Tony Perkins, FRC Washington Update: Ask any PR expert and they'll tell you: the pitch is just as important as the product. On Thursday, President Obama is betting his political life on that theory, as he takes a relatively unchanged Senate health care plan and tries to repackage it for the American people. Instead of unveiling a new bill that incorporates a more moderate approach, the President's latest proposal is a cheap knock-off of the legislation that passed in the Senate on Christmas Eve. Although it does purge the sweetheart deals for Senators Ben Nelson (D-Nebr.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.), the White House claims the plan will only cost $1 trillion over 10 years.We'll have to take the President's word for it since the Congressional Budget Office announced that the proposal can't be appropriately scored since "the materials that were released this morning do not provide sufficient detail on all of the provisions." Among other things, the bill would require Americans to buy health insurance and fines employers who don't provide it. Of course, the issue of utmost importance to pro-lifers is whether the President's September statement holds true: "Under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."
False! Under the administration's "new" plan, this bill would be the largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade--with a big chunk of the proposal tagged directly for groups like Planned Parenthood. Despite public opposition, President Obama reverted back to the Senate's language, which would force taxpayers to fund abortions even if their state opts-out of the coverage. Using a phony argument that the money would be segregated, the government would still draw from taxpayer pools to cover a procedure that Americans overwhelmingly reject. The President missed his opportunity to adopt the most popular piece of reform, Rep. Bart Stupak's (D-Mich.) outright ban on government-funded abortion.
To make matters worse, the White House is upping the ante on the Senate's abortion bailout, asking for $11 billion in "community health centers," which can easily be redirected to groups like Planned Parenthood. The President's package also includes Sen. Barbara Mikulski's (D-Md.) amendment, which would allow the administration to define abortions as "preventative health services" and force private insurers to cover them. As it's currently written, the $6 billion in grants for health co-ops doesn't include a single abortion restriction--nor does the Indian Health Services program. With the health care summit just days away, the onus is on Republicans. They can expose the President's credibility gap on abortion and kill the bill--or sit silent and risk the momentum that got them there.
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