| Will the Bishops Blast the Baucus Bill? |
| by Deal W. Hudson |
| 9/16/09 |
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Called the Roadmap for America's Future Act, the new bill was supposed to be a compromise piece of legislation, but there was obviously no compromise on abortion funding. According to Johnson,
In other words, once again Obama's pledge that health care reform does not include abortion coverage is far from the truth, to put it nicely. But, as Bill Donohue has reminded us, the president has a chance to make good on his promise -- all he has to do is publicly support an amendment to bar federal funding of abortion in any new health care legislation. As Donohue explains, another attempt at such an amendment has just been introduced:
As Donohue puts it, "Obama must back it." Both the Baucus bill and the Stupak/Pitts amendment offer the USCCB an opportunity to get itself off the hook in the health care debate. The USCCB can issue a statement about its disappointment in the the Baucus bill and urge the president to back the Stupak/Pitts amendment. Right now, the USCCB is hoping the Obama administration will honor its promise. That's fine and good, but are they willing to use their muscle? We will see. Now is an excellent opportunity for the USCCB to take a leadership role in the debate instead of looking like it does now, like the only guys in town who don't get the joke.
Readers have left 11 comments. Everyone who took the time to investigate his voting record and public statements knew that Barack was THE most radical pro-abortion politician in the history of America. When will Catholics who voted for him admit they were played for fools? When will Catholics who voted for him admit all of his talk about "Common Ground" was just an Alinsky tactic? The USCCB allowed Barack to pass as one who had found Common Ground with them when he spoke at Georgetown and Notre Dame and so now when they oppose him it will be easy for him to claim he is trying his level best to address every issue on the Common Ground and not just abortion; and then he can lie about the non-existent conscience clause; and then he can have his Marxist Minions mewl to the press about how Barack, in reaching out to the Catholic Church in a good faith effort to find Common Ground, has not once mentioned the Catholic Church's covering for pederasts in the priesthood etc etc. Barack has kicked The Catholic Church's butt these past two years and when (if?) the USCCB tries to kick-up opposition to him, Barack can tell it to butt-out and the Media will pile-on and then who amongst us would expect The USCCB to respond with puissant authority having never gone through a systematic desensitization of their male authority phobia? Over-coming a phobia takes a LOT of work. It'd prolly be too cruel to think that USCCB is an acronym meaning United States Conference of Carking Bishops. Written by I am not Spartacus Deal: I just wanted to point out to the readers out there that Baucus' bill is not the only one out of the Senate. There's another version yet to be voted on by the seanate Health, Education, and Labor committee (the committee that was formerly chaired by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy). Then the 2 bills will be combined on the Senate floor, amended, and then voted on and this will be the Senate version of the bill. It will then have to be compromised with whatever bill the House passes and both of these will have to be reconciled in a joint House-Senate conference and what comes out of that will be the final version of bill and both houses have to vote up-or-down on the bill before it goes to the President for his signature (or veto). So there are still a lot more hurdles to go. But you're right in this respect, now is the time to make our voices heard! Written by Stuart Deal: You seem to be making a lot of assumptions. First, we have already criticized the unacceptable features of the Baucus bill (see Catholic News Service this week), but can't do very much of this yet because there is no bill -- all that was released today was a conceptual summary, and the devil (sometimes literally) is in the details. Second, we already endorsed the Pitts/Stupak amendment on abortion funding weeks ago, and already wrote to all members of the House that if the House leadership tries to bring HR 3200 to the floor with a rule that would not allow this amendment to be offered, we will urge the House to defeat the rule. Third, there is no use urging President Obama to support inserting any amendment into the Baucus bill or any other bill if it isn't the bill he's going to support overall -- as I said in my previous blog, his description of the bill he wants does not conform exactly to any current bill and he may propose his own. It would be pretty dumb to use all our political chits to urge him to support amending that bill, only to find he was pushing forward with a different bill. And yes, we will be urging all involved to get the abortion issue resolved, as you will see in the next week. In the meantime, don't you have any real enemies to attack? Rich Doerflinger  Written by Richard Doerflinger I listened this afternoon to the reading of the Baucus bill and I was finding myself invaded by the over-developed presence of the Government into my most personal life, my healthcare. I felt like Government has just proposed a bill that will make Healthcare so much more complicated without making it more affordable, or higher in quality..... So what are we supposed to get behind. If you remove the Government Option/takeover and go back to the table, you soon discover all the opportunities to save money, waste fraud and abuse.... go for it and do that right now with government resources. Why can't we as individuals be given access to any of the 1300 Healthcare Insurance Companies to purchase insurance direct as I do car insurance. We should be able to get discounts for being within certain healthy perameters... BP, Non-smoking, non-obese....etc. Companies should still be able to offer tax free reimbursements for the premiums as a Benefit to its emplo yees. No to Government takeover of Healthcare! Written by Mother of Two Sons Richard, thanks for taking the time to explain your position to us at InsideCatholic. I am very appreciative. I disagreed with the message of your press release after Obama's health care speech, and I still do. The president spoke in the present tense, as he has all along, while all the bills being considered contain abortion funding. If he spoke in the future tense, about a bill he would sign, only if it did not contain abortion funding, then I would agree with your strategy. (Disagreement, by the way, does not constitute an attack.) Written by Deal Hudson The Baucus "hat in the ring" was written by the healthcare insurance lobby...well, maybe dictated to Baucus in exchange for $3 million in campaign contributions. It's a gift to the insurance lobby from the insurance lobby shills in the Senate. Sort of like an "Insurance Industry Profit Enhancement and Protection Act." Of course, if your real interest is just killing reform and maintaining the failed status quo, then it makes perfect sense to seize any opportunity to keep writing distortions about what is really under consideration in the HELP and House versions. Works really well for Doug Johnson. Written by Mitch The Baucas bill is problematic for a lot of reasons, not just the ones discussed on this page. "It's not every day that you hear a Democratic senator charge that a fellow Democrat is proposing to raise taxes on the middle class, but that is what happened on Tuesday when Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., ripped into the health-care bill developed by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mt., the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee." "The Baucus proposal would impose, starting in 2013, a 35 percent excise tax on insurance companies for 'high-cost plans' -- defined as those above $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for family plans" -- costs that would be passed along to the consumer. So much for "keeping your own coverage!" http://tinyurl.com/oylhd3 Written by Hess Family The Baucus proposal would impose, starting in 2013, a 35 percent excise tax on insurance companies for "high-cost plans" -- defined as those above $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for family plans" -- costs that would be passed along to the consumer. — Hess FamilyFixed the quotation marks. This is how it should read. Written by Hess Family The Baucus proposal would impose, starting in 2013, a 35 percent excise tax on insurance companies for "high-cost plans" -- defined as those above $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for family plans" -- costs that would be passed along to the consumer. — Hess FamilyFixed the quotation marks. This is how it should read. Actually, there's still a hanging quotation mark, just following "family plans." Please advise, and we'll fix it in the original comment. Written by Admin Actually, there's still a hanging quotation mark, just following "family plans." Please advise, and we'll fix it in the original comment. — AdminI'm a big dork tonight! Let's see, the quote from the article begins with "It's not every day" and ends with "for family plans." The section coming after the em-dash is my commentary (summarized from the article). It's bedtime in Germany, so I plead fatigue. ![[smiley=happy]](http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/components/com_jreactions/custom/templates/blog/smileys/smiley_happy.gif) Written by Hess Family The Baucus "hat in the ring" was written by the healthcare insurance lobby...well, maybe dictated to Baucus in exchange for $3 million in campaign contributions. It's a gift to the insurance lobby from the insurance lobby shills in the Senate. Sort of like an "Insurance Industry Profit Enhancement and Protection Act." — MitchOf course, if your real interest is just killing reform and maintaining the failed status quo, then it makes perfect sense to seize any opportunity to keep writing distortions about what is really under consideration in the HELP and House versions. Works really well for Doug Johnson. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the Republican party condemning the Baucus bill will go a long way towards restoring their pro-life pro-human reputation. And same with the Bishops. Written by Ted Seeber |
We are coming to the fork in the road of the health care debate. The new health care bill proposed today by Sen. Max Baucus (pictured above) "contains an array of pro-abortion mandates and federal subsidies for elective abortion,"
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