Big and Beautiful: The House Defunds Planned Parenthood

G rumble all you like about the “One Big Beautiful Bill” — the House version did something remarkable and historic in significantly defunding Planned Parenthood. Let us hope that the Senate follows suit.

As often happens with the products of Congress, there is quite a lot to dislike or find insufficient in the bill that passed the House by a 215–214 vote on the Thursday before the Memorial Day weekend. House Speaker Mike Johnson surely deserves his share of credit for holding together just enough of his majority, despite resistance at opposite ends from the “SALT caucus” and the House Freedom Caucus, in a process he compared to “crossing over the Grand Canyon on a piece of dental floss.” Credit where due goes to Donald Trump as well, for providing the gravitational pull to hold those 215 votes together to renew his tax cuts and pass other Trump priorities such as a tax cut on tips and more border wall funding.

The House did well to push Trump and others in his orbit away from the terrible idea of raising the top income tax rates at a time when Trump is already raising taxes on American consumers with his tariffs.

Johnson and Trump can likewise take their share of the blame — to be shared with those in the caucus whose votes needed compensating, as well as with the various people one can blame for Republicans not having a larger House majority in the first place — for the bill’s deficiencies. Our editorial noted some of these, such as the failure to roll back Biden-era spending and other failures of spending discipline, backsliding on the state and local tax deduction (SALT), and unnecessary giveaways in the tax code such as allowing interest on car loans to be deducted. As I noted back in December, the SALT cap combined with tough border enforcement and deportations puts an enormous demographic squeeze on the blue-state model that could shift political power toward the red states in the 2030 Census — but giving those states relief undermines that MAGA priority. Oh well, at least I get a tax cut here on Long Island.

Amidst the tax and spending fights, however, there’s been too little focus on the really big win for conservatives in this otherwise-uninspiring bill: defunding Planned Parenthood. That was very much up in the air three weeks ago, when I last wrote on this topic and our intrepid reporter Audrey Fahlberg asked Trump about it, to which he replied, “I don’t know yet. I have to see because you’re just telling me that for the first time. . . . We’ll work something out.”

The obstacles included cold feet from swing-district Republicans such as Mike Lawler, Brian Fitzpatrick, and Jen Kiggans. Hollywood celebrities petitioned to keep Planned Parenthood funded by taxpayer dollars. But Johnson and his caucus came through in the end:

In the bill, the House GOP removed Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the country. . . . Planned Parenthood receives more than one-third of its overall funding from the U.S. government through grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements. That translates to about $2 million per day, which taxpayers are on the hook for. Furthermore, taxpayer funding for the organization has been on an upward trajectory for about the past dozen years, having increased by 50% since 2013.

But the House reconciliation bill halts that trend by ending the flow of Medicaid dollars to Planned Parenthood, except in abortion cases for rape or incest. Planned Parenthood is also a major provider of hormones for so-called transgender transitions in the country, which means defunding it is also combating the organization’s efforts in that regard as well.

As Jacob Adams of the Daily Signal reported, national pro-life groups are happy:

That gets Planned Parenthood “out of our pockets, not just, you know, for the sliver of money that would be spent on abortions, but for everything they’re doing, because they’re not a ‘good government’ partner,” Katie Glenn Daniel, director of legal affairs and policy counsel at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told The Daily Signal. . . . “There is no excuse for forcing taxpayers to prop up a scandal-ridden industry that prioritizes abortions, gender transitions, and partisan political activism, instead of prenatal care, cancer screening, and other legitimate health services that are in continual decline,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said on Thursday.

Heritage Action and House members such as Dan Crenshaw also cheered the defunding provision, which was championed by conservative groups such as Mike Pence’s Advancing American Freedom — decades after Pence started pushing the House to take this step. It’s a good example of what can go right when conservatives, MAGA Republicans, and establishment Republicans work together on matters of common ground.

Now, on to the Senate. Despite likely opposition from Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, John McCormack of the Dispatch argued a few weeks ago that the Senate should be less challenging than the House:

Senate Republicans hold 53 seats, giving them enough cushion to lose the votes of Collins and Murkowski and still pass a reconciliation bill. And it’s not entirely clear that a provision defunding Planned Parenthood alone would cost Republicans the votes of those two senators. Asked if defunding Planned Parenthood via reconciliation would be a dealbreaker for her, Collins told The Dispatch in the Capitol on Tuesday: “I’m going to wait and see what the whole package is, rather than singling out individual provisions. The only red line that I’ve drawn—it’s a big one—is on Medicaid funding. . . . I am very concerned about Medicaid cuts.” Murkowski declined to comment.

At the same time, even staunchly pro-life Republican senators stopped short of saying a reconciliation bill must defund Planned Parenthood to get their votes. “This is something we feel very strongly about, that health care should be about health, not about taking life,” Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford told The Dispatch. “We’re working to be able to get it done. That’s all I’ll say,” Lankford added when asked if his vote was contingent on defunding Planned Parenthood. “There’s a lot of potential deal-breakers. That one’s pretty important,” Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley told The Dispatch.

Outside activists are taking no chances:

In a letter exclusively obtained by The Daily Wire, former NCAA athlete Riley Gaines, detransitioner Chloe Cole, Live Action founder and president Lila Rose, whistleblower Eithan Haim, Ethics and Public Policy Center President Ryan Anderson, and other prominent life advocates remind the Senate that the language to defund Planned Parenthood is currently included in the “Big Beautiful Bill” — and if the Senate has the guts, they write, it will keep and pass the provision. . . . Other signers include Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life America; Josh Mercer, the vice president of CatholicVote; Seth Dillon, CEO of the Babylon Bee; John Bruchalski, the founder of Tepeyac OBGYN Divine Mercy Care; Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood worker and the CEO and Founder of And Then There Were None, and others. . . .

Margaret Mary Olohan of the Daily Wire got the Trump White House on the record:

During a White House press briefing on Thursday afternoon, The Daily Wire asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt whether the president is committed to ensuring that the provision to defund Planned Parenthood stays in the “Big Beautiful Bill” as it passes through the Senate.

“The president has maintained a very clear commitment to ensuring that this administration and the American people’s tax dollars are not funding any institution; that includes hospital systems that are funding the chemical castration and mutilation of children,” Leavitt responded. “We are not going to tolerate taxpayer dollars going to such efforts.”

It’s up to the Senate to finish the job. Don’t go wobbly.