Fri Oct 1, 2021 – 2:43 pm EDT
WASHINGTON (LifeSiteNews) — Democrat hopes of passing a controversial $3.5 trillion spending package hit another snag this week with Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia declaring he will only support the Medicaid expansion within the bill if it includes language keeping tax dollars away from abortion.
“We’re not taking the Hyde Amendment off. Hyde’s going to be on,” Manchin told National Review Wednesday. “It has to be. [The new Medicaid program is] dead on arrival if that’s gone.”
Traditionally included every year in federal budgets with little objection, the 40-year-old Hyde Amendment is estimated to have saved more than 2 million lives since its adoption decades ago, by forbidding most taxpayer dollars from funding abortions except for cases of rape, incest, or threat to a mother’s life.
While Senate Democrats lack the sixty votes necessary to strip Hyde from existing Medicaid appropriations, they have proposed adding a new, Hyde-free program to the spending bill currently being debated, which would only need a simple majority to pass under reconciliation rules. The Senate is evenly divided between the parties, meaning Democrats could pass the plan with a tie-breaking vote
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