DriveThru – Get What You Need

Just so you know, the health care debate isn’t dead.  We still need you to make your voice heard on health care — even if you’ve already done so.

The President is holding a bipartisan meeting on Feb. 25th to try to hammer out a new version of the health care bill.   (Although it looks like he might have a bill crafted by the time the summit begins).

What that means is now is the time to remind your lawmakers where you stand on health care, particularly on the funding of abortions with federal dollars.  The Massachusetts election may have slowed down the Democrats from pushing their current health care version forward, but it hasn’t stopped them altogether.

So make sure your two U.S. senators and representative know that whatever bill they come up with, at a minimum, needs to keep your money from being used to pay for abortions.

Don’t know who your 2 U.S. senators and representative are? It’s easy to find them on our website by typing in you zip code here. You can even find the closest district office to you, in case you want to make an in-person visit!

Yesterday, The Denver Post brought to my attention yet another piece of legislation pending in the U.S.  House that gay activists could use as a political tool to force their will upon schools nationwide:

It’s called the Student Nondiscrimination Act, and it was proposed this week by U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colorado).

That sounds nice, doesn’t it? I mean, who would be against preventing discrimination?  But this bill is more sinister than it sounds.  

If passed, it would use federal mandates to micromanage local school policy all the way down to the elementary level. It would do this by mandating that every public school in the nation enforce special protections for pro-gay categories like “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”

Why is that a problem?

 First of all, it would open our schools up to a new wave of expensive lawsuits, at a time when they are already burdened by unprecedented litigation.

The proposed legislation calls for noncompliers to not only be liable for providing “compensatory damages” and in danger of losing grants, but also to be written up in a report that is filed with a U.S. House committee. The term draconian might be an understatement in this case.

And it’s unclear exactly how “discrimination” will be defined, which is concerning–especially in light of recent cases involving attempts to censor Christian student groups for having values deemed to conflict with pro-gay “nondiscrimination” policies.

Secondly, the bill would give gay activists the leverage they need to force their agenda—against parents’ will—into public schools, again, all the way down to the kindergarten level. And you don’t have to take my word for it. Just consider recent history.

If this legislation doesn’t make it through, supporters have a backup waiting in the wings that’s equally threatening to local control. It’s called the Safe Schools Improvement Act.

Both bills are heavily supported by the largest gay-activist groups in the nation, including the Human Rights Campaign and GLSEN (the organization created by “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings.)

As I explained to the The Denver Post, bullying is a serious problem that should be addressed (at the local level), but you can do so without sexualizing and politicizing the entire school environment. The emphasis should be on the wrong actions of the bullies, not on their “perceived” motivations.

You might think that the health care debate is over.  That you’re stuck with whatever abortion-funding, higher-taxing, premium-increasing, health care “reform” plan Congress comes up with.  But that’s not true—yet.

You still have time to stop this ugly train.  You still have time to persuade your U.S. representative to vote NO when the bill comes to the floor.

Right now, the House and the Senate are working out the differences in their versions of the bill behind closed doors.  When they’re done—they’ll quickly throw the bill on the House and Senate floors for a vote. That’s why *right now* is so important.  Now is the time to contact your U.S. representative and tell him or her that the health care plan is unacceptable, particularly because the Senate-passed version includes abortion funding.

And while phone calls are good, in-person visits to your representative’s home district office are better.  Check out this toolkit to help you set up a meeting at your lawmaker’s office.  You still have time!

Five out of 12 major anti-family policies in the omnibus spending bill are related to funding abortions and liberalizing sex education. You can thank bill-supporting Members of Congress (House, Senate) and our President for the following “gifts” just before Christmas 2009:

• Elimination of abstinence education funds ($zero$)
• Funding for Planned Parenthood (Title X funding boost to $315M)
• Publicly funded abortions for D.C. residents in our nation’s Capitol
• U.S. funding for U.N. population control, including China’s one-child policy and subsequent abortions (U.S. Taxpayers will pay $5M more)
• International family planning – fund overseas abortions – Mexico City Policy – ($103M more)

The Heritage Foundation posted a Web article titled, “Twelve Anti-Family Gifts From Congress,” [Dec. 22, 2009],   that lists another seven egregious funds and policies passed in by Congress in the omnibus spending bill. Policies such as more funding to keep people on welfare, needle exchange, limiting free speech, ending D.C. scholarship program, domestic partner benefits for D.C. employees and legalized “medical” marijuana … “high” in a pear treeeeee …

Supporting Members of Congress voted in favor of this bill, and President Obama signed it into law. We certainly hope they enjoy all the Piggy Pudding they passed in the $1.1 Trillion Pork-nibus spending bill with more than 5,000 earmarks.

Though this battle was lost in 2009, the war is far from over in 2010.

MORE INFORMATION

• See a PDF of The Heritage Foundation’s Twelve Anti-Family Gifts From Congress … 
• See Appendix for 2010 Budget of the U.S. Government … 
• See Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010 – H.R. 3288 (omnibus spending bill) …  [PDF]

While Saturday night’s 60-39 vote to move the health care bill forward was disappointing, all is not lost. 

Americans have all this week, while their senators are home for the Thanksgiving break, to contact local offices and urge their senators to vote NO on the 60-vote hurdle coming up after the holiday.  Did we mention the bill still includes federal funding of elective abortion? Yes, it does.  And we now know that the “reform” will cost far more than the $849 billion that the Dems are touting.  

So eat a lot of turkey this Thanksgiving, and while you’re at it, make a quick phone call to your senators’ local offices and say “vote NO” on the next health care vote coming up.  Just go here, type in your zip code, and then click on your senators’ names to find the contact information for their state offices.  Quick and easy.

Fact:  71 percent of Americans don’t want their tax dollars being used to pay for abortions under the government health care proposal.

Fact:  150,000 Americans signed a Focus Action petition to their lawmakers asking them to keep government funding of abortion out of the health care bills.

Fact:  The current health care bills still include government funding of abortion.

Fact:  Congress needs a wake-up call.

So what did Focus on the Family Action do about all this? We took those 150,000 petitions straight to Capitol Hill.  And the media showed up.  And so did 10 U.S. representatives and senators.  And collectively, we called on Congress to listen to the voices of tens of millions of Americans across this country who do not want their tax dollars being used to pay for abortions in any government health care plan.

On hand to speak on behalf of Focus on the Family Action was Tom Minnery, Senior Vice President of Government and Public Policy, and he was joined by almost a dozen lawmakers, like Senators Sam Brownback and Jim DeMint, and Representatives Eric Cantor, Mike Pence, Mary Fallin, and Lincoln Davis.

And every single petition was hand-delivered to the appropriate lawmaker.  I know that–because I was part of the team who delivered them.  What a great experience.

You can watch the entire news conference here or just watch our Focus Action Update video summary of the conference.  If video’s not your thing, you can simply read our wrap-up of the press conference and petition delivery

We’ll be watching what our lawmakers do as a health care bill (yet to be determined) heads to both chambers of Congress for a vote.  We hope and expect that there will be some maneuvering by pro-life lawmakers in the House and the Senate to offer language that would exclude abortion funding from the bill, since all other attempts in committee were voted down by the pro-abortion Democrat majority.

And late last week, Democrat Alan Mollohan was joined by 29 other House Democrats in sending a letter to Speaker Pelosi asking her to adopt language similar to the Hyde Amendment that would prevent federal funds from being used for abortion.  This letter is the third group letter signed by pro-life Democrats concerned about abortion in health care reform.  Will Democrat leadership in the House listen this time?

Eighty-three percent of U.S. voters, says Rasmussen, want legislation to be posted online in final form and available for everyone to read before Congress votes on it. Eighty-three percent!

After rushing through a stimulus bill earlier this year that even legislators didn’t have time to read before voting, and demands by Democrats to do the same with healthcare earlier this summer, it’s no wonder that voters are distrustful of their elected representatives and want commonsense measures in place to keep Americans informed.

Rasmussen didn’t ask me, but count me in as well.

The government healthcare proposal in Congress will fund abortions with tax dollars, if passed.  How many ways can we say it? Groups like Focus on the Family, National Right to Life, Americans United for Life, and the Family Research Council have been warning of tax dollars being used to pay for abortions since about day one.  Then along came the AP, the Wall Street Journal,  FactCheck.org and others.

Just today the Senate Finance Committee released its version of the healthcare reform behemoth proposal.  And *surprise, surprise* it includes public funding for abortion– via federal subsidies to private and government-chartered cooperatives that pay for abortions.

So it seems that most Americans–except the President and his Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius–see the same thing:  the government’s healthcare plan will fund abortion unless legislative language is changed.

Funny.  Didn’t the White House also say it was unaware of the masses of Tea Party protesters that descended on D.C. last weekend?  Knock, knock. Is anybody home?

So, remember:  the current healthcare proposals will fund abortion with your tax dollars.  No matter what President Obama says.  Unless you do something about it. Which means  communicating your opposition to Congress is the order of the day. So call your representative and your senators and tell them to exclude abortion funding from any healthcare reform proposal.

Wednesday the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing on the issue of bullying in public schools, innocently titled, “Strengthening School Safety through Prevention of Bullying.”

What prompted this hearing is a bill currently under consideration in the  House (H.R. 2262) that would would give money to schools who agree to craft and implement “anti-bullying and harassment” policies.

Sounds good, right? Who wouldn’t want the government to give money to schools in order to help them keep our kids safe from bullying and harassment?

But look closer.  The government gets to tell schools which categories of bullying and harassment are “worthy” of protecting against.

Here are the magical categories over which if a student bullies  another, he or she is in big trouble:  race, color, national origin, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity and religion.

So under this bill,  if a student harasses another for reasons other than the ones listed above, it’s, somehow, less bad? Yes.

Put another way, if Joe punches Ryan in the nose because Ryan is a Christian or maybe self-identifies as gay, then Joe is deserving of serious punishment.  If Joe punches Ryan because Ryan is small and wears glasses, Joe is deserving of less punishment.  That is unequal treatment at it’s height.

The truth is that all kids who are on the receiving end of a bully’s actions should be protected equally.  Period.

A parent standing in the principal’s office with her wounded child wants the school to bring the full force of discipline on the bully for his act,  not for what the bully was thinking when he did it.   A bully might “think” a bad thought about any number of students during the school day.  But it’s his actions that should have consequences.

There’s another problem with the bill.  Mandating that a school’s anti-bullying policy spell-out the categories of  “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” introduces sexualized and often politicized topics into the school environment–where they don’t belong.

And gay activists will use this federal mandate as the leverage they need to promote homosexuality in public schools.  We’ve already seen evidence of this.  A school district in Alameda, California recently mandated a pro-gay curriculum for elementary kids.  Parents were told they could not opt their kids out, meaning that kids as young as first grade will be taught about same-sex couples whether parents like it or not.  Guess what the school used to justify the pro-gay curriculum? So-called “student safety” and “nondiscrimination” laws.

So make sure your Member of Congress hears from you that if the federal government is going to give money to schools for anti-bullying programs, the government shouldn’t mandate that some students are more deserving of protection from bullying than others.  And that our kids’ school environments shouldn’t be platforms for sexualized or politicized topics.