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FRI JUL 10, 2015 AT 11:41 AM PDT
Earlier today, the House passed the 21st Century Cures Act by a wide margin of 344 to 77.
70 Republicans and 7 Democrats voted against it.
The bill authorizes $8.75 billion worth of new research dollars for the National Institutes of Health and overhauls the process that the Food and Drug Administration uses to assess and approve new medicines. Strangely, it pays for some of this by selling some of the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
It's obvious why the 70 Republicans voted against it. But why did 7 Democrats vote against it, too?
The Hyde amendment.
The Republican leadership attached the Hyde amendment, which restricts access to abortion, as a rider to the bill.
Here's New York congressman Jerry Nadler commenting on this GOP move:
“Today, I reluctantly voted against H.R. 6, the 21st Century Cures Act. Since coming to Congress, I have been a strong supporter of biomedical research. I represent a district and a city that is home to the best and most innovative hospitals, universities, and labs in the country. I am glad Congress is finally taking action to increase funding for biomedical research and make a real investment in saving lives.
“Yet I cannot support HR 6 and the Republicans’ ongoing efforts to expand the Hyde amendment into authorizing legislation to subvert women’s constitutionally-protected rights. As I said earlier this week when introducing the EACH Woman Act with Congresswomen Lee, Schakowsky, and DeGette, now is the time to be fighting back against the moral arrogance of politicians who say they have a right to dictate to women how they make personal health care decisions, to doctors what procedures they can use, and to scientists how they can conduct research on women’s health. This language is not about health. It is about Republicans belief in moral superiority – that they know best about what a woman should do with her own body.
“We have fought for decades to keep abortion safe and legal. Now Congress must act to make sure it is affordable and accessible. I am voting today to stop this infestation of Hyde and to say “NO MORE” to the Republican contempt for a woman’s, doctor’s, and scientist’s right to make their own personal, professional, or intellectual choices.
“It is my hope that the Senate will remove this language and make other necessary changes to this legislation, so that I can support it when it comes back to the House.”
Barbara Lee (CA-13) offered an amendment to remove this rider, but it failed 176 to 245.
5 Democrats voted against it:
Mat Cartwright (PA-17)
Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
Dan Lipinski (IL-03)
Collin Peterson (MN-07)
When the final bill came up, seven progressive Democrats refused to go along with a bill that kept these restrictions on abortion access:
Rosa DeLauro (CT-03)
Anna Eshoo (CA-18)
Raul Grijalva (AZ-03)
Sam Farr (CA-20)
Barbara Lee (CA-13)
Jerry Nadler (NY-10)
Jackie Speier (CA-14)
Hyde Bill- http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113s142is/pdf/BILLS-113s142is.pdf
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National Womens Law Center
House Defeats Amendment to Strike Hyde Amendment from 21st Century Cures Bill
House Defeats Amendment to Strike Hyde Amendment from 21st Century Cures Bill
July 10, 2015
(Washington, D.C.) Today, the House of Representatives defeated an amendment offered by Representatives Barbara Lee (D-CA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY) to strike a provision in the 21st Century Cures Act (H.R. 6) that would have applied the Hyde Amendment, a federal restriction on abortion coverage, to a new mandatory fund for the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The following is a statement by Gretchen Borchelt, Vice President for Health and Reproductive Rights at the National Women’s Law Center:
“Opponents of abortion in Congress resorted again to an outrageous tactic—sneaking an abortion restriction into a bill on another topic, in this case a bill intended to modernize the country’s science infrastructure and stimulate research into finding cures for disease. This is the third time in six months that politicians have stooped to this ploy. Their alarming game has one goal: to impose new abortion restrictions by expanding the Hyde Amendment, no matter the cost to women’s health. We applaud Representatives Lee, Schakowsky, Clarke and all who stood up for women today and said ‘enough.’”
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For Immediate Release: July 10, 2015
Contact: Maria Patrick (mpatrick@nwlc.org), 202-588-5180
Mia Jacobs (mjacobs@nwlc.org), 202-588-5180
House GOP Sneaks Hyde Restrictions Into Another Unrelated Bill
House GOP Sneaks Hyde Restrictions Into Another Unrelated Bill
by Emily Crockett, Federal Policy Reporter, RH Reality Check
July 10, 2015 - 3:29 pm
House Republicans tried to expand the anti-choice Hyde Amendment for the fourth timein 2015, this time with a last-minute change to a medical research bill.
HR 6, the 21st Century Cures Act, is a bipartisan effort to speed the development and delivery of new medical treatments and enhance funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
After the bill had already been extensively negotiated and unanimously passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week, anti-choice legislators quietly added to the bill language that would have applied the Hyde Amendment, which severely restricts federal funds for abortion care, to the allocations.
Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), who worked on the Cures bill with Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) and is co-chair of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, said on the House floor that she was “disappointed” in the move.
“I think it is unnecessary, and I think it distracts our attention from the important mission this bill brings,” DeGette said.
The House easily passed HR 6 on Friday, after rejecting an amendment by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) that would have stripped out the Hyde language.
The first time House Republicans tried to expand the Hyde Amendment this year was through a sweeping anti-choice bill that would have both made Hyde permanent and drastically limited private insurance coverage of abortion care.
That bill, an attempt to appease the right-wing base after Republicans canceled a vote on a 20-week abortion ban bill, went nowhere after the House passed it.
“When that didn’t work, when they couldn’t get [Hyde] everywhere, they started putting it into every bill that comes along,” Sharon Levin, director for federal reproductive health policies at the National Women’s Law Center, told RH Reality Check.
This “Hyde and sneak” strategy, as pro-choice advocates call it, has been used in two other high-priority bipartisan bills this year—a human trafficking bill and a bill that addressed the long-standing “doc fix” problem in the Medicare sustainable growth rate (SGR).
In those bills, as in the 21st Century Cures bill, Hyde restrictions were added by reference—citing other places in the law where Hyde would apply, instead of explicitly writing new language into the bill that restricts abortion funding.
Pro-choice Democrats in Congress saw the original Hyde restriction in the human trafficking bill as a dangerous expansion worth putting up a bitter public fight for, but they seemed to think that the hard-won bipartisan compromises in the long-awaited Medicare and Cures bills weren’t worth torpedoing over restrictions that were both more temporary and more theoretical in their application.
While pro-choice Democrats say they aren’t happy about the addition to the Cures bill and would like to see it stripped out, most seem to think that it wouldn’t change much about the Hyde fight in practice. Democrats still lack the votes to get rid of Hyde, which still applies to programs like Medicaid that matter the most to women’s access to abortion care.
Some House Democrats are working to end the Hyde Amendment entirely so that this problem won’t come up again.
Along with Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Lee and DeGette introduced a bill this week, the EACH Woman Act, that would both override Hyde and guarantee equal access to abortion insurance coverage for all women. The bill has no chance of passing the GOP-dominated House, but it represents a significant shift in Democratic messaging and strategy on the issue as new polling shows that a majority of Americans support public funding for women who can’t afford abortion care.
“The point here is that we have to get Hyde out,” a House Democratic aide told RH Reality Check, adding that the Hyde language that ended up in the Cures bill is “more nimble” and less harmful than that in either the SGR bill or the original human trafficking bill.
“For example, if we have a great year in 2016 and we have the votes to suddenly overturn Hyde, then in subsequent years for that Cures funding, Hyde is gone,” the aide said. It’s also highly unlikely that research funds for the NIH and the FDA would have any practical effect on abortion access, the aide said.
But pro-choice advocates are most concerned about what will happen in the long term as Republicans continue to insert Hyde language into new parts of the law. Right now, Hyde is added every year to spending bills as a sort of tradition, but it could become even more deeply embedded and harder to extinguish if Republicans stay their current course of stealthily inserting Hyde into bills seen as essential to pass.
“They keep doing this over and over again, in order to embed the law wherever they can,” Levin said. “And each time it gets put in, it’s precedent that they can then look back to and say, ‘Well it was in here, why can’t we put it in there?’”
To schedule an interview with Emily Crockett contact director of communications Rachel Perrone at rachel@rhrealitycheck.org.
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Lee Amendment fails to stop wording that restricts a woman's right to choose.
Link Here- https://www.congress.gov/amendment/114th-congress/house-amendment/658/actions
House Republicans tried to expand the anti-choice Hyde Amendment for the fourth time this year, this time with a last-minute change to a medical research bill. (Shutterstock)
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