Senate Committee to Vote on Pro-Abortion Baucus Health Care Bill This Week

After rejected pro-life amendments last week that would have ensured the Baucus health care bill does not fund abortions and to protect the conscience rights of medical professionals, the Senate Finance Committee plans to vote on the legislation later this week.

The vote had been expected as earlier as Tuesday but the panel's chairman and the sponsor of the measure, pro-abortion Sen. Max Baucus, promised members of the committee that a vote would not occur until it received a financial analysis of the bill from the Congressional Budget Office.

The committee is the last of five Congressional committees -- two in the Senate and three in the House -- on different health care bills.

Each of them, including the Kennedy measure in the Senate and the three versions of HR 3200 in the House, include massive abortion funding and mandates.

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Obama Has Only Read "A Decent Part" of the Pro-Abortion Health Care Bills

Barry is pushing pretty hard for government-run healthcare, and if the bill ever makes it to his desk (I pray that it doesn't), he should know what it is that he's signing. And I do have a question. If he claims we need this so badly, why doesn't it take effect until 2013? That would be right after he runs for re-election. I don't think that is coincidence.

In recent weeks and months there has been some controversy about whether members of Congress will actually read the pro-abortion health care bills they are considering. Yesterday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs gave a telling answer about whether the president has read them.

"I was just wondering, before the President signs it will he himself read it or rely on staff to read the text of the bill?" a reported asked during Monday's press briefing.

"Well, I think he's read a decent part of the legislation that's been bandied around right now," Gibbs responded.

The comment comes after Gibbs joked about Obama reading the bill when he was asked a similar question in August.

“I don't know what his vacation plans are currently,” said Gibbs at the time.

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Hypocrisy That Would Make Even Obama Blush

By now, who hasn't seen US Rep. Alan Grayson's (D-FL) reality-twisting rant on the House floor, during which he claims a Republican version of health care would have Americans "die quickly"? When asked to apologize, he apologized instead to the "44,789 Americans [who] die every year because they have no health insurance," adding that this "holocaust" is "more than ten times the number of Americans who've died in the war in Iraq; it's more than ten times the number of Americans who died on 9-11." Later, one of Grayson's aides, replying to an outraged constituent via email, explained that Democrats "feel failure to act is similar to murdering the uninsured."

It should go without saying that efforts to arrive at such a figure are highly subjective, resulting in little more than political fodder, as Grayson demonstrates. But even if true, 44,789 is just 1/30th-- yes, one in thirty-- the number of persons aborted every year in our country.

What's remarkable about all this is that Grayson, as an anti-life lawmaker, is a collaborator in history's greatest genocide. His political party not only defends and promotes the abortion of well over a million healthy Americans every year, it funds hundreds of thousands of these murders with our tax dollars, through such proxies as Planned Parenthood. And they intend to institutionalize this slaughter as "reform" of our health care system.

This brings to mind the above cartoon, published last year to highlight Barack Obama's efforts in Illinois to codify euthanasia, which Compassion & Choices (the euthanasia lobby formerly known as The Hemlock Society) gleefully admits is an integral part of the Democrats' health care proposals. By the way, did you catch Grayson's jab at pro-life advocates at the close of his diatribe? "Let's remember that we should care about people even after they're born." Evidently, to Grayson and like-minded lawmakers, nothing says "care" more than killing, whether in a womb or in a hospice.

Once again, unabashed anti-life Democrats have taken hypocrisy to a whole new level, underscoring the truth of Rep. Joe Wilson's (R-SC) outburst before Obama and Congress: "You lie!"

Health care legislation still ‘deeply flawed’ on pro-life concerns, U.S. bishops’ officials say

Officials with the U.S. bishops’ conference said that proposed health care reform legislation remains “deeply flawed” on pro-life issues, though they praised the bill for making health care more affordable to at-risk families.

The Senate Finance Committee rejected pro-life amendments proposed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), which the U.S. Conference on Catholic Bishops (USCCB) had supported.

One proposal would have forbidden federal subsidies for benefits packages that cover abortions, with rare exceptions. Insurers could have offered supplemental abortion policies if they were funded solely by private premiums of those choosing to purchase them.

Another amendment proposed by Sen. Hatch would have forbidden federal agencies and state and local governments receiving federal funds under this bill to discriminate against health care providers that decline to perform, refer for, or pay for abortions.

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And what happened to the "transparency" that Barry promised?


Congressional leaders fight against posting bills online

cross-posted from A Catholic View