Update, 2:12pm EST: President Obama said at a White House press conference Tuesday afternoon that he would not approve the latest stopgap budget bill, and criticized Republicans’ efforts to de-fund abortion in the measure.
“We are now at the point where there’s no excuse to extend this further,” he said, specifically naming abortion as one of the issues that should not be fought over in the bill. The latest proposed stopgap measure included a provision to stop taxpayer funds for paying for abortions in Washington, D.C.
“We don’t have time for games,” he said. “Nobody gets 100 percent of what they want, and we have more than met what the Republicans want.”
WASHINGTON, D.C., April 5, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The latest short-term Continuing Resolution (CR) proposed to allow extended negotiations on a final budget bill includes a provision to bar taxpayer funds from paying for abortions in the District of Columbia.
A press release by the House Committee on Appropriations Monday announced that the measure, which would extend budget talks until April 15 instead of April 8, “includes a provision preventing both federal and local funds from being used to provide abortions in the District of Columbia.”
The change marks one step towards the scope of abortion cuts achieved in the bill originally approved by the House of Representatives, which included a de-funding of Planned Parenthood, the health care reform bill, and the United Nations Population Fund.
The Senate had rejected the House’s plan, which slashed a total of $61 billion from the federal budget. The temporary CRs that followed avoided the controversial cuts, a fact that pro-life leaders feared was a foreshadowing of concessions in the final bill.
Pro-life commentator Jill Stanek said that the D.C. provision, which resurrected the Dornan amendment eliminated under the Obama administration, “puts Democrats in a deliciously tough spot.”
“It should not be a deal-breaker because President Obama himself signed the policy into law for FY09 and also voted to continue the policy twice while serving in the US Senate,” wrote Stanek, pointing to several other pro-abortion Democrats who have allowed the Dornan amendment to stand in past Congresses.