Senate Republicans rolled out the latest rewrite of their Better Care Reconciliation Act yesterday with the hopes that it won’t be long until America is looking at Obamacare in the rearview mirror. Senators, staffers and policy experts like FRC’s team have been working non-stop to arrive at a compromise that can pass the scrutiny of the Senate parliamentarian, maintain the pro-life protections in the House bill, and then get 51 votes in the Senate. Late Wednesday, the parliamentarian gave thumbs up to the overall bill structure, ruling it could proceed. That doesn’t mean the bill is out of the woods, since each section of it will be vetted by the parliamentarian to ensure it fits within the limited timeframe of the budgetary reconciliation process.

It was a rare bit of good news for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who knows that without the parliamentarian’s vote, he could forget about the party’s other 52. Although major pieces of the plan are still up in the air, this at least gives Republicans some momentum headed into an intense battle over the specifics.

With the hopes of an entire country riding on the effort, President Trump told Christian Broadcasting Network there were no more excuses. If Republicans can’t pass a repeal after seven years of promises, it will be “very bad,” the president said bluntly. “I don’t even want to talk about [that],” he went on. “I will be very angry about it and a lot of people will be very upset,” he warned. “But I’m sitting waiting for that bill to come to my desk. I hope that they do it… They’ve been promising it ever since Obamacare, which is failed. It’s a failed experiment. It is totally gone. It’s out of business, and we have to get this done.”

As difficult as it’s been to juggle his senators’ agendas, McConnell knows that there’s one issue that can make or break the bill: taxpayer-funded abortion. With pressure bearing down on all sides, leaders understand that protecting the pro-life language is priority number one. From what we’ve seen of the new proposal, this bill does exactly that. Like past versions, this one guts the lion’s share of Planned Parenthood’s funding and blocks the Republicans’ tax credits from flowing to any plan with elective abortion. On top of that, McConnell’s working group actually improved the pro-life language by demanding — for the first time — that Health and Human Services clamp down the Obamacare segregation requirements.

Remember when the former president tried to appease Democratic pro-lifers with that phony accounting gimmick that pretended a “third-party” would be paying for abortion coverage for any employers with moral objections? (A lie, we know now, since the funding was coming from the same pot of money.) Well, that was never actually enforced under Obama. That changes now, say Republicans, who are insisting that insurers prove the payment and accounting are separate. In a move that should hearten House members like Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), the GOP is also forcing insurance companies to be transparent about which plans cover abortion and which don’t. (A problem that continues to plague consumers on the Obamacare exchange.)

Now that Senate Republicans have crafted a repeal and replace plan that does the people’s will on abortion, a lot rests with the parliamentarian, who will rule sometime next week on whether the pro-life language passes the reconciliation test. While we don’t know which way she may lean, we do know that if the pro-life protections are pulled, so will the support of most conservatives.

Originally published here.

DOJ’s Sessions Behind the Hate Ball

What’s so controversial about a conservative speaking to conservatives? A lot, if you’re Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In a non-story that’s getting far too much attention in the press, the former Alabama senator is being criticized by the intolerant Left for speaking at an Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) event in California. ADF, our good friends and fellow defenders of religious liberty, hosted a gathering to “bring together prominent legal advocates, scholars, cultural commentators, business executives, and church leaders to develop legal strategies to allow freedom to flourish in the United States and around the world.” What better person to address those issues than the chief law enforcer of the county?

But, with predictable outrage, liberals like Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) slammed the Justice official’s involvement, insisting that it sends a “very troubling message that our Attorney General … is not committed to standing up to anti-LGBT hate.” Now where would she get the idea that ADF was spreading hate? From the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the organization whose thin veneer of credibility took another hit last month when GuideStar was forced to drop SPLC’s labeling from its charity index. The Wall Street Journal published “The Insidious Influence of the SPLC,” and Politico spent 11 pages of its latest magazine criticizing the group for losing its way.

But despite the growing chorus of detractors, even the Democratic National Committee released a statement blasting Sessions’s decision to address a crowd of people — who, like him, believing in upholding the law. “You can judge a person by the company they keep, and tonight Attorney General Jeff Sessions is choosing to spend his time speaking in front of one of the country’s leading anti-LGBTQ hate groups. ADF has been designated a hate group, and Sessions’s appearance … brings into question whether the attorney general intends to protect all Americans.”

The Left’s attack on Sessions is even more ridiculous when you consider that SPLC’s labeling is so controversial that even the Obama Justice Department backed away from the group — along with the FBI and U.S. Army. If Tammy Baldwin and others want to defend a group linked to domestic terrorism in federal court, fine. But they won’t have much company.

In a lengthy exposé that tackles everything from Dees’s shady financial dealings to the group’s controversial methods, Politico’s Ben Schreckinger signals the days of SPLC’s free pass are over. “As Dees navigates the era of Trump, there are new questions arising around a charge that has dogged the group for years: that SPLC is overplaying its hand, becoming more of a partisan progressive hit operation than a civil rights watchdog. Critics say the group abuses its position as an arbiter of hatred by labeling legitimate players ‘hate groups’ and ‘extremists’ to keep the attention of its liberal donors and grind a political ax.” In that same interview, SPLC didn’t hide how it feels about the new attorney general. Richard Cohen calls the former senator “simply mad” and then begs Schreckinger not to quote him (which he does anyway).

After eight years of an all-out war against men and women of faith — led in part by Obama’s Justice Department — the attorney general’s willingness to talk openly about issues like religious freedom is refreshing. As ADF and Trump’s DOJ have made clear: “We all condemn manifestations of true hate.” But believing what the Bible says about marriage, sexuality, and gender isn’t hate — no matter what SPLC’s apologists say.

Originally published here.

DC’s Great Wipe Hope

Washington, DC, is obsessed with the environment, but its morals may be the most polluted. The capital city would barely be recognizable to the Founders, who hoped it would represent the best America had to offer. Instead, it’s 68 square miles of failing schools, broken families, drug abuse, assisted suicide, crime, and social radicalism. So, when the city says its sewage is overflowing, we have to wonder which kind it means.

In a debate that would be comical if it weren’t so symbolic of the city’s backwards thinking, District leaders are asking Congress to keep its hands off their new ban on disposable wet wipes. “Wet wipes in the District,” DC Democratic Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said at a press conference. “I never believed I’d have to talk about wet wipes standing at a podium in the Congress of the United States.” Nor, I’m sure, did Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), who — like most conservatives — thinks the city’s overreach is preposterous. Cynthia Finley, director of regulatory affairs for the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, defended it as a “common sense wipes law. They form massive fatbergs that cause problems and sewage overflows.” What does this have to do with Congress, you wonder? Thankfully, the U.S. House has the responsibility of overseeing the city’s laws, which has become quite a job lately. With DC going out on an extreme limb with its Reproductive Non-Discrimination Act, assisted suicide and marijuana, the House Financial Services Committee has its hands full reining in the extremists on the city council.

Like us, it can’t believe that the capital city wants to micromanage wipes — but couldn’t care less that its streets are full of homeless people strung out on the drugs they legalized. If you want to clean up the capital, start with its values! It’s amazing. DC is concerned about what parents are using on public changing tables but couldn’t care less how its city is changing under this far-Left lurch. Unfortunately, the District is a classic example of what’s wrong with America. Liberal leaders are preoccupied with the “environment” while their moral one implodes.

Fortunately, conservatives like Rep. Harris are doing what they can to fix the city’s upside-down priorities, starting with DC’s assisted suicide policy. As part of the Financial Services bill, he’ll tackle a District law that’s so extreme a doctor doesn’t even have to be present for a patient to take their own life and patients can define a “terminal disease” as something as treatable as diabetes! Even insurance companies are invited to pay for the lethal drugs. There are absolutely no parameters for the destruction of valuable human life. In other words, lives are disposable, but wipes aren’t.

It’s time to help DC to worry about something else going down the tubes — not wipes, but moral values, which will do far more damage to the future of the capital than pipes full of lumpy white paper.

Originally published here.

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