Obama’s Bum Budget and Brave New War on Religion

February 14, 2012 07:44


While Greece is literally burning to the ground, the administration is giddily racking up more debt, blind to where this out-of-control spending leads. Apparently, the President believes birth control isn’t the only thing that Americans can get for “free.” He offered a $3.8 trillion budget, assuming that projects will just materialize on someone else’s dime.

 

From Family Research Council

In Lew of Restraint: Higher Taxes

The 97-0 thumping that the President’s budget took last May was humbling but apparently not instructive. Today, the White House released another draft for fiscal year 2013, and many of the same problems exist. On top of a trillion dollars in stimulus-like spending, the President’s “solutions” are a repeat of last year’s criticisms: higher taxes, shady accounting, and more government projects the country can’t afford. Among other things, the White House wants to raise taxes by $1.5 trillion (the largest increase in U.S. history), slash the military’s already anorexic budget, and commit even more money to transportation projects and foreign aid. “There’s pretty broad agreement that the time for austerity is not today,” Chief of Staff Jack Lew told reporters Sunday.

Boy, is that the understatement of the year! Despite promising to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, President Obama’s 10-year deficit reduction plan is less than the total projected deficit for 2011 alone! While Greece is literally burning to the ground, the administration is giddily racking up more debt, blind to where this out-of-control spending leads. Apparently, the President believes birth control isn’t the only thing that Americans can get for “free.” He offered a $3.8 trillion budget, assuming that projects will just materialize on someone else’s dime. President Obama says the plan will help keep the country on track–and he’s right. Under this budget, America is right on track for more debt and more economic decline. What our country really needs to do is get off this road and embark on a new path of reduced spending and limited government!

 

See No Evil, Hear No Evil

The President’s Friday announcement was supposed to ease concerns over the contraception mandate, not harden them. But the only way to describe the White House’s latest proposal is the “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Keep Your Mouth Shut” compromise. Under the President’s “accommodation,” religious groups would still have to provide abortion drugs and birth control–they just wouldn’t see it on the list of benefits. In this new twist, the coverage would pass through the insurance company, so the organization wouldn’t hear about it–but the church’s money would still be paying for it. As Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) said, “New words, same policy.

Archbishop Charles Chaput had even harsher words for the insurance-company-as-middleman approach. “Many Catholics are confused and angry. They should be… [T]he HHS mandate, including its latest variant, is belligerent, unnecessary, and deeply offensive… [W]e cannot afford to be fooled–yet again.” The administration was also out front this weekend, trying to sell its make-believe compromise on the morning shows with Chief of Staff Jack Lew. On Sunday, CBS pressed Lew on whether the President would be open to relaxing the rules further, and Lew said no. “This is our plan,” he told CBS. “We’re going to go ahead and implement it.”

Of course, asking if there would be more compromise implies there was some to begin with. And with the exception of the President’s abortion allies, most everyone sees this accommodation for the sham it is. Still, Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and abortion-apologists Catholics United are doing what they can to persuade voters otherwise. Starting today, NARAL Pro-Choice America will try to give the Obama administration cover with new ads. The campaign, which is already airing in states like Colorado, Florida, Virginia, and Wisconsin, costs a cool quarter-million. “Thanks to President Obama…” the narrator says, “women of all faiths, no matter where they work, can get contraceptive coverage.”

But that’s not because of anything President Obama has done. Women have always had access to contraception, including those who work at Catholic or religious organizations! Faith-based groups haven’t denied access to birth control or abortion-inducing drugs. They simply haven’t paid for them. ” There is no crisis in ‘reproductive health,'” Andrew McCarthy writes on National Review. “There is not even inconvenience. Contraception and abortion services are readily, affordably accessible to anyone who wants them… Obama dropped this bomb only because he is at war with America ‘s culture of individual liberty, of which religious freedom lies at the heart.”

Congress will do what it can to fight back–starting this week, as Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) races to hold a hearing on conscience rights. He understands, as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) does, that “If this is what the President is willing to do in a tough election year, imagine what he will do in implementing the rest of his health care law after the election.” The contraception mandate is wrong for the same reasons that the individual mandate is wrong. It forces Americans to buy things they either don’t want or morally oppose. Either way, it’s a violent attack on our first freedoms–and we must not be silent! How it would grieve our Founders to see America today–a nation where birth control is “free” but the people are not.



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