Health Care Reform at Critical Stage

After much anticipation, the President's marathon summit on health care at the Blair House across the street from the White House did little to bring together Democrats and Republicans. 

Although it was billed as a bipartisan debate, the White House released its plan for a bill three days before the summit was even convened. 

Further, at the end of the day, the amount of time allotted to each party by the President at the summit broke down as follows:
Democrats: 233 minutes
Republicans: 110 minutes

Even more interesting is that the President granted himself more time (119 minutes) than either Republican or Democrat (114 minutes) lawmakers.  It is clear that this so-called 'summit' represented the latest in a lengthy string of partisan maneuvers that we have seen during this process. 

But that is only the beginning of the procedural flaws with the plan that is emerging.  This six-hour event revealed that the President and Democrats in Congress are determined to use budget reconciliation rules to ram this health care bill through Congress.  As we have been telling you for some time now, this process is intended to be used only for budgetary items and is not supposed to be used for policy changes.  Because health care represents roughly 1/5 of our economy, there is no dispute that this bill represents a massive policy overhaul.   The reason that Democrats are insisting on using this process is that it only requires 51 votes in the U.S. Senate, instead of the usual 60 to end debate.

The fact is that there remains grave concerns with granting the federal government such sweeping authority over our health care.  Without question, this is the first step on the road to socialized medicine.

But even beyond that broader issue, there are still tremendous concerns about the fact that this bill would circumvent longstanding federal law by allowing federal dollars to subsidize abortions, as well as flow to plans that cover abortion.  This would occur despite the fact that 70% of the American people do not want their dollars used for abortions.  It is also despite the fact that 64 House Democrats joined 176 Republicans to overwhelmingly approve the Stupak/Pitts Amendment to ensure that federal dollars are not used for abortion under this bill.  This protection was not included in the Senate bill or in the Presidents proposal.  The authors of the protections, Democrat Rep. Bart Stupak and Republican Rep. Joe Pitts were not even invited to attend the summit.

Despite this overwhelming opposition to funding abortion with federal dollars, the President failed to even put this topic on the agenda.  House Minority Leader John Boehner asked the President to support the inclusion of the Stupak/Pitts Amendment, but the President sidestepped the issue and declined to give a response.  Unfortunately, House Speaker Pelosi mistakenly stated that this problem does not even exist.   You can read our legal analysis of how the federal funding of abortion is included in President Obama's health care plan.  That memo is here.

Now is the time for us to again stand up in opposition to government-run healthcare, the egregious use of the budget reconciliation process to pass policy measures, and the reversal of the longstanding prohibition on federal funding of abortions. 

Add your name to our petition now.  And stay tuned to Jay Sekulow Live! for updates.