John Boehner - 8th District of Ohio

John Boehner at Rally

Share This Page Slashdot Del.icio.us Google Digg Reddit Newsvine Furl Yahoo Facebook

Nov 10, 2009

Washington - Congressman (R-West Chester) today issued the following statement reacting to a report in this morning’s New York Times indicating President Obama will seek to roll back the bipartisan Stupak-Pitts anti-abortion amendment that was added to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2,032-page job-killing government takeover of health care before it passed the House late Saturday night:

“President Obama’s perspective on Speaker Pelosi’s legislation is dismaying.  He isn’t troubled by the bill’s job-killing tax hikes on small business, the cuts it makes to seniors’ Medicare benefits, the crushing new debt it piles on our children, the criminal penalties it imposes on Americans who fail to comply with its mandates, or the fact that it replaces millions of Americans’ current health care with a government-run bureaucracy.  But he is troubled that the bill contains a bipartisan amendment prohibiting federal funds from paying for abortion – an amendment reflecting the views held by most Americans, and a bipartisan majority of legislators in the House.  

“Rather than scrapping the Stupak-Pitts amendment, the president and congressional leaders should scrap Speaker Pelosi’s health care bill entirely and start over, this time working with Republicans on a step-by-step, common-sense approach our nation can afford.”

NOTE: In comments on MSNBC yesterday, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), a member of the House Democratic leadership, declared “I am confident that the Stupak amendment will not be in the final version of the bill — we will be working very hard to eliminate it.”  And in an op-ed published in this morning’s Politico, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) suggests that the tax-exempt status of the Catholic Church should be reviewed and possibly rescinded by Congress in retaliation for Catholic bishops’ advocacy of the Stupak-Pitts pro-life amendment.