[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 124 (Thursday, July 15, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S4913]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Appropriations

  Madam President, on another matter, this week, Democrats on the House 
Appropriations Committee are doing something so radical that it hasn't 
been done for decades. They are advancing an annual funding bill that 
leaves out the Hyde amendment, the commonsense prohibition on forcing 
taxpayers to fund abortion.
  Since the 1970s, abortion has claimed the lives of more than 60 
million unborn children. But at the very, very least, the mainstream, 
bipartisan Hyde amendment has ensured that taxpayers' hard-earned money 
is not funneled into this brutal practice.
  A broad, bipartisan coalition agreed the American taxpayers should 
not be forced to underwrite this nightmare. And, by the way, a strong 
majority of Americans still agree with that proposition.
  For decades, nearly his entire career, then-Senator Joe Biden was a 
reliable supporter of Hyde protections. One letter to a constituent 
read like this:

       Those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be 
     compelled to pay for them.

  But a couple of years ago, on the President's campaign trail, our 
former colleague changed his tune. He let the demands of the 
increasingly radical left overcome a principle he had held literally 
for decades.
  So earlier this year, the President's budget request obligingly 
proposed ending this longstanding protection. Yet another way in which 
the administration that sold itself as moderate and unifying is now 
spiraling way, way to the left. And this week, the House is following 
through.
  In today's Democratic Party, there is no room to dissent from the far 
left's culture war, even in the most modest, most longstanding, most 
widely popular ways.
  Senate Republicans are going to continue standing up for life, 
standing up for taxpayers, and standing up for the conscience rights of 
millions, millions of Americans who don't want the government 
laundering their hard-earned money to abortion providers. Republicans 
will stand with the majority of the American people, even if our 
colleagues across the aisle have given in to the most radical voices