Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Thursday that Republican pressure to include a rider to a budget deal defunding Planned Parenthood is “stunning” to her as a woman and that Senate leadership will not back down in their support of women’s health issues.
“I am really stunned. And I am angry as a woman that we have come to this after weeks of negotiating on numbers… that there are those in the Republican party in the House who are willing to shutdown the government, take people’s paychecks away from them because they want to deny women access to health care in this country,” Murray told reporters. “Every woman and every man in this country ought to be saying, ‘What are you doing?’”
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said repeatedly Thursday that the spending talks between Senate Democrats, the White House and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) essentially have broken down in the 11th hour not over figures but over “ideology.”
Reid devoted much of his floor remarks, and then later statement in a press conference, to discussing the women’s health-based negotiations sticking point.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0411/Murray_stunned_government_might_shutter_over_Planned_Parenthood.html