Bipartisan Snowe Job

If you've listened to the media surrounding Senator Olympia Snowe's (R-Maine) vote in the Finance Committee on health care reform, you could easily come to the wrong conclusion that this is a new sign of bipartisanship in the debate. Unfortunately, that's only because the media has chosen to ignore the valiant efforts of dozens of pro-life Democrats in the House who have worked with likeminded Republicans to try to ensure that the overhaul doesn't fund abortions. In the five committees discussing health care reform, a total of sixteen amendments were offered to separate abortion from health care. Many of these amendments were supported--and even sponsored--by Democrats like Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), only to be opposed by the Democratic leadership. Yet the media has been largely silent on this strong showing of bipartisanship in opposing taxpayer-funded abortions.

Interestingly enough, these are the same reporters that highlighted the comments from former GOP lawmakers in favor of the Democrat's health care plan. But, as reporter Tim Carney from The Examiner points out (and the mainstream media chooses to ignore), those former legislators, including Tommy Thompson, Bob Dole, and Bill Frist, lobby for health care special interests and stand to personally profit from a government takeover of health care. There has been true bipartisanship from the very beginning of this debate as more leaders unite to exclude abortion from health care.

Needed: Vigilance not Volunteerism

Today marks the 8th anniversary of the Islamic terrorists' attacks on the United States . Thankfully, America has not suffered an organized attack on our soil since that fateful day. There is a reason, or should I say reasons. 9/11 was a wake up call for Americans, first to be vigilant. After President Reagan won the Cold War, we failed to stand guard against the advancing ideologies that were hostile to the ideals of self government, individual freedom and ordered liberty. 9/11 reminded us we have to defend our ideals and protect our people. Secondly, it was also a wake up call to Christians to be more vigilant in praying for our nation and its leaders. There is an effort, however, to replace this vigilance with volunteerism.

In April, President Obama signed a bill changing the focus from prayer to service. He declared September 11^th the National Day of Service and Remembrance. According to Matthew Vadum, writing in the American Spectator, the recently dethroned green czar, Van Jones, and others within the White House were using this National Day of Service to push the green agenda in hopes of taking back 9/11 from the "Right" who have used it as "a day of fear that helps Republicans, into a day of activism that helps the Left."

Americans should not and cannot tolerate our security being used as a political football. Transforming a day on which we reflect upon the tragic loss of human life, the heroic sacrifices made to protect and defend that life and earnestly pray for our nation's divine protection into a day on which we focus on service and volunteerism as part of a left wing agenda is not a subtle shift of priorities--it is a significant, and even dangerous, change.

Myths and Facts about Obamacare

Last week NBC News released a poll showing that while 36% of Americans believed President Barack Obama’s health care plan was a “good idea,” 42% of Americans believed it was a “bad idea.” NBC’s explanation for this inconvenient truth? “[M]isperceptions about the president’s plans for reform … that nonpartisan fact-checkers say are untrue.” Specifically NBC found that 55% of Americans believed Obamacare “will give health insurance coverage to illegal immigrants,” 54% believed it “will lead to a government takeover of the health care system,” 50% believed it “will use taxpayer dollars to pay for women to have abortions,” and 45% believed it “will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care to the elderly.”
The President has since copied NBC’s diagnosis, devoting his Saturday Weekly Address to debunking these “phony claims.” The problem for NBC News, and the White House, is that every one of these concerns has rock solid foundation in fact.
Obamacare Will Provide Health Benefits to Illegal Immigrants: The President is correct when he says that the idea to provide illegal immigrants with health insurance “has never been on the table.” The problem is that the American people also know that despite the fact that our immigration laws did not intend it, there are 12 million persons illegally in the United States. The issue is enforcement and the provisions in H.R. 3200 are completely inadequate to ensure that illegal immigrants do not illegally obtain health care through the bill. In the House Ways and Means mark up of H.R. 3200, Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) introduced an amendment that would use two citizenship status verification systems, the Income and Eligibility Verification System (IEVS) and Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) programs, to establish an individual’s eligibility to obtain the bill’s proposed affordability credits or enroll in the public insurance option. Both programs are currently used to determine citizenship status and eligibility for other public assistance programs. Safeguards to guarantee that only citizens can access federal health care benefits are necessary, considering that the US Census Bureau currently estimates that 9.6 million of the uninsured are not US citizens. The Heller amendment failed on a straight party-line vote.
Obamacare Will Lead to a Government Takeover of The Health Care System: Whether it’s a “public option”, individual mandate, employer mandate, the expansion and federalization of Medicaid, or the creation of a new health czar, the provisions in the health bills being pushed by the Obama administration call for more government regulation and intrusion in the American health care system. The nonpartisan, independent Lewin Group found that an estimated 56 percent of Americans would lose their current insurance under the House bill.
Obamacare Will Use Taxpayer Dollars to Pay For Women to Have Abortions: In all four mark-ups of health care legislation (three in the House and one in the Senate), Conservatives have offered amendments that would specifically prohibit federal funds from being used to cover abortion. None of them passed. Instead, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed an amendment by Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) that actually requires at least one insurance plan to cover abortion in every geographical region and requires the newly-created public plan to cover all abortion services. How can the President and NBC News possibly claim that Obamacare will not direct taxpayer money to pay for abortions? They’ve employed a complete accounting fiction, claiming that beneficiary premiums will pay for abortions, not federal subsidies. Since neither the federal government nor any insurance company will be required to create separate “abortion” and “non-abortion” general funds (and since the President explicitly promise Planned Parenthood his health care plan would cover “reproductive services“), Americans have every right to believe that the existing legislation will funnel their tax dollars to abortion.
Obamacare Will Allow Government to Ration Health Care: Both the House and Senate bills call for an increased role for Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) to determine which medical procedures are most effective at treating specific ailments. Although this provision is based on perfectly sound policy, many Americans are concerned that federal officials could use CER to make treatment, coverage, or payment decisions. Three Senators offered amendments that would have prohibited the use of CER to mandate coverage, deny care, or ration. CER, if used as a rationing tool, would obviously interfere with the traditional doctor-patient relationship. All three amendments failed on straight party-line votes.
These are just some of the very real fears Americans have about Obamacare. And as we have decisively demonstrated, all have sound basis in fact. But they do not even touch on another very real fear Americans have about Obamacare: the cost. This Friday, the Obama administration leaked news that they will be forced to raise their 10-year budget deficit forecast to about nine trillion dollars, up about two trillion from the previous forecast. Considering that all best estimates point to at least a $1 trillion price tag for Obamacare, it is a wonder just 42% of Americans believe Obamacare is a “bad idea.”

From the Heritage Foundation

President Obama's 'Wild Misrepresentations'

President Obama hosted a townhall meeting yesterday afternoon that seemed more scripted than some of the soap operas that his broadcast was competing with. Not surprisingly, the meeting was carefully choreographed--so much so that the President couldn't find a single person to disagree with him. Apparently his was the only townhall in the entire country where there wasn't at least one voter opposed to a government takeover of health care. Unlike the millions of concerned citizens packed into local gymnasiums and city halls, this event was replete with a select group of White House cheerleaders. Even the little girl, who famously asked why the other side is so "mean," turned out to be the child of an Obama donor, who is important enough to have already met the First Family and Vice President Joe Biden at a previous fundraiser. Coincidence? As Michelle Malkin pointed out, there are no coincidences in this administration. What was more amazing than all this premeditation is how the President accused groups like FRC of engaging in "wild misrepresentations" while engaging in a series of incredible distortions himself.

The whoppers he told ranged from fudging the plan's list of supporters to the details of the plan itself. At one point he told the crowd, "We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for our seniors." That was news to the AARP, who disputed the endorsement immediately after the townhall concluded. Tom Nelson, AARP's chief operating officer, told reporters, "Indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills... are inaccurate." The President also claimed, "Under the reform we're proposing, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan." But an independent study commissioned by the Heritage Foundation actually found that 88.1 million people would be shifted out of their current employer-based plan.

As part of his pitch, the President also tried to compare his health care overhaul to the competition between FedEx and the U.S. Post Office. He said, "If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are. It's the Post Office that's always having problems." It's a false comparison for several reasons, but mainly because the U.S. Postal System is heavily regulated and, as a result, it's weighed down by federal mandates--just as the President's health plan would place burdensome new regulations on private insurance companies. That's why his statement is so revealing about why a government takeover of health care is not the solution. The American people are outraged because they don't want health care delivered with the empathy of the IRS, the efficiency of FEMA or the mismanagement of the Post Office. The Post Office lost $ 2.8 billion last year while giving a $ 135,000 "performance bonus" to its top executive. And because the USPS is federally run and funded monopoly, it is unaccountable for its perpetual fiscal mess--just like Medicare. That's not the kind of change the American people are hoping for.

Of course, the President's biggest misrepresentation was his insistence that he doesn't back a single-payer system. "I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter," he told yesterday's audience. Maybe he hasn't said it as President, but last August, candidate Obama told an Albuquerque townhall, "If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system." The bottom line, Mr. President, is that if you portray yourself as an honest man, it helps if you keep your facts straight.

APA and Media Play Mind Games over Ex-Gay Therapy

Promoting the belief that people are "born gay" and cannot change is crucial to the homosexual agenda of equating sexual orientation with race and the identification of homosexual conduct with the civil rights movement. Unfortunately for them, facts--like the existence of thousands of "ex-gays"--are stubborn things. Politically correct attacks on the ex-gay movement continued yesterday with the American Psychological Association's adoption of a resolution discouraging what they call "sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE)."

This led to a predictable round of headlines today saying things like "Gay Therapies Unsound" and "Psychologists Reject Gay Therapy." The APA's actual scientific findings were much more modest, however, declaring, "There are no studies of adequate scientific rigor to conclude whether or not recent SOCE do or do not work" [emphasis added]. Ironically, it is largely the pro-homosexual forces in the APA which have prevented "studies of adequate scientific rigor" to make more definitive conclusions. Claims that such therapy is actually harmful, meanwhile, are supported by only anecdotal rather than scientific evidence.

Yesterday's report could have been worse, since some homosexual activists want sexual reorientation therapy to be flatly declared unethical--something the APA declined to do. Instead, the APA should re-affirm the profession's traditional ethical commitment to letting every client, including those unhappy with their homosexuality, set their own goals for therapy. The Left's growing problem with professional ethics and valid medical standards continues to grow.

Judgment Day

With just one day left on the summer schedule and public unrest threatening to sink the party's health care plan, Senate liberals hoped to leave town on a high note. For them, that meant confirming the President's highly controversial Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. Despite a spotty record that shows her tendency to legislate from the bench, nine Republicans--including Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Kit Bond (R-Mo.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and George Voinovich (R-Ohio)--helped to put her confirmation over the top in a 68-31vote.

While the overall outcome was disappointing, FRC applauds the nearly unprecedented unity displayed by the 31 Republicans who stood united against her confirmation on the grounds that she is a judicial activist. The conservative leadership in the Senate, led by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), is to be commended for their noble effort to protect the Constitution.

On Hate Crimes, It's the Thought That Counts

With the help of Saturday Night Live's finest--new Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.)--liberals are accelerating their push to pass federal "hate crimes" legislation. In a letter to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) made no bones about his plan to fast-track the bill after the July 4th recess, bypassing the normal process. His maneuvering would mean that Republicans have relatively no input on legislation that would have sweeping consequences for churches, charities, Christians, and criminal law. Bob Knight sums it up as a "grab bag of ways to violate genuine constitutional rights while addressing a non-issue."

Nevertheless, the Left insists on forcing a bill through Congress that establishes "thought crimes," gives special protection to homosexuals under the law, and paves the way for the federal government to get deeply involved in crimes on the local level. The House already passed the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S. 909) back in April. Now the Senate leadership is racing to do the same.

You can help derail their train by flooding the offices of three Committee Democrats whose votes could make all the difference--Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln, phone: 202-224-4843; Arkansas's Mark Pryor, phone: 202-224-2353; and Alaska's Mark Begich, phone: 202-224-3004. Remind them that equal justice under the law means equal protection for all!

It's OK if You Are Confused about Health Care Reform

There are very good reasons to be confused about what kind of health care reform Congress is debating right now. The health reform plans keep changing. Even in the committees of jurisdiction, only part of each bill is being considered because the rest of the bill has not been drafted. And when it gets drafted, it has to be scored (its cost to the taxpayer determined) by the Congressional Budget Office. The scores have been so high, ranging from $1.6 trillion to $2.4 trillion in the U.S. Senate and $3 trillion in the U.S. House, that the crippling price tags are causing further changes. Until the Democrats decide whether or not to have a government health plan option, the delays and confusion will continue. On one hand, three of the most influential House Democratic caucuses have demanded a public/government plan option. On the other, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Medical Association and the Association of Health Insurance Plans have all come out four-square against a government plan. When the leaders of the employer, doctor and insurance communities unite to oppose a specific legislative item, it becomes very difficult to pass. Moreover, President Obama has said that there is "no line in the sand" on a government plan, but House Speaker Pelosi says she cannot pass health reform in the House without a government plan. If you are confused about what is happening on health care reform, don't worry, so are members of Congress.

ObamaCare: Open Wide and Say, 'Nah!'

Plenty of people tuned in to yesterday's White House infomercial on health care, but were Americans buying what the President was selling? ABC sure hopes so, since it turned over a full day of programming to the administration in an amazing co-opt of one of the country's biggest media outlets. In last night's primetime town hall, one of the audience members asked the President how he can justify a plan that limits the treatments for people with terminal disease.

"My mother... has terminal cancer," Robert Wasson said, " [and] she deserves to be treated to the best of [doctors'] abilities. To say it's expensive is not right. I just don't think you can put a price tag on quality time with loved ones, especially at the end of their lives."

The President tried to tackle the end-of-life issue with his plan, particularly the criticism that under the government option, people would be denied certain treatments or procedures. "...[W]e're not going to solve every difficult problem in terms of end-of-life [questions]... But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that's not making anybody's mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or drugs... that is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what? Maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the surgery but taking the painkiller."

If anyone's going to need painkillers, it's the taxpayers who would be forced to finance this treatment-lite plan. In an interview yesterday with Joe Scarborough, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) estimated that the House's radical version of "reform," a bill that includes a funding mandate for abortionists, could cost upwards of $3 trillion. Unfortunately, that number doesn't mean much to most Americans.

After the stimulus, omnibus, and bailouts, the country seems almost immune to the administration's black hole of spending. Let me put it in perspective. You would need to spend one dollar every second--going all the way back to 30,000 years before Christ--to reach a trillion dollars. Think about it. The federal government's first trillion dollar annual budget was just 19 years ago. Now we're talking about just one program that could cost three times that!

Insurance Includes No Assurance on Life

President Obama, fresh from a government takeover of General Motors, now has his sights set on your medical coverage. On Saturday, he told Congress it was "time to deliver" on his massive health care overhaul. One version of the President's plan, crafted by Sen. Ted Kennedy's (D-Mass.) Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was circulated throughout the Hill on Friday. In it, all Americans are guaranteed some form of basic health care, and employers are ordered to provide coverage--or else. Of course the biggest hiccup is that Kennedy's committee has no idea how Congress would pay for such a plan, particularly since the U.S. is already borrowing almost 50 cents for every dollar it spends.

The chief complaint against ObamaCare, apart from the trillions it would cost, is that this plan would force taxpayers to provide abortion coverage for the first time in U.S. history. There are some Senators that are concerned that the President wants to make "reproductive health care," including abortion, an essential part of his government-controlled system.

While the administration would force you to pay for abortions, it also leaves relatively no options for those faced with having to perform or promote them. The current plan lacks any clear conscience protections for medical workers, leaving the health care field exposed to even greater attacks. If the bill refuses to address the freedom of conscience, more of our doctors, nurses, and pharmacists will be forced to choose between their convictions and their careers.

Pelosi's Tortured Chamber

In Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) House, policymaking has given way to excuse-making. The chamber's top Democrat continues to bumble her way through the questions about what she did and did not know about the C.I.A.'s waterboarding practice. Earlier this month, Pelosi insisted that she was never briefed about the interrogation of suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah, specifically that the C.I.A. "misled" her on their torture techniques.

Asked last week if she was accusing the C.I.A. of lying, Pelosi said, "Yes." The agency's new director, Leon Panetta, fired back with documents suggesting that the Speaker was "briefed truthfully" in 2002. Records also show that a Pelosi staffer was briefed again in 2003. "It is not our policy... to mislead Congress," said Panetta. "That is against our laws and our values."

In the days since Pelosi's disastrous press conference last Thursday, when she left the podium twice to try to get her facts straight, her selective memory loss seems to have abated long enough for the Speaker to concede that she did know more in 2003 than she let on. This matters for several reasons. First, as Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) points out, Speaker Pelosi is discrediting the brave men and women of the C.I.A. while Americans are fighting two wars. Secondly, she has called repeatedly for a "truth commission" to hash out whether the Bush administration was justified in torturing suspects. Obviously, this is problematic if she knew about the tactics years ago and did nothing to stop them.

Regardless of how it may damage her personally, Pelosi owes it to the C.I.A. and her country to set the record straight and apologize. As the second in line for the presidency, the American people need to know that they can trust her. If she refuses to share in the responsibility, then it's up to the House Ethics Committee to move quickly in launching its own "truth commission." Interestingly enough, Speaker Pelosi (despite her vow to "clean up Washington") continues to block the ethics investigations of her liberal colleagues. As this latest scandal suggests, Pelosi continues to be more preoccupied with political security than national security.

New Ice Cream Flavor

In honor of the 44th President of the United States, Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream has introduced a newFlavor: "Barocky Road. "Barocky Road is a blend of half vanilla, half chocolate, and surrounded by nuts and flakes.The vanilla portion of the mix is not openly advertised and usually denied as an ingredient. The nuts and flakes are all very bitter and hard to swallow. The cost is $100.00 per scoop. When purchased it will be presented to you in a Large beautiful cone, but then the ice cream is taken away and given to the person in line behind you. You are left with an empty wallet and no change, holding an empty cone with no hope of getting any ice cream.

Are you stimulated?

First Comes Love, Then Comes... Motherhood?

According to research released yesterday by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), America is rapidly becoming a nation of unwed parents. While the social shift has been underway for years, few could have predicted just how quickly it would sweep the country's households. In 2002, 1.4 million babies were born to unmarried women--doubling the number from 1980. Five years later, the data spiked to 1.7 million babies born to unwed moms in their 20s and 30s. To put things in perspective, four of every 10 babies are now born to single mothers.

In the blink of an eye, the United States has gone from a relatively gradual uptick in unwed births to being completely Europeanized. Experts cite plenty of reasons for the surge, but the de-emphasis of marriage and family is by far the largest. As more men retreat from responsibility, women are delaying marriage or foregoing it altogether. That's bad news for children and for anyone hoping for a return to limited government. As the foundation of our homes splinter, Washington will look for new ways to fill in the cracks. Most liberals, like those presently in control of government, believe that Washington can do a better job supporting families and raising children. Instead of policies that strengthen families, the White House will look for ways to bolster the government's role in them.

Of course, a lot of fiscal conservatives ignore marriage as a policy issue because they think of it as a cultural or religious institution. What they fail to realize is that it's also an economic institution that has enormous implications for the role of the federal government. Every year, state and federal governments fork over $280 billion in welfare, food stamps, and other anti-poverty programs just to keep these broken families afloat. That means that in one decade, the decline of marriage has taken $3 trillion dollars out of taxpayers' pockets.

As Dr. Pat Fagan writes, "This system is a massive injustice. Married people are the source of a massive transfer of payments to broken families. Those who stay together are also paying for those adults who do not." If the federal government could reduce family breakdown by a single percent, taxpayers would save around $3 billion dollars a year. And those are just the fiscal benefits. Having a happy, two-parent home to grow up? That's priceless.

Irresponsible Funding for Irresponsible Behavior

In keeping with the administration's lack of restraint, Washington is preparing to send a message to America's teens that sexual restraint is also unnecessary. One of the few places that President Obama has shown a stingy side is by cutting programs for teens that have made a meaningful impact on public health. Of course, it's not really a spending cut since the money is being redirected to new pro-contraceptive programs for teens.

In fiscal year (FY) 2009 the Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) fund was $94.7 million. Today the administration is proposing that of the $114.5 allotted for FY 2010, no less than $75 million would go to teen pregnancy prevention programs that include contraception promotion--not abstinence education. While another $25 million could be used for abstinence education, there is no guarantee that it will be since the proposal calls for "new strategies" with this money.

Abstinence funding in Title X Adolescent and Family Life funds is getting a similar cut. Instead of $13 million going to abstinence education, programs that advocate abstinence would have to compete for $3.28 million earmarked as "new strategies" for prevention, but as with CBAE there's no guarantee that the abstinence projects would be funded. The administration defends the abstinence cuts by pointing to studies, many of which are linked to Planned Parenthood, that question the effectiveness of abstinence programs.

The truth is, abstinence education goes beyond pregnancy prevention to promoting holistic change in teenagers. Studies show that in addition to preventing pregnancy and disease, teens who practice abstinence are better off emotionally and are much more likely to experience marital fidelity and satisfaction. The same cannot be said of the comprehensive sex education. In a review of 119 studies, comprehensive sex education has produced no compelling evidence of sustaining a meaningful effect on protective behaviors in a school-based setting, even after three decades of implementation and evaluation.

Obama’s First 100 Days

From The Heritage Foundation:
This week marks Barack Obama’s historic first 100 days as President. Highlights of his Presidential actions are listed below.
Impact on Spending, Debt, and Taxes
• President Obama’s $3.69 trillion budget will raise taxes on all Americans by $1.4 trillion over the next decade, and will permanently elevate federal spending to nearly 23 percent of the entire economy by 2019—a level reached only three times since the end of World War II.
• The President’s budget dumps a staggering $9.3 trillion in new debt—$68,000 per household—into the laps of America's children and grandchildren. This is more debt than has been accumulated by all previous Presidents in American history from George Washington to George W. Bush—combined.
• President Obama ordered his cabinet to identify and shave a collective $100 MILLION in administrative costs from their budgets after proposing 40,000 times that in his budget and spending bills.
• The President’s budget proposes a $646 billion cap-and-trade tax that energy companies would immediately pass on to all consumers, including those earning less than $250,000.
Impact on Foreign Policy
• The President approved a cut of 15 percent of the Pentagon’s budget for missile defense and abandoning deploying defenses in Western Europe.
• Both President Obama and the Secretary of Homeland Security have been reticent to discuss the threat of terrorism, and Administration officials have issued a plethora of ambivalent and contradictory statements on homeland security and counterterrorism policies.
• The President declared that “50 years” of US policy had not worked as justification for reversing long-standing U.S. policies to isolate the Cuban dictatorship.
• President Obama’s Justice Department released documents on terrorist interrogation tactics used by the CIA after 9/11, yet refused to declassify and release additional material that describes the full scope and context of the program, including the effectiveness of the CIA interrogations.
Impact on Domestic Policy
• The President took over General Motors by firing the CEO.
• President Obama put the breaks on cheaper energy by delaying the opportunity to expand domestic supply through offshore drilling.
• The Obama Administration took the first official step towards federal regulation of carbon dioxide (the gas we exhale) by having the Environmental Protection Agency declare carbon dioxide dangerous to human health and the environment.
Click here to read more about President Obama's first 100 days in the White House.

Obama's Bad Science Bailout

Yesterday's Executive Order may not have surprised conservatives, but it certainly shocked the Left. Although most of the country expected President Obama to make good on his promise to reverse the federal restrictions on embryonic stem cell (ESC) research, the final order turned out to be far more extreme than ESC's biggest proponents had hoped. Most believed the President would maintain some semblance of restraint and allow experimentation only on those embryos discarded by fertility clinics. Unfortunately, no such limits exist. The President not only cracked ajar the door to ethically-challenged research, he flung it wide open--leaving the very scientists who demanded this money potentially in charge of its limitations.

Under the President's directive, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), unless Congress intervenes, will determine what, if any, boundaries there might be on how we obtain these embryos. With no clear policy from the White House, you and I could be footing the bill for research that clones embryos just to scavenge their parts.

If that's the case, our policy will condone the creation of life for the sole purpose of experimenting on it. Ronald M. Green, a Dartmouth College bioethicist, said, "There are lot of people on the left and the right sides of our political spectrum who are opposed to that--to create a life to destroy it."

President Obama justified the idea yesterday, saying, "As a person of faith, I believe we are called to... work to ease human suffering." But killing to cure doesn't make murder more acceptable, just like giving stolen goods to the church doesn't justify larceny. As Yuval Levin, the former executive director of President Bush's Council on Bioethics writes in today's Washington Post, "In science policy, science informs--but politics governs, and rightly so."

By shielding this research from any public or congressional scrutiny, the President may as well tear up his social contract with the American people. When we're talking about human life and taxpayer dollars, voters have a right to know who's going to monitor the scientists. The appetite for this research may be insatiable, but as Levin says, "[Science]... is no substitute for wisdom, prudence, or democracy."

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) disagrees. A longtime proponent of unethical research, DeGette urged Congress to make Obama's executive order permanent. "Congress must quickly pass complementary legislation so that no future anti-science administration will be able to hinder progress... Congress absolutely must not delay in codifying the directive to prevent science from being subject to the whim of politics." Here is the first of what we expect to be many fierce attacks on the Dickey-Wicker Amendment--the only policy remaining that protects taxpayers from directly funding the destruction of human embryos.

President of 'Hope' Gives Patients Anything But

For eight years, President George Bush proudly displayed in the Oval Office a bust of Sir Winston Churchill on loan from Great Britain. As a gesture of goodwill, the British government offered to let President Obama keep the statue during his term as a symbol of our longstanding friendship. Obama declined, shipping the bust back to England--and with it, the reminder of Churchill's great wisdom. It was he who warned that if evil prevails "all that we have known and cared for will sink into a new Dark Age, made more sinister...by the lights of perverted science."

Today, that "perverted science" took root in America in a powerful new way, as President Obama tore down the wall between the federal government and embryonic stem cell experiments. By executive order, he took the first step in overturning the restrictions on taxpayer-funded embryonic stem cell research. His decision will allow government agencies to use federal money to encourage experiments on innocent human life, abolishing a ban that Bush put in place in 2001.

Supporters of the decision are quick to point out that Americans won't be financing the death of embryos. Although we may not be funding the killing, we are funding the killers. For now, the one law that prevents Obama from using taxpayer dollars to fund the destruction of embryos directly is still in place. The Dickey-Wicker amendment, approved by Congress every year since 1996, bans the use of federal funds to create human embryos. Unfortunately, even that safeguard could be in jeopardy under the liberal majority. As with the other pro-life riders, Dickey-Wicker must survive the appropriations process--a feat that could now be monumentally more difficult.

Obama's decision puts the government in a business which is not only unethical but also medically unnecessary. As recently as last week, researchers announced that they had successfully turned ethically created cells into the neurons that break down in Parkinson's disease. The week before, scientists produced evidence that they had treated Parkinson's in a patient with his own adult stem cells. Almost daily, researchers are celebrating new breakthroughs without compromising a single human life. Over 70 diseases and conditions have already been treated through adult stem cells, helping patients overcome everything from juvenile diabetes to heart disease. There is a common misconception that ESC research hasn't yielded these same results because it's not legal. It is. Only federal funding has been restricted. Private, commercial, and even state ESC experiments continue to no avail. That's why the ESC community is so desperate for federal funding. Many of the private ESC financiers see the method as an expensive failure. Even Dr. James Thomson, who first grew human ESC in 1998, has pulled his resources from embryos and invested in induced pluripotent (or iPS) cells, because, apart from the satisfying the moral dilemma, these cells are easier and cheaper to reproduce.

While the Obama administration and its supporters claim to be on the cutting-edge of science, the new President is pursing old technology. And thanks to the latest stimulus package, he will have at least $8 billion to do so. In a clever political move, Obama put the money in place at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) during the second "bailout," then moved ahead with rescinding Bush's restrictions. As he stated today, it will be up to NIH to decide in the next 120 days on the guidelines for ESC research.

Of course, scientists will lobby to obtain the money without strings or congressional oversight. According to the White House, their wish may be granted in the form of a presidential memo which Obama released today that seeks to insulate scientists from political accountability. In instances like this one, a lack of transparency is unacceptable, particularly when taxpayers are footing the bill. Harold Varmus, who co-chairs the President's Council on Science and Technology, defended the idea. "This is consistent with the President's determination to use sound scientific practice... instead of dogma in developing federal policy." Is it dogma or discipline? I guess that depends on your worldview. Are they restrictions or protections? Research or experiments? In this brave new world of commodifying human life, we should all be grateful for moral restraints. Please contact your leaders and urge them to uphold the ones that still exist. Urge them to right Obama's wrong by voting for the Patients' First Act. Instead of asking taxpayers to fund the destruction of life, this bipartisan bill would promote stem cell research that is making progress on principle.

The Standard is Poor

His speech may have inspired the nation, but President Obama's economic cheerleading failed to make a believer out of Wall Street. Despite today's bleak news on the trading floor, the comforter-in-chief seemed to accomplish what he set out to do on Tuesday night--raise the spirits of grassroots Americans. Before last night's speech, confidence in the country had tumbled. While an overwhelming majority approved of President Obama (62%), nearly 80% agreed that "things are going badly in the United States." By a noticeable margin, the President has become more popular than his policies.

While people respond to his rhetoric, the market responds to reality--which is why investors have seen an interesting trend each time the President's outlines his agenda for the economy in a major speech. Obama's stock goes up, and the Dow goes down. Like a truth indicator to the President's plans, Wall Street tells us what Obama will not: financial experts have serious misgivings about the administration's approach to the crisis. The correlation below is really quite striking. When the President speaks, the market listens... and crumbles.

• November 5, 2008 (Wednesday after Election Day): -486 (5.0%)


• January 9, 2009 (one day after Obama speaks at George Mason University on "need" for $800 billion stimulus package): -143 (1.6%)


• January 20, 2009 (Inauguration Day): -332 (4.0%)


• February 10, 2009 (one day after Obama declares that without a stimulus, "an economy that is already in crisis will be faced with a catastrophe"): -382 (4.6%)


• February 17, 2009 (market opens for the first time after Congress passes $787 billion stimulus on February 13; Obama signs bill into law, declaring, "The stimulus lets Americans claim destiny."): -298 (3.8%)


• February 19, 2009 (one day after Obama announces potential mortgage relief plan): -90 (1.2%)


• February 25, 2009 (one day after Obama's first speech to the full Congress): -80 (1.1%)

Pig Pen: Obama Signs Pork Package into Law

With one stroke of the pen, President Obama vaulted into the record books yesterday, signing what may stand as the largest spending bill ever passed in the history of America. The legislation itself is eight inches thick, so large, a White House aide joked, that it "needed to be strapped in with a seat belt on Air Force One."

Instead of relieving debt, President Obama's "stimulus" is expected to add $9,400 more debt to every family in America. According to the Congressional Budget Office, that may be a modest estimate. If the programs created by the stimulus are made permanent (as the late President Ronald Reagan said, "A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!") the 10-year cost of this bill will be $3.27 trillion--almost triple the initial amount. Let me put that into perspective. If we spent a dollar every second, it would take 31,688 years to spend one trillion!

Unfortunately for U.S. taxpayers, there seems to be no caboose on this money train. The ink had barely dried on the stimulus before President Obama called for another $50 billion to stabilize the housing crisis. The auto industry is also striking while the money press is hot, lining up for another $17 billion handout--on top of the roughly $20 billion carmakers already received from Washington. Wall Street's finest are not far behind, as plans for a TARP 2 (Troubled Assets Relief Program) are already underway.

Obama: Up to His Earmarks in Pork

Yesterday, President Obama was back in campaign mode, hoping to engender the same affection for his massive stimulus bill that he did for his candidacy. This time, voters are noticeably more skeptical. In Indiana, Obama abandoned his trademark optimism and warned that without his trillion dollar spending spree, we would be turning a "crisis into a catastrophe." He defended his recovery plan--but not without telling a few whoppers about the intricacies of his plan.

To a roomful of Hoosiers, Obama said, "Understand, this bill does not have a single earmark in it, which is unprecedented for a bill of this size. There aren't individual pork projects that members of Congress are putting into this bill." In truth, it depends on how the President defines the word "earmark." A majority of Obama's projects are wasteful, special interest spending programs. If the Coast Guard's $255 million "polar icebreaker" doesn't qualify as pork, what does? Maybe the $3 million tax benefit for people with golf carts or ATVs?

Obama bragged, "The plan that we've put forward will save or create three million to four million jobs over the next two years." As the Associated Press points out, those numbers are impossible to substantiate. "The president's own economists... stated, 'It should be understood that all of the estimates presented in this memo are subject to significant margins of error.'"

Despite voters' displeasure, the stimulus bill passed the Senate today, paving the way for some high-stakes bargaining between the chambers. Democrats have already indicated that most of the Senate cuts will be put back into the final legislation during the House and Senate conference. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the "compromise" expected to pass today will cost $18.7 billion more than the House bill. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said, "I do think that there was some spending in the bill that was makeup for a starvation diet under the Bush administration, some important priorities of our party." A "starvation diet" is hardly how I would characterize Bush's two terms, in which federal spending ballooned by more than 20 percent!

Unfortunately, this is just a tidbit of what the administration has in store over the next few months. On the threshold of an unprecedented $1.3 trillion stimulus, the President is moving forward with "phase two" of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), created to rescue Wall Street. In TARP 2, the Treasury Department has floated the possibility of spending up to $150 billion in new bank bailouts, shortly before the springtime omnibus, which is rumored to cost another $500 billion.

Dems Hope Pork Bailout Saves Their Bacon

This much is clear after last night's vote. House Democrats will live or die by the stimulus. President Obama's hopes for a spirit of bipartisanship sank the moment Republican leaders got their hands on the bill's fine print. The American people seem to be catching the new wave of skepticism about the liberals' plan. According to the latest Rasmussen poll, only forty-two percent of the nation's likely voters now support the President's plan. Perhaps they, like the GOP, are paying more attention to the fallout for the nation's families. Human Events says the $1.1 trillion pork-and-payoff bill will cost every American household $10,000--with just 5% dedicated to infrastructure. As families carefully spend their dollars, the presses are running around the clock to print more money for government agencies who abuse what they already have.

We're also learning of some disturbing connections between House liberals and the beneficiaries of the stimulus. Newspapers revealed that the bill's architect, Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), had a vested interest in the massive $2 billion earmark for national parks (triple what the Senate Appropriations Committee approved). His son, Craig Obey, happens to be the chief lobbyist for the National Park Service. House Democrats also want to reward the National Science Foundation with a lavish $1.4 billion check at the same time its employees are under investigation for viewing and emailing porn on the taxpayers' dime ("for significant portions of their workdays, and over period of months or even years," according to Politico). Most Americans would agree that this isn't the kind of stimulus Congress should be funding.

We also learned that your money will help ingratiate Obama to his new Hollywood friends by providing a $246 million tax break for film investors. We commend the Democrats who stood against the party pressure and voted with conservatives and the GOP to protect the taxpayers. They include: Reps. Bobby Bright (Ala.), Parker Griffith (Ala.), Allen Boyd (Fla.), Walt Minnick (Idaho), Brad Ellsworth (Ind.), Frank Kratovil (Md.), Collin Peterson (Minn.), Gene Taylor (Miss.), Heath Shuler (N.C.), Paul Kanjorski (Pa.), and Jim Cooper (Tenn.).

GOP Loses Standoff, Wins Respect

President Obama came to the Republican mountain, but he didn't manage to move it. In his much-anticipated meeting with the House minority, the new leader tried to soften opposition to the $1.1. trillion stimulus package. Obama did concede on one of the Republicans' largest complaints--the hundreds of millions of dollars in contraception. He stripped that provision, along with a beautification project for the National Mall, but neither compromise did much to ease Republicans' minds. Like us, they see the "recovery package" not as stimulus but as a major pork-and-payoff bill that quietly authorizes the most controversial pieces of Obama's social agenda.

Although the legislation passed this evening 244-188, the GOP did set in motion a new era of opposition, voting unanimously against a bill that would take government into the final frontiers of universal health care and federalized education. In the face of the most popular incoming President since JFK, Republicans stood together in statement of solidarity. We applaud them for showing real backbone against unprecedented government expansion.

As the veil begins to drop from the shady elements of the stimulus, more people are beginning to understand what's at stake. Today's New York Times reads, "Stimulus Offers Road to Retooling Social Policy" with "little notice and no public hearings." We thumbed through the 1,588 page H.R. 1 and found plenty of waste. Obama offers: $600 million to buy "green" cars for government workers; $400 million to help NASA conduct climate change research (which ranks dead last on Americans' priorities, according to a new Pew poll); $4.1 billion for "neighborhood stabilization activities," for which ACORN (the Democrats' get-out-the-vote machinery) would be eligible; and even $227 million to oversee the pork spending in the stimulus (Page 11). Medicaid would expand for the poor, the uninsured, and the unemployed, opening the doors to universal health care. And the bill would more than double the Department of Education's current budget.

24 Hours -- A World of Difference

Americans watched on television as President Bush's jumbo jet soared out of sight on Tuesday--and with him, a long record of protecting the unborn. Although the Obama administration is only about 48 hours old, the new President has already set to work undoing years of pro-life and pro-family policy.

Minutes after Obama took the oath of office, the transfer of power was made complete on the White House website. For the past eight years I've been a regular visitor of the website. I have over 2,500 pictures in my library of the various points of President Bush's terms in office. The page, once home to a host of family values, now welcomes an extreme collection of anti-life, anti-woman, and anti-family agendas. Under the caption "civil rights," Obama pledges to fight for nationwide civil unions, repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, homosexual adoption, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, expanded "hate crimes," and over 1,100 costly same-sex benefits. He promises to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" as well as block a federal amendment to preserve marriage. In exchange for the support of groups like Planned Parenthood, the abortion business is also due for a rich payoff from the 44th president, including his support of abortion-on-demand, more funding for "family planning" programs, embryonic stem cell experiments, and tax-funded abortion.

Washington D.C. may have changed overnight, but our values as Christians must be enduring. We must continue to advance faith, family, and freedom in the next four years. God's people need to begin to work NOW on the next congressional elections to get conservatives elected. America needs to bless God before God will bless America!