No abortion in reconciliation means no federal funding of abortion
Hat tip to Michael Sean Winters for flagging this.
The Catholic Bishops today wrote they oppose the Senate health care reform bill largely because they say it, “allows federal funds to pay for elective abortions.”
It doesn’t, as Professor Tim Jost has exhaustively debunked. The Bishops say they disagree with Jost’s analysis, but today they undercut their own policy analysis.
In the very same piece, the Bishops mention Senate Republican plans to “object to any improvements in the Senate bill.”
While they don’t say it directly, this is a clear reference to the Republican pledge to raise a “point of order” against abortion and immigration changes in the reconciliation bill (the USCCB’s Richard Doerflinger told reporters earlier that the USCCB would encourage Senators to vote to waive the point of order.)
Why is this significant?
If federal funds were going to be used to pay for abortions, the Republican pledge would be meaningless. Reconciliation can only be used for policy that affects federal spending and revenues. If there really were abortion funds in this bill, then Republicans would not be able to raise a point of order.
But, there aren’t abortion funds in the bill.
As Michael Sean Winters put it, “By calling attention to the need to get around the [point of order] … the bishops unintentionally gut their principal argument against the bill.”