Sources: Budget deal includes D.C. abortion rider, money for school vouchers [View All]

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-wire/post/sources-budget-deal-includes-dc-abortion-rider-money-for-school-vouchers/2011/04/08/AF3ET24C_blog.html

By Ben Pershing

The spending deal agreed to Friday night to avert a government shutdown includes a provision banning the District from spending its own funds to provide abortions to low-income women as well as funding to continue a controversial school voucher program, according to Democratic and Republican sources familiar with the agreement.

The inclusion of the abortion policy “rider” represents a victory for Republicans, who previously imposed such a ban when they controlled Congress and who included the provision in the version of the continuing resolution passed by the House in February. And it marks a sharp defeat for D.C. leaders, who fought to keep the ban out of a deal.

Leading Democrats said repeatedly in the hours leading up to the deal that they would not accept a larger prohibition on federal funding for Planned Parenthood, and they appear to have been successful in that goal. But District activists have feared for weeks that Democrats might concede on the D.C. ban in order to pave the way for excluding the Planned Parenthood ban.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) wrote a letter to President Obama last month expressing her fear that the District rider would be used as “a bargaining chip” and warning: “If any D.C. riders are included in the CR, that acquiescence by Democrats will make it nearly impossible to argue that they should be kept out of the fiscal year 2012 and fiscal year 2013 spending bills.”


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_spending_showdown

Anti-abortion lawmakers succeeded in winning a provision to ban the use of federal or local government funds to pay for abortions in the District of Columbia.

One of Boehner's priorities, a program that lets District of Columbia students use federally funded vouchers to attend private schools, was included.