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Washington • With Republicans openly welcoming a preordained veto, the Senate on Thursday approved legislation aimed at crippling two of their favorite targets: President Barack Obama's health care law and Planned Parenthood.
With a House rubber stamp expected in days, the bill would be the first to reach Obama's desk demolishing his 2010 health care overhaul, one of his proudest domestic achievements, and halting federal payments to Planned Parenthood.
Congress has voted dozens of times to repeal or weaken the health law and repeatedly against Planned Parenthood's funding, but until now Democrats thwarted Republicans from shipping the legislation to the White House.
Thursday's vote was a near party-line 52-47.
Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee both voted to repeal Obamacare, as they have in previous efforts to gut the law. Both Utah Republicans say the move is worthwhile even if they don't have enough votes to overturn a veto.
"When President Obama vetoes this legislation — as we all expect he will — he will take ownership of the Affordable Care Act, along with its many failures and gross inadequacies all over again," Hatch said on the Senate floor Thursday. "I think the same can be said for any of our colleagues who vote against repealing the worst elements of the law this week."
Hatch co-sponsored a plan, the Patient Care Act, that would replace parts of the health care law now, with options for individuals to seek insurance in the private marketplace. The GOP-passed bill would jettison other parts of the Affordable Care Act unpopular with conservatives, including the mandate for individuals to buy insurance and companies with a certain number of employees to offer coverage, as well as a tax on medical devices and a premium charge for top-notch insurance plans.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell praised Hatch's "central role" efforts to dismantle Obamacare, "a law that's hurting families in Utah and across America."
Lee said Thursday that repeal supporters know the president will never sign legislation to get rid of his signature domestic policy achievement, but that's not the point.
"It's nonetheless something that signals our present sympathies with the American people, a majority of whom have never supported the Affordable Care Act," Lee said. "And it signals our intent presently, and in the future when we might have a president who is more receptive to repealing and replacing Obamacare with free market reforms, to put something like this into law."
Republicans said an Obama veto would underscore that a GOP triumph in next year's presidential and congressional elections would mean repeal of a statute they blame for surging medical costs and insurers abandoning some markets. They lack the two-thirds House and Senate majorities they would need to override a veto.