EXCLUSIVE — Advancing American Freedom Foundation, a conservative advocacy group founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, is lobbying Republicans to include a ban on Planned Parenthood funding and election security measures in their third party-line spending bill.
The foundation originally outlined 21 policies it would like to see in a third reconciliation bill earlier this year, but a memo obtained exclusively by the Washington Examiner focuses on the 10 issues “Congress cannot afford to leave out.” The memo, titled “What’s Missing From Reconciliation 3.0,” will be circulated to congressional offices Wednesday afternoon as House Republicans prepare to vote on a budget blueprint for the legislation.
“Congress can still fix the latest reconciliation package and prove to voters that they are working to protect the unborn, secure our elections, bring costs down, and cut government waste,” John Shelton, vice president of policy at AAF Foundation, told the Washington Examiner in a statement.
GOP leadership has received significant blowback from House rebels who think the resolution, which focuses on defense spending, farm assistance, and elements of the SAVE America Act, does not include enough conservative priorities. The reconciliation text also does not include any offsets for the new spending, upsetting fiscal hawks.
Leaders have dangled a fourth reconciliation bill for the fall to address missed priorities, but many of the possible holdouts are skeptical of the promise, and others are concerned about the feasibility of passing another party-line spending bill days before the midterm elections.
The group’s highest priority is to codify a permanent defunding of Planned Parenthood. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed last year included a one-year ban on Medicaid funding for abortion providers, but the moratorium expired in early July.
AAFF is pushing for a permanent ban or an “equivalent clawback tax that retroactively pulls back funds that go out since the moratorium wasn’t extended.”
The group also wants lawmakers to fund data-sharing between the United States Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security so that “election officials are automatically notified when ballots are mailed to addresses tied to non-citizens or voters who’ve moved.”
Election integrity is one of President Donald Trump’s top legislative priorities for reconciliation, and House Republicans hope to incentivize states to adopt elements of it, including voter ID requirements and proof of citizenship when registering to vote, through grant funding. On Tuesday, New Jersey removed more than 6,000 noncitizens from its voter rolls after discovering they were registered to vote.
Conservatives have pushed House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and GOP leaders to include the entire SAVE America Act into the party-line spending bill, but its fate would likely be doomed in the Senate, where the bill has failed multiple times and will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
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AAFF is also pushing for cost-cutting measures and estimates Congress could claw back upward of $60 billion per year by imposing a penalty on states that exceed the 3% cap on improper Medicaid payments. The penalty would cut a state’s Medicaid match by 1 point for every point that improper payments exceed the cap. In addition, the memo outlines an estimated savings of about $10 billion per year by compelling states to follow federal income and asset limits for food stamps.
The memo also calls for a new payroll tax — a 15% to 21% levy — on employers who hire unauthorized workers.
Read the memo in full below.
“What’s Missing From Reconciliation 3.0” memo by web-producers