The Patriot Post® · Trick or Treat?

Early yesterday morning, members met in the Capitol basement – where, for the last several weeks of negotiating, Congress’s polling numbers have been. Two weeks and several protests into the partial government shutdown, both sides are hungry for a deal to end the standoff. So hungry, Roll Call reports, that a group of House conservatives sat down at Tortilla Coast restaurant to strategize with the defunding ObamaCare standard-bearer, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), to hash out next steps. Recognizing that the Senate was on the precipice of a deal that would yield virtually nothing for conservatives, a dozen Republicans talked about how to respond.

Initially, the Senate seemed to rally around a measure that would reopen the government, eliminate some of the sequester cuts, and extend the debt ceiling until early next year. What’s it in for conservatives? Two things: income verification for the ObamaCare subsidies (which is just enforcing a preexisting law, so it can hardly be considered a “concession”) and stripping the reinsurance tax on insurers, which would hugely benefit the President’s union friends. Since the tax will increase premiums, it affects families too. But as gratifying as it would be to get rid of another $6.3 billion in taxes, the overall “deal” would do nothing to gut ObamaCare or postpone the exchanges, the individual mandate, or conscience violations.

Of course, complicating matters is the ticking time bomb of the debt ceiling, which America is set to blow through Thursday. While the world’s financial markets look on, Congress and the rest of the country are already in unchartered waters when it comes to the debt. Under the Democrats’ plan, the country’s new credit line wouldn’t max out until February 7, when most squirmy members would rather handle anything but another debt limit debate. In the heat of the midterm elections, the last thing Congress will want to do is put America back on the brink of default.

Meanwhile, House leaders – fearful the Senate will send over a worse deal on Wednesday – scrambled Tuesday afternoon to put together another counter-proposal. Like Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) offer, it keeps the government running until the end of the year (Dec 15) and lifts the debt ceiling enough to pacify Wall Street until 2014. In exchange, all the House is supposedly asking for is to delay ObamaCare’s unpopular medical device tax (which affects everything from braces to bedpans) and force the President, Vice President, Congress, and other political appointees onto the same health care exchanges as the rest of the country. Remember when President Obama said, “If you like your health care you can keep it?” Well, Congress would like to! Washington has been trying to wiggle out of the same coverage it pushed on the rest of the country since it passed the law in 2010 – and the House’s proposal would end the special subsidy that takes the sting out of ObamaCare for the people responsible.

Unfortunately, that’s where the changes end. For many Republicans, who put everything on the line to torpedo the President’s health care law, the return on their investment is almost non-existent. Although the proposal nibbles around the edges of ObamaCare, it doesn’t take the bite out of the law that the grassroots demand and the nation needs. What’s worse, it does absolutely nothing to protect the families of America from the effects of ObamaCare – which include the biggest attack on religious liberty and expansion of taxpayer-funded abortion in history. In the end, the House’s proposal only plays into the Democrats’ hands by giving them the one thing they wanted all along: a clean budget bill. As Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kans.) told reporters, “There’s only one way out of this. And that’s to win.”

As far as FRC is concerned, there is no winning without dismantling ObamaCare and the threat it poses to the future of our nation. We won’t rest until human life and the religious liberties of Americans are protected – not attacked – by our government. It’s time to make the political establishment listen – and if they won’t listen now, I guarantee they’ll listen at the ballot booth in 2014. Until then, we heed Samuel Adams’s words, “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”

In Photo, a Snapshot of Intolerance

The sequester cuts may have hurt some of the Defense Department’s priorities – but the Pentagon’s campaign against religious liberty wasn’t one of them. At the Values Voter Summit over the weekend, Fox News’s Todd Starnes broke what’s becoming an all-too familiar story of anti-Christian hostility – this time in a formal Camp Shelby Army briefing. During a session on the Mississippi base, a classroom of active duty and reserve troops were warned that the American Family Association should be classified as a hate group because of its stance on biblical family values.

One soldier was so stunned that he snapped a picture of a particularly disturbing slide that aligned AFA with the notorious Westboro Baptist Church and sent it to Todd Starnes. As almost everyone familiar with AFA knows, Tim Wildmon’s group has absolutely no connection to Fred Phelps or his offensive and unbiblical message.

Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to matter to the Army’s instructor, who intentionally lumped AFA in with the likes of everyone from the Ku Klux Klan to radical Islam in an attempt to marginalize and silence soldiers who share its views. “I donate to AFA as often as I can,” the source told Starnes. “Am I going to be punished? I listen to American Family Radio all day. If they hear it on my radio, will I be faced with a Uniformed Code of Military Justice charge?”

Back in April, when an Army Lieutenant Colonel emailed his subordinates that FRC and AFA didn’t share the “Army[‘s] values,” a Pentagon spokesman assured us it was an isolated incident. Well, FRC and Liberty Institute created an entire booklet of these “isolated incidents,” and the common thread is that this hostility is part of a coordinated effort to drive a wedge between the military and one of their greatest defenders: faith-based groups. Through these trainings, the Obama administration is trying to separate service members from the handful of organizations trying to protect their religious rights.

Of course, the question on most of our minds is how influential the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been in shaping this new policy. Several months ago, Judicial Watch exposed the behind-the-scenes coordination that’s taken place between the DOJ and the discredited group. Could it be that SPLC, which was just linked to the first case of domestic terrorism in Washington, D.C., is similarly involved here?

Secretary Chuck Hagel is one person who can find out – and do something about it. Join FRC in calling on the new Secretary of Defense to end the DOD’s intimidation campaign against men and women of faith in the military. Sign our petition asking his agency to stop using the left-wing, anti-Christian SPLC as a legitimate source of information – particularly when it comes to issues of civil and political debate.

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