Sen. Ted Cruz continued his commitment to defund Planned Parenthood during Wednesday night’s CNN GOP debate, even if it means a federal spending bill does not pass because taxpayer dollars for the abortion business are included in it.
Like members of the House Freedom Caucus, Cruz has pledged to vote against any spending legislation that contains funding for the abortion giant.
Cruz was set up by moderator Dana Bash to debate Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who recently made headlines for channeling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said the current Congress could not defund Planned Parenthood because President Obama is a supporter of the organization and would not sign a bill that eliminated its funding.
During the debate, Kasich said:
Well, I agree that we should defund Planned Parenthood. I don’t know many people in America who don’t think that we should, and in my state, we’re trying to figure out how to get it done, because we are threatened with the federal government taking all of our Medicaid money away.
I think there is a way to get this done by giving governors the ability to be able to act to defund Planned Parenthood. But when it comes to closing down the federal government, you gotta be very careful about that.
When we shut the government down — if we have a chance at success and it’s a great principle, yes. The president of the United States is not going to sign this, and all we’re gonna do is shut the government down, and then we’re gonna open up — open it up, and the American people are gonna shake their heads and say, “what’s the story with these Republicans?
Cruz countered, however:
[N]umber one, I’m proud to stand for life. These Planned Parenthood videos are horrifying. I would encourage every American to watch the videos. See — seeing your Planned Parenthood officials callously, heartlessly bartering and selling the body parts of human beings, and then ask yourself, “are these my values?”
These are horrifying. On these videos, Planned Parenthood also essentially confesses to multiple felonies. It is a felony with ten years’ jail term to sell the body parts of unborn children for profit. That’s what these videos show Planned Parenthood doing.
Absolutely we shouldn’t be sending $500 million of taxpayer money to funding an ongoing criminal enterprise, and I’ll tell you, the fact that Republican leadership in both houses has begun this discussion by preemptively surrendering to Barack Obama and saying, “we’ll give in because Obama threatens a veto.”
“We need to stop surrendering and start standing… for our principles,” Cruz said.
As Breitbart News reported, both Kasich and McConnell have used the government shutdown effort to get other things they have wanted in the past.
In 1995, then-Rep. Kasich was part of a GOP shutdown effort that ultimately led to Republicans adopting their budget priorities.
Kasich drew attention to his shutdown efforts in his book titled Stand for Something.
Similarly, in 2013, then-Senate Minority Leader McConnell secured nearly $3 billion for a dam project in his home state of Kentucky in the government funding bill deal that was passed after a shutdown debate over funding Obamacare and raising the debt limit.