Government Shutdown Healthcare

What’s the Next GOP Hostage? Birth Control.

Via LGF, here’s a preview of what kind of hostage the tea party might take the next time the House has to pass a continuing resolution. Yes, it’s birth control.

Conservative House members expressed a desire Tuesday to fund the government only until Dec. 15 in order to force a fight over ObamaCare’s birth control mandate.

Members of the House GOP discussed a proposal that would reopen the government through mid-December, just weeks before a provision of the mandate takes effect on Jan. 1 for religiously affiliated groups.

Republicans seemed adrift after canceling a vote on a debt-limit plan Tuesday night.

But members of the party signaled concerns about letting the Jan. 1 date pass without waging a battle over contraception.

“It boils down to conscience protections that basically become compromised on the first of January, and that’s bothersome to a lot of people,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) told reporters Tuesday afternoon.

(ht Virginia Attorney Steve Duckett)