When Senate Republicans met for lunch yesterday, the most important thing on the menu had nothing to do with food. With the clock counting down to the July 4th recess, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and special guest Mike Pence had their work cut out for them lobbying GOP holdouts on the newly released health care plan. Breaking bread wasn’t enough to bridge the divide between the various Republican factions so leaders decided to postpone the vote until after the holiday when more changes could be made.

For some conservatives, the real indigestion started before the meal with the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) score of the Senate bill. While plenty of the analysis was positive, leaders didn’t exactly get a helping hand from the liberal media, which seized on the suggestion that 22 million Americans (one million less than the House plan) would “lose” their health insurance under McConnell’s Better Care Reconciliation Act. At first glance, that’s a jarring number. But it doesn’t tell the whole story. Under the House and Senate bills, there’s no government-imposed mandate for people to buy insurance. And if they aren’t being fined for forgoing health care, more Americans will choose to be uninsured — almost half of that 22 million, CBO points out.

And while both sides usually lean on the budget group to give them a ballpark estimate of how much their proposals will cost, these are educated guesses. Like most forecasters, the CBO isn’t always right — especially when they’re dealing with something as enormous as one-sixth of the U.S. economy. As we found out with Obamacare’s score (it was supposed to lower the deficit, remember?), there are just too many variables and outstanding factors to consider. In a bit of good news for Leader McConnell, the Senate version saves $188 billion more than the House bill and would carve almost twice as deeply into the federal deficit ($321 billion) over the same 10-year span.

On the downside, Americans would notice a bump in premium prices in the short term until 2020, which is when they’d see a reduction in costs by about 30 percent. Of course, premiums have already skyrocketed an average of 105 percent under Obamacare — with no relief in sight. Doing nothing is not an option for the GOP, which, from a political and practical standpoint, has to act. “As more and more people continue to lose coverage and face fewer health care choices, President Trump is committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare, which has failed the American people far too long,” the White House said in a statement. At least one insurance company, Anthem, told reporters that the GOP’s plan “will markedly improve the stability of the individual market and moderate premium increases.”

For conservatives, the biggest concern isn’t the cost in dollars — but lives. Like the House measure, McConnell’s bill includes the most important carrot for pro-lifers: defunding Planned Parenthood (which was just caught on tape in St. Paul promising to “break the baby’s neck” if it’s born alive). This is not, as Forbes points out, “just a bar on receiving Medicaid funding for abortions, which is already precluded by the annual federal spending provision known as the Hyde Amendment. Rather, it is a total shutoff of Medicaid funding for all of Planned Parenthood’s work…”

The other non-negotiable for pro-lifers is language that would stop people from using the bill’s tax credits to buy plans that include abortion coverage. The House version included Hyde amendment language that would prohibit the credits from being used for abortion. However, there is concern that the Senate parliamentarian may rule that the Hyde language is out of order on the reconciliation bill. That’s a major concern. But, thanks to some creative thinking, the lion’s share of the funding will funnel through a program called SCHIP, which is subject to the Hyde amendment. FRC is working to ensure that whatever the mechanism that taxpayers are not forced to fund abortion. I will keep you updated with the latest as this unfolds.

Originally published here.

Hail to These Chiefs…

In between power naps and side conversations, members will be considering a big bump in funding for the military. Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-TX) is pushing for more than even Donald Trump’s $603 billion base budget to address what conservatives are calling a “readiness crisis.” But there’s one way the group can improve readiness without spending a cent — and that’s rolling back the Obama-era social engineering. Days shy of the July 1 deadline to admit the gender confused, three branches of the military are urging Defense Secretary James Mattis to reconsider. In an already strained force, enlisting people who identify as transgender would create more headaches for a military that can’t afford the distractions. At a Pentagon meeting last week, the service chiefs asked for at least a six-month delay so that the leaders can study the impact of this integration on troop discipline, recruitment, and retention.

Mattis, who just landed in Germany for a meeting with NATO, has yet to make a decision. But that doesn’t mean Congress can’t do it for him. At today’s NDAA mark-up, conservatives are planning to offer their own amendment to postpone the transgender policy. As of October 1, service members struggling with their gender can get medical care for their “transition” and start changing their personnel files in the Pentagon system. According to reports, 250 people have taken advantage of the policy (with the Navy accounting for more than 160). Republicans will do their best to put the brakes on this runaway train, especially as it has to do with the accession standards that are set to go into effect Saturday.

As General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed out, there are weighty issues that “need to be resolved” — not the least of which is the inability of these new troops to perform their jobs. “Key concerns are whether currently enlisted troops have had medical or other issues that cause delays or problems with their ability to deploy or meet physical or other standards for the jobs.” Then, of course, there’s the issue of privacy (or lack thereof). In a force already plagued by sexual assault, throwing open the shower and barracks doors to both genders hardly seems like the solution.

We owe it to our military to put America’s focus back where it belongs: on fighting and winning wars. To find out how the transgender agenda compromises that mission, check out FRC’s policy brief here.

Originally published here.

A Deep Bench for SCOTUS Fans

Gorsuch made strong arguments for broad application of the Free Exercise Clause noting that it “guarantees the free exercise of religion, not just the right to inward belief (or status).” In a swipe at the majority’s distinction between a person’s religious status as a believer receiving a government benefit and the person’s use of the government benefit for religious purposes, he wrote, “I don’t see why it should matter whether we describe that benefit, say, as closed to Lutherans (status) or closed to people who do Lutheran things (use). It is free exercise either way.”

But Gorsuch’s critique of the majority didn’t stop there.

“I am unable to join the footnoted observation … that ‘[t]his case involves express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing.’ Of course the footnote is entirely correct, but I worry that some might mistakenly read it to suggest that only ‘playground resurfacing’ cases, or only those with some association with children’s safety or health, or perhaps some other social good we find sufficiently worthy, are governed by the legal rules recounted in and faithfully applied by the Court’s opinion. Such a reading would be unreasonable for our cases are ‘governed by general principles, rather than ad hoc improvisations.’ … And the general principles here do not permit discrimination against religious exercise — whether on the playground or anywhere else.”

Essentially, the rookie justice was telling his six colleagues that they drafted the opinion too narrowly, and that he thought the free exercise principles applied more broadly. This is fantastic news for people of faith, who can look forward to the Constitution protecting their religious exercise, even outside of the church building and playground.

Gorsuch was also the only justice who joined Thomas’s opinion on a gun rights case that the court refused to take. “For those of us who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and superfluous. But the framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense.”

Not only are Justices Thomas and Gorsuch aligned on the issue of free exercise, gun rights, and Trump’s travel ban, but touchy issues like marriage. In a dissent also signed by Justices Thomas and Samuel Alito, Gorsuch was upset that the majority in the court allowed same-sex partners to appear on birth certificates without ever hearing the case. In the batch of decisions released Monday, six justices (including John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy) held that Arkansas was infringing on “the constellation of benefits that the States have linked to marriage” by refusing to include the names. “To be sure, Obergefell addressed the question whether a state must recognize same-sex marriages,” Gorsuch wrote in his dissent. “But nothing in Obergefell spoke (let alone clearly) to the question whether §20–18–401 of the Arkansas Code, or a state supreme court decision upholding it, must go. It seems far from clear what here warrants the strong medicine of summary reversal.”

In 2005, Gorsuch wrote an op-ed in National Review accusing liberals of using the courts “as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide.” Obviously, we don’t know how the newest justice will rule on every issue, but this is certainly an encouraging sign that he refuses to be an activist pawn in the Left’s court-centric agenda.

Originally published here.

---

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.