Dems always use abortion as the squirrel.
Via Washington Times
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday offered Democrats an up-or-down vote on their request to remove abortion language from an otherwise-bipartisan bill to help victims of human trafficking.
Mr. McConnell said his offer, which was swiftly rejected, would be the fairest way to break an impasse over the language, which Democrats only discovered this week and have objected to as an expansion of the long-standing ban on using federal funds for abortions.
“If they had the votes they would be able to take that provision of the bill out,” Mr. McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said.
But Democrats don’t appear to have the votes, so Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid shot down the offer and said Republicans should accept a substitute bill that doesn’t contain the abortion language. He also showed little sympathy for the new GOP majority, saying he faced repeated filibusters.
“So let’s not talk about dysfunction,” he said. “The book on that has been written by the Republican minority for the last six years.”
The bill under consideration would fight human slavery and sexual exploitation by beefing up law enforcement and setting up a restitution fund for victims made up of penalties paid by the worst offenders.
Although it’s been in the legislation for nearly two months, Democrats objected this week when they spotted so-called Hyde language that would prevent the use of those funds for abortions.[…]
Buoyed by 10 Democratic cosponsors, the bill breezed through committee and offered a hopeful dose of bipartisanship for a chamber steeped in fights over the administration’s approach to Iran, immigration and health reform.
But that changed Tuesday, when pro-choice groups and their Democratic allies objected to what they called a “sneak attack” on abortion rights in the bill.
They accused the GOP of expanding the Hyde restrictions beyond their usual bounds. Instead of taxpayer funds, the bill before them would apply the ban to penalties collected from traffickers, which the Democrats say is a different kind of money.
“This language paves the way for political leaders in the future to interfere even more with a woman’s basic personal health decisions,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said Thursday. “It sets the tone for expansion of abortion restriction for years to come.”