November 30, 2016

Price Tagged for HHS Post

It’s past Thanksgiving, but the president-elect continues to give voters plenty of things to be grateful for. With half of his Cabinet filled, Donald Trump added another solid conservative to his team in Congressman Tom Price (R-Ga.). The pro-life surgeon, who has been a longtime friend of FRC and families across the country, is the president-elect’s pick to head up what has become one of the most powerful agencies in Washington: the Department of Health and Human Services.

It’s past Thanksgiving, but the president-elect continues to give voters plenty of things to be grateful for. With half of his Cabinet filled, Donald Trump added another solid conservative to his team in Congressman Tom Price (R-Ga.). The pro-life surgeon, who has been a longtime friend of FRC and families across the country, is the president-elect’s pick to head up what has become one of the most powerful agencies in Washington: the Department of Health and Human Services.

As the New York Times put it, “If [Trump] wanted a cabinet secretary who could help him dismantle and replace President Obama’s health care law, he could not have found anyone more prepared than Representative Tom Price…” For six years, the Georgia Chairman of the House Budget Committee has been leading the charge to topple President Obama’s signature failure — and as the head of the agency in charge of overseeing health care, he’ll be in the perfect place to see that goal through to completion.

And based on today’s polling, he’ll have plenty of grassroots support when he does. A whopping eight in 10 Americans told Gallup this month that they’d like to see the law either fully repealed or significantly changed. Only 14 percent approve of the “Affordable” Care Act that continues to crush jobs, medical choices, family budgets, freedom, and conscience. “There is much work to be done to ensure we have a health care system that works for patients, families, and doctors,” Price told reporters, “that leads the world in the cure and prevention of illness; and that is based on sensible rules to protect the well-being of the country while embracing its innovative spirit.”

A respected leader on America’s fiscal issues, Donald Trump couldn’t entrust HHS’s $1 trillion budget to a better person. As far as values go, you can’t get any much more conservative than Rep. Price. For the last six terms, he’s earned a perfect record on FRC Action’s Vote Scorecard, hosted lectures here on his plans for replacing Obamacare, joined us for our nationwide webcasts on the topic, and been a regular on “Washington Watch” with me.

And as important as our endorsement may be of the pick, one look at Planned Parenthood’s panicky statements should tell everyone that Trump’s choice was the right one. The long-time pro-lifer “poses a grave threat to women’s health,” Cecile Richards warned. If he has his way, she went on, “millions of women could be cut off from Planned Parenthood’s preventative health services.” Let’s hope she’s right, because most Americans see the only thing Richards’ group is “preventing” is parenthood. The real reason for the concern is that Congressman Price was the primary sponsor of the landmark 2015 Budget Reconciliation bill that would defund Planned Parenthood, cutting them off from the taxpayer-funded gravy train redirecting the funds to community health centers.

Unfortunately for taxpayers, President Obama was determined to continue Americans’ forced partnership with the country’s largest abortion business. Donald Trump’s election offers the greatest chance of severing those ties since liberals opened the government’s wallets to Richards’s group decades ago. And that victory will be much sweeter with a secretary of HHS who’s spent six terms fighting for that very thing! Hats off to Donald Trump for another solid pick in Tom Price. The Georgian may have a different job, but we still share the same vision: health care that respects life, freedom, and family options.

For more on the pro-life revolution possible under the new administration, check out this new op-ed from FRC’s Cathy Ruse, “What a Trump Court Would Mean for Abortion.”

Originally published here.

Semper Sigh: Marines Follow Orders on Transgenders

The few may not be the proud after the latest announcement from the U.S. Marine Corps. After raising more red flags than any other service, the Marines have finally agreed to issue a new policy guidance on how to integrate people who identify as transgender into the USMC. The Corps, which continues to speak bluntly about the social experimentation of the Obama administration, has decided to fall in line with the rest of the military and start diverting already limited training time to instruct commanders on the treatment of the gender-confused.

Unlike some of the other branches, though, the Marines’ policy was a short, six-page missive that leaves a lot to leaders’ discretion. “Each case is really going to be unique and individual, and it’s going to be [decided] case-by-case,” said Marine spokesman Major Garron Garn. For the Corps, at least, the guidance seems to leave a little room for commanders to deal with the unnecessary distraction it will inevitably cause. If, for example, a Marine’s transition to another gender “interferes” with training, there would be cause for separation. “The service also reserves the right to separate Marines whose ability to serve is adversely affected by medical conditions or medical treatment related to their gender identity… adding that these Marines would be treated ‘in a manner consistent with a Marine whose ability to serve is similarly affected by medical condition(s) unrelated to gender identity or gender transition.”

Lt. General Mark Brilakis, who drafted the memo, points out that Marines will have to meet all of the “uniform, grooming, height, weight, and physical fitness standards appropriate to their preferred gender.” But perhaps the most outrageous part of the implementation process is the amount of money the administration is willing to waste to score LGBT points. Unlike the Navy, which is just encouraging modesty, the Marines are actually going to the trouble — and expense — to remodel their bathrooms and showers in units concerned about privacy.

Talk about backwards priorities. The Marines are spending who-knows-how-much refitting showers for .3 percent of the population, while their other units are so strapped for cash that they’re scavenging plane parts from museums! Unfortunately, this is the new normal for a military that’s fallen apart while its commander-in-chief pursued his radical agenda: open homosexuality and transgenderism in the troops, women in the infantry, and daughters in the draft. America’s enemies are getting more sophisticated — and what are we getting? More politically correct. And what is the result? Sky-high incidents of suicide and sexual attacks, low morale, and even lower job satisfaction.

Even our friends north of the border are struggling with the effects of this brave new define-your-own-reality world. According to a new report, one in four women in the Canadian military have been sexually assaulted during their time in the service. In fact, the risks of being victimized doubled the second they entered the military! “The survey also found that members of the military were almost twice as likely as the general population to have been victims of sexual assaults within the past year,” the New York Times reports.

As Rep. Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told me on Monday’s “Washington Watch,” these are the tragic effects of the Obama administration’s only real mission: fundamentally transforming America. “There has been social engineering going on at the Department of Defense for eight years. And it’s going to take some time to remove that influence and to return the focus back to what it should be, and that is fighting and winning the nation’s wars.” Hopefully, President-elect Trump can help restore some order and pride in a military tradition decimated by these misguided notions of so-called tolerance. Until then, join us in calling on Congress to put the brakes on any major policy changes until the new administration is in place!

Originally published here.

2nd Vote the First Target of Tech Company

How do you know if a conservative message is effective? When the Left tries to shut it down! That’s the position our friends at 2nd Vote find themselves in after they launched a #AnywhereButTARGET campaign to build on the national boycott of a company that’s opened its bathroom and changing room doors to anyone in the name of “gender equality.” After a string of peeping Tom incidents in Targets across America since the policy change, 2nd Vote wanted to remind shoppers where not to spend their Black Friday dollars. Turns out, their web hosting company didn’t take too kindly to the campaign and made the unilateral decision to shut 2nd Vote’s website down!

Leadpages, the company in charge of keeping the site up and running, pulled the plug after the #AnywhereButTARGET movement started gaining steam. In a letter from the company’s director of operations, Leadpages accuses 2nd Vote of being “hateful” and “discriminatory” for wanting to protect consumers from sexual predators. “You see, at Leadpages, we strive to create an inclusive workplace that upholds the dignity of all people… We believe that embracing diversity of thought and perspective encourages collaboration that leads to product innovation, diverse products, and a successful business.”

Apparently, that “diversity of thought” doesn’t extend to conservatives, since executives went on to warn the organization to take down their campaign — or else they would. By 9 a.m. Thanksgiving morning, Leadpages carried out their threat in the ultimate display of cultural hypocrisy. “Liberals who constantly tout tolerance and inclusion go out of their way to shut down ideas they disagree with. To say our campaign is about inequality, intolerance, hate, discrimination, or devaluing anyone is flat wrong; it’s about common sense and safety. But, some of the truest hate and intolerance we’ve seen has come from the liberal responses to our campaign,” said 2nd Vote’s Lance Wray. “#AnywhereButTARGET has reached over three million conservatives through several platforms. We’ve even added our Christmas Shopping Guide to the campaign that is giving these conservatives better choices on where to spend their Christmas shopping dollars.”

Unfortunately, this is a serious problem that’s only growing in the online world. Earlier this year, Google sounded the alarm that it would start cracking down on online hostility by combing the web for — and eliminating — hate speech. “Sort of like spell-checker,” the company said, “but for hate and harassment.” Apart from the obvious problems — like censorship — conservatives have another concern. Who’s defining “hate?” Because how it’s defined will say an awful lot about who’s affected. If you ask most liberals, “hate” is seeing the world differently than them, believing in things like natural marriage or biblical sexuality.

Speaking of definitions, they apparently don’t know the definition of hypocrisy. Why is it liberals have no hesitation to refuse to use their artistic and creative ability to make dresses or facilitate communication for people they disagree with, but Christian bakers, photographers, and florists cannot?

Originally published here.


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

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