Surreal times in Washington, DC

These days it seems a bit more surreal than usual in Washington, DC, if that were possible.
On Tuesday night we learned that Massachusetts, of all states, is sending a fiscally conservative Republican to Congress to put the kibosh on Sen. Ted Kennedy's healthcare overhaul legacy.
On Wednesday morning, I found myself sitting in an equally surreal meeting with Nebraska Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson and pro-life leaders. Once considered a fairly reliable pro-life voter, Sen. Nelson famously betrayed the hopes of pro-life advocates by voting to move the abortion-expanding Senate healthcare overhaul bill forward, in exchange for a permanent exemption from Medicaid cost increases for Nebraska—a.k.a., the "Cornhusker Kickback".
Just 17 percent of Nebraska voters approve of Sen. Nelson's deal. That would seem convincing enough for any politician, but our meeting revealed that Sen. Nelson hasn't quite gotten the message.
Deploring Tuesday's election that promised to derail the abortion-laden train he had helped push down the tracks, Sen. Nelson actually asserted that the pro-life cause had suffered a setback.
Why? Because he himself no longer can wield leverage as a holdout 60th voter in the Senate.
Sen. Nelson inexplicably expected the pro-life leaders in the meeting to swallow the bizarre logic that although he had used his 60th vote status to push an abortion-expanding healthcare bill through the Senate, somehow the pro-life cause is worse off now because the new senator from Massachusetts will vote to kill the bill instead of passing it in exchange for political kickbacks.
For Sen. Nelson, the meeting went downhill from there.
With emotion rising, he defiantly defended himself as a man of principle and castigated pro-life leaders who criticize him but don't have to "walk in my shoes."
When challenged on his strategy and voting in the Senate healthcare debacle, Sen. Nelson incredibly insisted, ""Yes, I would do it again."
To his credit, Sen. Nelson did vow during the meeting to vote against any healthcare bill that came back to the Senate without the Stupak amendment, which bars government subsidy of abortions. The House passed the Stupak amendment, but the Senate rejected similar provisions.
The political danger remaining for Sen. Nelson, however, is that he may never get a chance to redeem his vote. The House could simply send the Senate bill as-is to the President for signature.
In any case, the Nebraska senator's years of service and dedication to the pro-life cause appear doomed to be overshadowed by one monumentally mistaken judgment.

Your invitation to Washington, DC

Come join thousands of like-minded friends and concerned citizens in Washington, DC this coming Friday, January 22.
Join the March for Life, visit  your legislators and help save lives.
  In this landmark one-day event on Capitol Hill, you will be joining thousands of families and individuals just like you who take seriously our democratic responsibility to influence our government.
This year we will band together to take to Congress one simple, unifying message: No Abortion in Health Care.
Right now, the White House and pro-abortion Members of Congress think they are on what the President has ironically but aptly called the "precipice" of passing healthcare overhaul. Politicians have been cutting billions of dollars of pork barrel, special interest deals behind closed doors in a desperate effort to push their radical agenda through.
Unless American citizens rise up in this 11th hour and make our voices heard, Congress will pass a dangerously radical healthcare bill that will:

• subsidize abortion,
• undermine the conscience rights of healthcare professionals,
• and inject government bureaucrats into the physician-patient relationship.

Ready to join this exciting movement to protect our liberties and our children's future? Click on this link below to find all you need to plan your trip and make your voice heard:
http://stoptheabortionmandate.com/
You'll find here:

• one-page action sheet summarizing the who, what, when, where, why and how.
• E-mail and social networking (Facebook and Twitter)  message samples to help you share this information with others.
• Sample slogans and messages, plus graphic files if you would like to bring a sign to the march.
• Talking points
• Congressional Office Visit Guide and  What to Ask Your Elected Officials

Thank you for responsibly standing up and making your voice heard!
For more information on healthcare overhaul, visit the Learn section of www.Freedom2Care.org

What goes on behind closed doors

Emerging from yet another closed-door negotiating session with President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stressed that healthcare overhaul legislation must pass the tests of health insurance premium "affordability" and insurance company "accountability". She missed the obvious irony that the legislative process and the legislation itself fail both tests.
Eight times during his campaign, Mr. Obama pledged a new era of accountability and transparency by promising to televise healthcare negotiation meetings on C-SPAN. Yet to date, the White House and Congressional leadership have banned cameras, media, independent observers, and any other possibilities of public accountability from their closed-door negotiations. Posers can easily slip into state dinners at the White House, but credentialed media are blocked from observing for the American people the healthcare negotiations that will impact one-sixth of our economy.
That's because behind closed mahogany doors, lawmakers have been cutting deals that bust the budget with political pork payoffs such as the nine-figure "Louisiana Purchase" and "Cornhusker Kickback"—political bribes given to secure the votes of holdout Senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Now a desperate White House has bought off union bosses, in the process ballooning the healthcare bill cost by $60 billion.
Healthcare affordability can be achieved not with new socialistic taxes and draconian penalties, but with targeted government subsidies for the poor, funded by cost-saving preventive medicine, tort reform and fraud prosecution. Accountability can be achieved simply by opening the doors to these secret meetings so we the people can witness firsthand how politicians plan to spend our money.

Untangling healthcare bills on conscience rights

Wondering what's happening with conscience issues in the current healthcare bills?
With all the closed-door secretive legislating scheming, tracking any specific issue is a real challenge.
Thankfully, our friend Mary Harned, an attorney with Americans United for Life, has developed a chart that tracks life issues including conscience--in the Senate bill, the House bill, and the Hyde amendment law.
The bottom line is that even in the best case, healthcare professionals remain vulnerable to discrimination simply for following well established norms of medical ethics--norms as basic as the Hippocratic oath. Even the good Stupak-Pitts amendment in the House bill only applies to abortion.

Think about all the issues that a physician encounters, from birth control to reproductive technology to requests for lethal medications for assisted suicide, and much more. Add to that current list potential future challenges involving unethical genetic testing and risky manipulation, embryo-destructive research, transhumanism and you begin to get a feel for how challenging it is to be a life-honoring physician.
The lack of robust conscience protections in the House and Senate bills is even more concerning given the backdrop of the looming Obama administration's rescission of the only federal conscience-protecting regulation. To learn more about that regulation and battle, visit the Learn section of Freedom2Care.
Remember that life-honoring physicians aren't the only ones who stand to suffer discrimination. Forcing them out of medicine--and polling shows they're prepared to quit if pressured to compromise conscience--means that life-honoring patients will not be able to find physicians who share their convictions.
Concerned? Speak out now--with the help of these Freedom2Care resources--to let your legislators know you want strong conscience protections in law and in regulations.

Socialist approach to health care will kill the engine and strand the caboose

Lacking steam power from popular support or political consensus, Democrat House and Senate bosses are meeting clandestinely to plot to push the healthcare overhaul train to the White House station (“Obama to Congress: Pass health bill quickly,” Politics, Wednesday). 

Even if healthcare overhaul reaches that station, however, the train may not get much farther down the tracks.
That’s because economically challenged, leftist politicians intent on redistributing wealth have designed their healthcare engine to be fueled by incentive-killing taxes and penalties against businesses and entrepreneurs--the very ones we’re counting on to create new jobs and rebuild the economy.
In order to subsidize their gargantuan government takeover of health care, Robin Hood politicians see no problem in forcing healthy young people to buy insurance or in slashing the Medicare program for the elderly.
Besides the immense weight of public disapprobation, the healthcare overhaul train is also hopelessly overladen with political payoff pork, such as the $300 million “Louisiana Purchase” perk inserted to secure Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s vote on the Senate healthcare bill and the “cornhusker kickback” state Medicaid expense immunity handed to holdout Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
The uninsured and poor need help, and targeted government subsidies paid for with cost-saving initiatives in preventive medicine, tort reform and fraud detection could significantly address their needs. But stealing engine-room resources provided by productive individuals and businesses will eventually cause the healthcare train to run out of steam. That short-sighted socialistic approach will leave the poor caboose stranded on the tracks.