On Tuesday, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) spoke out against the latest spending bill because it fails to defund Planned Parenthood and fails to protect those who don’t want their taxpayer dollars going to abortion-related activities:
I’m a Republican because I’m a conservative, and I’m a conservative because I believe the Constitution and the ideals that it asserts on behalf of the American people are with protecting; they’re worth defending – even when they’re untimely; even when they’re unpopular; and especially for the vulnerable, for the marginalized, and for the forgotten among us.
Equal rights, equal opportunity, equal justice under the law, equal dignity under God. We fail as Americans when we violate these ideals, when we neglect them to whatever degree; when we exclude some number of our neighbors from their God-given share of our common inheritance; when we declare in the interest of expedience and in defiance of our own national creed that some people are somehow less equal than others. Such was the cruelty of our nation through our laws long visited on African Americans, on Native Americans, immigrants and ethnic minorities, on women, on the disabled, and on religious minorities…
Now, happily, Mr. President, this is no longer the case. Happily, all these groups who, taken together, comprise the vast majority of all Americans were at different times in our history affirmatively brought under the protection of our laws. This work of inclusion, of expanding the circle of legal and constitutional protection, was not a natural, organic, spontaneous evolutionary process. No, it was the product of hard work, the work of vigilant citizens, activists, and lawmakers affirmatively, aggressively, painstakingly advancing the cause of justice at every opportunity, even against the entrenched forces of the political status quo.
Republicans in this Congress have undertaken such efforts on behalf of certain priorities. In particular, the tax relief and spending increases that are poised to yield [the] budget deficit of nearly $1 trillion dollars this year. But no such legislative process has been achieved advancing the right to life nor the plight of those denied it.
For the second straight year of unified Republican governance, unified pro-life governance, Congress’ annual spending bills will include no new reforms protecting unborn children or getting federal taxpayers out of the abortion business.
The House version of this Health and Human Services spending bill included multiple reforms. It denied taxpayer funds to the largest abortion provider in the country, Planned Parenthood; it eliminated Title X family planning grants, which cross-subsidize abortion providers; it prohibited federal funding of research on aborted fetal tissue; it included the Conscience Protection Act protecting pro-life people and groups from funding discrimination. None of these modest, common sense spending reforms survived the House/Senate negotiations. None of them. None was made a priority by the people in power to set priorities.
The authors of this bill defend their $1.3 trillion compromise. And of course, this being Washington, I know, as is always the case, that in this case it could have always been worse. But Mr. President, before this bill passes with an overwhelming bipartisan supermajority as its base of support despite being mostly unread by its supporters, someone ought to speak up for the Americans that this legislation conspicuously leaves behind.
The best measure of any government or any policy or proposal can be measured according to its impact on the least among us. Too often today, Washington acts as though the least among us refers to our most vulnerable incumbents rather than to our most vulnerable constituents.
This $1.3 trillion spending bill exemplifies that very confusion, and fails that very test.
Under this bill, neither the unborn nor taxpayers are any more protected from the abortion industry than they were under president Obama and a unified Democratic Congress. I understand that fighting on contentious issues comes with a cost. I understand that it’s not easy, but other things come with a cost, too. It’s not just this that comes with a cost. So too does not fighting on them, especially in the rare moments when we could win.
This bill represents a significant opportunity missed, and missed at a time when we can’t be sure how many more we will be given going forward, how many more opportunities like this that we might have.
Some causes, Mr. President, are worth fighting for even in defeat – the God-given equal rights and dignity of all human beings being paramount among them. The arc of history may, as I hope, bend toward life, but only if we bend it, Mr. President. I oppose this legislation…