted using abortion as a stand-alone term — adding “abortion care” or rewording it entirely.
Wen also apparently refused to use “trans-inclusive” language, like saying “people,” instead of “women,” and worried that such a progressive posture would “isolate people in the Midwest.”
All of this, including alleged mismanagement, led to Wen’s dismissal.
Her departure comes on the heels of Planned Parenthood <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/trump-abortion-rule-blow-planned-parenthood-64361195">stating</a> it is “not going to comply” with new rules from the Trump administration, which block federal funds from organizations that refer women for abortion. After <a href="https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/health-care-equity/title-x?_ga=2.222149276.567036714.1563409937-835350979.1563409937">stating for years</a> that this money was critical to its healthcare mission of breast cancer screenings, wellness exams, and screening for sexually transmitted diseases, Planned Parenthood is now <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/07/17/742841170/planned-parenthood-officials-say-theyve-halted-use-of-title-x-family-planning-fu">forgoing</a> the funds — solely so it can continue to refer women for abortions.
In taking these steps, Planned Parenthood finally unmasks itself as the abortion-focused advocacy group it has always been, and joins the Democratic Party in being honest about the terms of the abortion debate in America.
Abortion that is “safe, legal, and rare” — the mantra of the Clinton years — has been enthusiastically replaced by abortion that is unlimited, unrestricted, and unregulated. Earlier this year, 44 Senate Democrats <a href="https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/03/getting-the-party-of-infanticide-on-the-record/">went on the record</a> opposing medical care to infants born alive after a botched abortion. Democrats for president are now <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/5/18654627/abortion-elizabeth-warren-hyde-amendment-biden-msnbc">attacking</a> consensus policies which, for decades, have prevented Congress from using taxpayer money for abortion.
The Democrats and their allies are no longer hiding behind a veil of moderation when it comes to abortion. At least they’re finally being honest with voters about it.
Rachel Bovard is policy director at <a href="http://www.conservativepartnership.org/">Conservative Partnership Institute</a>.

BOVARD: Planned Parenthood Has Revealed Its True Self For The World To See

Democratic Party

Democratic Socialism

Leftism

Planned Parenthood

It’s spending season in Washington, and once again, funding for the troops is being used as a political bargaining chip.
Congress hasn’t passed any of the 12 spending bills required to fund the government by September 30, and the clock is ticking. Democrats are <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-debt-budget/pelosi-sets-spending-demands-for-two-year-budget-deal-idUSKCN1U900Y">trying to finagle</a> a two-year spending deal that will drastically increase spending and open the door to negotiations on a host of issues where they’d like to confront President Donald Trump. Senate Republicans, in a face-slapping move to the president, are <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/03/republicans-white-house-budget-plan-1398306">inclined to agree</a> with them.
The White House is not as eager to cut a deal with Democrats. Rather, they’ve floated a one-year spending extension (known in Washington-speak as a continuing resolution, or a &#8220;CR&#8221;), which freezes spending at current levels, and doesn’t allow Democrats to block their efforts on deregulation or roll back critical pro-life policies.
Congress and the White House should be cutting spending from last year’s levels, not freezing them. But Senate Republicans, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/450719-mcconnell-dismisses-one-year-stopgap-bill-floated-by-white-house">led by</a> Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), are using the military as a pawn to spend even more.
A one-year CR, <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060709805">according to McConnell</a>, will cut funding for the troops by $71 billion. Other Senate Republicans have <a href="https://www.perdue.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter.pdf">pointed to</a> the sequester — legally required spending cuts — as a reason to oppose the White House plan.
Even though there is every indication that the White House is taking a reasonable approach to these negotiations, the insatiable spenders in Congress are refusing to even engage with the White House. Moreover, their comments are a misrepresentation of what the White House is proposing and ignorant of how these exact same issues have been handled in the past.
First and foremost, the military pay increase required by law will go into effect, regardless. It’s dealt with in the National Defense Authorization Act, which has already passed both the House and the Senate.
But most importantly, the White House appears prepared to sign a bill that gives the Department of Defense (&#8220;DOD&#8221;) flexibility to spend money where need be — the same way past CRs have provided for bomb-resistant vehicles in Iraq and nuclear submarines moving through the acquisition process.
If appropriators, the members of Congress in charge of spending, are really concerned about defense spending, they’ll give DOD the necessary flexibility in a CR — the same way many of them did in 2011 and 2012, when DOD was under a CR for 279 days.
But there are other critical factors for why a two-year spending strategy is both a negligent and careless way to make policy for Republicans.
The Congressional Budget Office recently <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55331">released</a> its long-term spending outlook for the next ten years, and it’s a doozy. Spending as a percentage of gross domestic product (&#8220;GDP&#8221;) rises to 20.7% this year and will rise to 28% of GDP by 2049. Only three years (the war-time years of 1944 and 1945, as well as 2000) have had higher spending-to-GDP ratios. Meanwhile, the share of the debt held by the public will rise from 78% of GDP in 2019 to 144% in 2049.
The need for a reduction — or at the very least, a slowdown — in spending is obvious. Unfortunately, the White House isn’t aggressively demanding spending cuts. Rather, the White House’s proposal will freeze spending for one year, which still results in $34 billion in savings as compared to what the House has already passed. Contrast this to the two-year spending strategy pushed by Senate Republicans, which requires a backroom deal with Democrats — who will not agree to anything without a massive increase in spending.
Equally as important, <a href="http://conservativeactionproject.com/conservatives-to-congress-no-two-year-caps-deal/">leading conservatives</a> have pointed to the numerous policy provisions that would be put at risk by opening negotiations with Democrats. Key gains, from deregulatory policies that have saved American taxpayers <a href="https://www.americanactionforum.org/insight/two-months-to-go-regulatory-budget-progress/">millions of dollars</a> and pro-life policies that prevent taxpayer dollars from being spent on abortion, to the <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/05/trump-administration-imposes-new-restrictions-on-fetal-tissue-research-1354165">recent decision</a> to prevent taxpayer funding on research from aborted baby parts, will all be put at risk by a Democratic Party that almost exclusively supports abortion <a href="https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/03/getting-the-party-of-infanticide-on-the-record/">up until, and after</a>, the moment of birth.
With a Republican majority in the Senate and a Republican in the White House, the party is well positioned to force Democrats to the table on their terms — not cede to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), as Mitch McConnell appears eager to do.
“No politician has ever lost office for spending money,” McConnell <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/his-own-fiefdom-mulvaney-builds-an-empire-for-the-right-wing-as-trumps-chief-of-staff/2019/07/14/85c5ebdc-942b-11e9-b570-6416efdc0803_story.html?utm_term=.08d066fc4ed7">reportedly</a> told the president in the Oval Office last month.
This is absurd. Bloated government spending was the cause célèbre that resulted in wave elections in the Reagan Revolution in 1980, the Gingrich Revolution in 1994, and the Tea Party wave in 2010. The 2010 election should be particularly memorable for McConnell — as the election where his consiglieri, big-spending appropriator Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT), lost his primary to a fiscally conservative upstart named Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT).
Once the curtain is pulled back, it’s clear that Senate Republicans are offering the same tired arguments for increasing spending and, in doing so, are giving Nancy Pelosi and House progressives the opportunity to undo key policy gains from a Republican administration.
Once again, the troops are being used as a political football to carry other bloated, unnecessary spending. Who wins with a two-year spending deal strategy? K street lobbyists, establishment Republicans, and progressive Democrats. Who loses? The taxpayers, who get fleeced. Again.
In other words, it’s business as usual in Washington. The Trump administration’s proposed one-year CR doesn’t go nearly far enough, but it’s far preferable to the proposal being floated by the big spenders on Capitol Hill.
Rachel Bovard is policy director at <a href="http://www.conservativepartnership.org">Conservative Partnership Institute</a>.

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Rachel Bovard

BOVARD: Senate Republicans Are Betraying Pro-Lifers

BOVARD: Josh Hawley Is Quickly Becoming One Of The Most Important Conservatives In America

BOVARD: Planned Parenthood Has Revealed Its True Self For The World To See

BOVARD: GOP Must Stop Using The Military As An Excuse To Justify Massive Spending