Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday beat back attempts by Republicans to use the 2013 Labor, Health and Human Services bill to defund President Obama’s healthcare reform.

The bill was reported out to the Senate on a party line 16 to 14 vote, a break from the normally bipartisan nature of the spending panel.

The skirmishes came days before the Supreme Court is set to rule on whether the Obama health reform law is unconstitutional due to its requirement that all adults obtain health insurance. 

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) offered an amendment that would have prevented the administration from hiring any new employees to carry out healthcare reform. That failed on party lines.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) offered an amendment that would block health reform’s Prevention and Public Health Fund from spending any money.  He argued that the funds are being used for lobbying and as a “slush fund.” That too was defeated. 

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the spending ‘cardinal’ in charge of the bill, argued that attempts to defund the prevention fund were actually impossible through the appropriations process since the funding was already mandated by the Affordable Care Act. 

Johnson admitted the amendment was poorly constructed. 

Harkin said the Labor, HHS bill simply tells the administration exactly how to spending the money.

“When they say it a slush fund…it is impossible...we know where the money goes,” he said.  Harkin said that the Obama administration has been using its discretion on how to spending the funds since in 2012 the Senate and House failed agree to pass detailed instructions on how to spending the money which Harkin had drafted. 

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) offered an amendment to the bill that would prevent the prevention fund from being used to advertise for the ACA. He said HHS has used $20 million in funds on a publicity campaign to promote the ACA. That amendment was defeated.

“I would have preferred to work together to produce a bipartisan bill, as was the norm for so many years on this Committee,” Harkin said. 

“There are dozens of programs in the bill that I wholeheartedly support,” Shelby said. “I do disagree with the excessive spending in our bill for numerous federal programs that are untested…and unnecessary.”

Overall the spending bill provides $158.8 billion for 2013, $8.8 billion more than the House is expected to provide in its bill which is heading for a markup as soon as next week.

Most of the markup was consumed by battles over the National Labor Relations Board. A Johnson amendment to defund the NLRB entirely was defeated by a 13 to 17 vote.

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