The Hill News

House Republicans will push ahead with a measure to prohibit taxpayer funding of abortion in Washington, D.C., in their bill to extend government funding for another week.

Contained within the legislation on which the House will vote today, which would cut $12 billion from the federal budget and guarantee funding for the Department of Defense for the rest of this year, will be a provision to ban taxpayer-funded abortions in D.C.

"Americans are concerned not just about how much we're spending, but how we're spending it," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). "That's why the policy provisions are an important part of this discussion."

The House is expected to approve the one-week continuing resolution in a vote sometime on Thursday.

Democrats in the Senate have said they wouldn't support such a measure, though the pressure of an impending government shutdown at the end of Friday could force the! m to relent.

President Obama has said he's open to a very short continuing resolution if only to allow a finalized deal to clear procedural hurdles. The president has also said he would only support such a measure if it's "clean," meaning that it's absent any attached riders Democrats might find distasteful.

The inclusion of the ban on taxpayer-funded abortion in D.C. in many ways mirrors the inclusion of a rider in the larger legislation passed by Republicans to fund the government the rest of the fiscal year. That rider would rescind federal support to Planned Parenthood, and this provision is now being blamed by Democrats for holding up a final agreement on a spending bill.

"The only thing holding up an agreement is ideology," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday on the Senate floor.

But Boehner's office points out that the provision to ban taxpayer-funded abortions in D.C. has enjoyed long support, sinc! e Reid has voted for legislation containing the measure during! his tim e in the Senate, and Vice President Biden supported it during his time in the Senate as well.

Obama has also signed previous spending bills into law that contained such a measure.