I suppose this is the legislative equivalent of playing like you have a Royal Flush when you’re really only holding a pair of deuces:
Washington (CNN) - House Republicans have added a measure aimed at limiting contraceptive coverage to the spending bill coming up for a vote Saturday night, a spokesman for Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kansas, told CNN.
A senior House leadership aide confirmed that development.
The so-called “conscience clause” would allow employers and insurers to opt out of preventative care for women which they find objectionable on moral or religious grounds. That prominently includes birth control, which most insurers are required to provide for free under current Obamacare rules.
With this move, House Republican leaders would give any employer or group health plan the ability to opt out of contraception coverage for the next year. That time frame syncs up with the larger measure in which this is included: a one-year delay of Obamacare provisions not yet in effect.
“This is a big deal for the congressman,” Huelskamp’s spokesman, Paul Nelson, told CNN. “He has been pushing for (the conscience clause) since he entered Congress.”
This issue, of course, has been the subject of numerous lawsuits around the country, several of which are already on track for Supreme Court consideration possibly in time to be heard in the current term. There’s no chance, of course, that this would ever be accepted by the Senate or the President, but it does emphasize the extent to which the House GOP has turned this process into a pander-fest to the hard-right Republican base. The Machiavellian would say that this is all part of a plan for the leadership to be able to say to them, after it fails “see, we tried to do this, but those darn Democrats wouldn’t let us.”
