McConnell: Biden flip on anti-abortion Hyde Amendment sign of administration 'spiraling way, way to the left'
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell discusses Democratic funding bill that leaves out Hyde Amendment.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., slammed President Biden for steering the U.S. to the more to the left despite campaigning as a moderate, in light of Democrats' push to eliminate the Hyde Amendment.
First passed in 1977, the Hyde Amendment to Medicaid prohibits federal tax dollars from being used to fund abortions, except in cases where the woman's life is in danger – exceptions for cases of rape or incest were later added. McConnell noted that while the White House's budget request called for scrapping this, Biden supported the Hyde Amendment in the past.
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"For decades, nearly his entire career, then-Senator Joe Biden was a reliable supporter of Hyde protections," McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor Thursday morning. "But a couple of years ago on the presidential 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."
McConnell went on to say that Biden's newfound opposition to the Hyde Amendment is "yet another way in which the administration has sold itself as moderate and unifying" but "is now spiraling way, way to the left."
The Republican leader stated that this illustrates the current state of the Democratic party.
"In today's Democratic party," he said, "there is no room to dissent from the far left's culture war, even in the modest, most standing, most popular ways."
Fox News reached out to the White House for comment but they did not immediately respond.
McConnell vowed the Republicans would resist the effort to scrap the Hyde Amendment, saying that the GOP would "continue standing up for … millions of Americans who don't want to the government laundering their hard-earned money to abortion providers."
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This is not the first time this week that McConnell has taken to the Senate floor to accuse Democrats of moving farther to the left. On Tuesday, he railed against Democrats for contributing to growing inflation, warning that a massive spending package supported by those including self-described democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would make matters worse.
"Our distinguished colleague, the junior senator from Vermont, the chair of the budget committee, has been very transparent about his socialist ideology for decades. Very up front about it," McConnell said. "But the country didn’t elect a 50-50 Senate and a president who claimed to be a moderate so that chairman senators could turn America into a socialist country."
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