Around this time of year, we hear from our local bishop and our parish priest about the importance of "Stewardship." Of course, the kind of stewardship they are talking about relates to wise use of our personal financial resources and our responsibility to share in the work of the Church by renewing our annual tithing commitments to the parish and to the annual diocesan appeal.
But the Catholic concept of Stewardship applies as well to our national spending practices, which threaten to bankrupt the nation (quite literally) and leave a mountain of debt and interest payments to our children. In my nearly complete series on the Obama-Democratic health care legislation, I suggest that the plan is not economically viable and if fully implemented will be disastrous for our country.
My friends on the left side of Mirror of Justice and among its readers invariably protest that it is rather convenient for me to raise the debt alarm now the President Obama is in office. Or, as the author of this delightful and starkly illustrated YouTube video puts it: "When arguing against increases in the federal deficit, one of the biggest objections I've heard is 'George W. Bush was spending like Paris Hilton on a bender.' Why the sudden concern with spending now the President Obama is doing it?"
Keep in mind that this video was produced nearly a year ago, that it was based on the Obama Administration's own projected deficits which already have proven much too low, that this illustration does not include the likely leap upward in deficits to be created by the health care legislation, and that the Congressional Budget Office is now warning (here and here) that the Obama deficits will more than double the national debt from where President Bush left us. The CBO (which I've been arguing is underestimating the rate of spending on the Democratic Party's stimulus, health care, and other projects) reports that, under President Obama's budget, the national debt will rise to 90 percent of GDP, nearly the level of World War II deficits and moving into the range of such insolvent nations as Greece.
Yikes! Talk about riding in a car with a stuck accelerator! Any chance of a recall?
I don't read the Washington Post.This morning, an MOJ reader sent me a message
and a column from today’s WP.
The reader's message:
"A question that should be put
to every participant of the MOJ blog, to which no one should not respond if MOJ
intends to have any credibility at all outside Catholic circles:How does Catholic Social Theory respond to
this?I can't think of any more pressing
socio-theological-legal issue confronting Catholics (including American
Catholics) right now or in the future..."
Now, the column:
How the Catholic Church could end its sex scandal
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
How in the name of God can the Roman
Catholic Church put the pedophilia scandal behind it?
I do not invoke God's name lightly.
The church's problem is, above all, theological and religious. Its core
difficulty is that rather than drawing on its Christian resources, the church
has acted almost entirely on the basis of this world's imperatives and
standards.
It has worried about lawsuits. It
has worried about its image. It has worried about itself as an institution and
about protecting its leaders from public scandal. In so doing, it has made
millions of Catholics righteously furious and aggravated every one of its problems.
So instead of going away, the
scandal keeps coming back, lately in a form that seems to challenge Pope
Benedict XVI himself. It was sickening to read Thursday's New York Times story
reporting that Vatican officials "did not defrock a priest who molested as
many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned
them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church."
The priest, the Rev. Lawrence
Murphy, worked at a Wisconsin school for deaf boys from 1950 to 1974. He died
in 1998.
In Germany, the pope's home country,
more than 300 victims have come forward in recent weeks, and Chancellor Angela
Merkel, whose party has Catholic roots, called the scandal "a major
challenge for our society."
In the case of Murphy, the Vatican
did what every institution does in a scandal: It issued a statement putting the
best face on its decisions.
"In light of the facts that
Father Murphy was elderly and in very poor health, and that he was living in
seclusion and no allegations of abuse had been reported in over 20 years,"
the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said, "the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith suggested that the Archbishop of Milwaukee give
consideration to addressing the situation by, for example, restricting Father
Murphy's public ministry and requiring that Father Murphy accept full
responsibility for the gravity of his acts." Murphy, he noted, "died
approximately four months later without further incident."
The statement is representative of
what's wrong with the church's response. It is bureaucratic and
self-exculpatory, even asking us to feel for this priest because he was
"elderly" and "in very poor health."
The spokesman called the case
"tragic," but tragic does not do justice to the outrage here. Yes,
the statement included an acknowledgement of the "particularly vulnerable
victims who suffered terribly from what [Murphy] did," and that he had
violated his "sacred trust." Is this the best Father Lombardi could
do?
During his visit to the United
States in 2008, Pope Benedict started moving toward a better approach. He
seemed genuinely pained and angered by the scandal. He repeatedly apologized
and said he was "deeply ashamed" of the abusive priests who had
"betrayed" their ministry.
But while this was a step in the
right direction, apologizing for the misbehavior of individual priests will
never be enough. The church has been reluctant to speak plainly about the heart
of its problem: In handling these cases, it put institutional self-protection
first.
The church needs to show it
understands the flaws of its own internal culture by examining its own
conscience, its own practices, its own reflexives when faced with challenge. As
the church rightly teaches, acknowledging the true nature of our sin is the one
and only path to redemption and forgiveness.
Of course, this will not be easy.
Enemies of the church will use this scandal to discredit the institution no
matter what the Vatican does. Many in the hierarchy thought they were doing the
right thing, however wrong their decisions were. And the church is not alone in
facing problems of this sort.
But defensiveness and institutional
self-protection are not Gospel values. "For whoever wants to save his life
will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it."
The church needs to cast aside the
lawyers, the PR specialists and its own worst instincts, which are human
instincts. Benedict could go down as one of the greatest popes in history if he
were willing to risk all in the name of institutional self-examination, painful
but liberating public honesty, and true contrition.
And then comes something even
harder: Especially during Lent, the church teaches that forgiveness requires
Catholics to have "a firm purpose of amendment." The church will have
to show not only that it has learned from this scandal, but also that it's
truly willing to transform itself.
The health-care-reform bill passed despite the
efforts of conservative lobbying groups, most of which are opposed to
reform for other reasons, and the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, which supports reform in theory but opposed the Senate bill.
But the debate has been costly for prolife groups.
By the time you see this, the fate of the Democrats' health-care
legislation will probably have been decided. The House of
Representatives plans to vote on the Senate bill a few days after we go
to press. Whatever the outcome, one thing is already certain: the debate
over the bill has left a deep rift—and not only between the two major
parties.
Prominent representatives of the prolife community, including the
Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities for the United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops and the National Right to Life Committee, have rejected
the Senate bill, claiming that it allows direct federal funding of
elective abortion. Meanwhile, Catholic supporters of the bill, including
the Catholic Health Association, have said that it does not. One needs a
good reason to oppose a bill that would cover 30 million uninsured
Americans and greatly improve insurance for those who already have it.
If the Senate bill did clearly authorize the federal government to pay
for elective abortions, prolife Americans might have such a reason. To
conclude the bill does this, however, requires one to believe that every
ambiguity—every possible complication the bill doesn’t explicitly
address—is a ploy by prochoice politicians to sneak abortion funding
into the system. President Barack Obama and his party’s leadership have
promised the bill won’t be used in this way. Their critics instruct us
to presume that they’re lying.
These critics point out that the bill departs from the Hyde
Amendment’s ban on federal support for any health plan that covers
elective abortion. They insist this is the only conceivable way for the
government to subsidize insurance without paying for abortion. This is
false, as the Senate bill itself clearly demonstrates. Under the bill,
anyone who buys a plan that covers elective abortion would have to pay a
separate, unsubsidized premium for that coverage. Such premiums would
be segregated from premiums for all other services in a special account,
which would have to cover the full cost of elective abortions and
couldn’t receive a penny from the government. In other words, the bill
would preserve the Hyde Amendment’s principle without applying its
method.
Critics also claim that the money the bill appropriates for community
health centers is not subject to the Hyde Amendment. No doubt the bill
would be strengthened with the addition of language that clearly imposes
the Hyde rule on any federal money given to health centers. But since
such money will in any case be channeled through the Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS), where the Hyde Amendment obtains, there
is no good reason to suppose that it will be exempt from the
amendment’s constraints. Besides, if HHS really could spend any part of
the new funding on elective abortions, it wouldn’t matter that the Hyde
Amendment keeps it from using the rest of its money for this purpose: as
the bill’s critics never tire of telling us, money is fungible—the Hyde
Amendment works only if it covers everything HHS spends. It’s also
worth mentioning that none of the existing health centers, which provide
care to one in eight children born in the United States, has ever
offered abortion services.
Many of the bill’s most prominent critics are lobbyists, and for the
purposes of lobbying, a plausible falsehood is often as useful as the
truth. But crying wolf is always a dangerous game. If prolife groups
raise false alarms to bully politicians and scare up donations, they
risk being ignored when a real threat arises. Some of the same groups
that are now loudly predicting disaster if health-care reform passes
warned that the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) was sure to be passed and
signed into law if Barack Obama was elected president. People remember
these predictions, and eventually they stop paying attention. If the
Senate bill does not pass, conservative lobbying groups, most of which
are opposed to reform for other reasons, and the bishops conference,
which supports reform in theory, will bear some responsibility for it.
If one wants to claim that no politician who’s really opposed to
abortion can support the Senate bill, it’s not enough to show that the
bill’s provisions are inferior to the House’s Stupak Amendment; one must
also argue that the Senate bill is inferior to the status quo. The
government is already subsidizing group plans that cover
elective abortion by means of tax breaks for businesses that offer them.
Millions of Americans must now choose between accepting such a plan and
going without good health insurance; the only other option, a decent
individual plan, is now just too expensive for them. The Senate bill
would give such people the wherewithal to buy insurance that doesn’t
cover elective abortion, which means that, in addition to its many other
benefits, it would save millions of Americans from having to choose
between their conscience and their health.
I thought this essay (here) by Bill May was particularly powerful. His reminder of our obligation to take up our cross daily is important as we get ready to begin Holy Week.
[This is the fourth in a series.You can view the full series on one
page here.]
Understandably anxious about having passed a
narrowly partisan bill – steered through by an unpopular congressional
leadership and signed by an unpopular president over the opposition of most
Americans – President Obama and the Democratic Party now must try to make the
political case to the American people that they knew what was best for us all
along.
Toward this end, hopeful Democratic Party
politicians have taken to citing other major social programs, such as Social
Security and Medicare, as showing how controversial Democratic legislative
initiatives become celebrated historical landmarks.They claim that these legislative programs had also been
passed by Democrats over Republican opposition.In the same way, they argue, the American people will learn
to love the new health care program and reward, rather than punish, the
Democratic Party.
The Democrats are whistling past the political graveyard.This new political spin is a political
myth.What happened this past week
truly was unprecedented.Never
before has a major and potentially transformative social welfare initiative
been enacted by Congress without broad-based bipartisan and embracing public
support.And, as a consequence, whether genuine health care reform will take effect remains uncertain. Building and maintaining solidarity with the disadvantaged, for whom those future uncertainties are most dangerous, has been made far more difficult.
In 1935, when Social Security was enacted,
Democrats did not force through a narrow partisan scheme over Republican
opposition, even though Democrats enjoyed an overwhelming majority in Congress
and had the enormously popular President Roosevelt in the White House.In fact, Republicans voted for Social
Security by a vote of 81-15 in the House and 16-5 in the Senate (here).Republicans had preferred an
alternative measure that would have created a true trust fund whose assets
could not be withdrawn and applied to other government spending (what a
blessing today if that alternative had prevailed).Nonetheless, on the final vote, Republicans stood solidly
behind Social Security.
In 1965, Medicare was enacted with nearly
unanimous Democratic support and the support of nearly half of Republicans in
Congress (70-68 in the House and 13-17 in the Senate) (here).The legislation was promoted and signed
by Democratic President Johnson who stood high in the polls as well, soon after
his landslide victory in 1964.
By contrast, the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act of 2010 was enacted on a strictly partisan vote by
unpopular politicians and over public opposition.In the House this past Sunday, all Republicans and 15
percent of Democratic representatives opposed the bill. The Democratic
congressional leadership that cajoled and dealed and wheeled the legislation
through to slender passage are held in such low regard by the public that one
barely breaks into double digits and the other falls below it, with Speaker
Pelosi at 11 percent and Majority Leader Reid at 8 percent (here).President Obama has seen his approval
rating plummet over his first year in office.In the latest CNN poll, a majority of Americans now disapprove
of the president (here). On the eve of the House vote, a CNN/Gallop reported that
nearly 60 percent of Americans opposed the bill (here).
John Schwenkler evidently thinks that my recent comment on "moral incoherence" was directed at him. It wasn't. It was directed at Vice President Joe Biden, Senators Mark Begich, Christopher Dodd, Ted Kaufman, Dick Durbin, Tom Harkin, Mary Landrieu, Barbara Mikulski, John Kerry, Claire McCaskill, Robert Menendez, Kirsten Gillebrand, Jack Reed, Patrick Leahy, Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, and those Catholics in the House of Representatives and across the nation who share what, if Mr. Schwenkler and I are right, is the morally incoherent position that (1) “we must reform the health care system to ensure that basic care is reasonably accessible to all members of the community,” and (2) “the unborn have no right to legal protection against being killed by abortion.”
I took the opportunity afforded by Michael P.'s posting of Mr, Schwenkler's comment to make the point. Mr. Schwenkler seems to think that I wanted to force him to go through the ritual of acknowledging the bidirectionality of the charge of moral incoherence. I didn't. I hadn't heard of Mr. Schwenkler before reading the comments Michael P. posted. He seems a bit annoyed that I haven't seen his bio on dotCommonweal. But I do not read dotCommonweal on a regular basis, and I read his comment on MoJ, not on dotCommonweal. Anyway, none of this matters, since my post wasn't directed at him and I had no intention of forcing him ritually to acknowledge the bidirectionality of the charge of moral incoherence.
I concluded my post by noting that Ross Douthat would agree with me, but allowing that I didn't know whether Mr. Schwenkler would agree. That was because I know Ross Douthat and I don't know Mr. Schwenkler. In particular, I didn't know whether Mr. Schwenkler would agree with this point in my post:
"The Church ("that very same church") teaches that efforts must be made to ensure that all members of the community, including the poor, have reasonable access to basic health care; but it does not prescribe a government run health insurance or health care system or a particular scheme or degree of government regulation of health care providers or insurers. People can reasonably and responsibly "claim the banner of church teaching" while advocating different policies for the structure (or reform) of the health care system to make sure that as many members of the community as possible have reasonable access to basic care (and insurance against medical catastrophes)."
I gather from what Mr. Schwenkler says in his response to my post that he does agree. That;s great. I'm delighted. But Mr. Schwenkler seems to want to do a bit of boxing with me, so I'm happy to go a round or two with him. Here's where I disagree with him, if I understand him correctly. He blames "conservatives" for their "stunning. inability to propose a coherent and forward-looking agenda of their [read our] own to address this country’s very real need for serious health care reform." He is painting with too broad a brush. Are some conservatives complacent about the need for dealing with the flaws of our health system, including the need to improve access and expand coverage? Sure. And they merit Schwenkler's criticisms (and mine). Are there Randian libertarians out there who think that improving access to health care is none of the government's business? Of course, though most of them, like Ayn Rand herself, are on the Biden-Dodd-Durbin-Harkin-Mikulski side of the abortion question. (It's just that they are less morally incoherent than the pro-choice Catholic senators against whom my post was directed.) But there are conservatives, including dedicated pro-life conservatives, who are thinking and working hard to devise sensible, affordable, liberty- and subsidiarity-respecting ways of reforming the health care system. James Capretta and Yuval Levin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. are two whose work strikes me as particularly insightful and promising. If Republican victories in 2010 and 2012 make it possible to repeal and replace Obamacare, work now being done by people like Capretta and Levin will help to shape the reform of the reform
[This is the third in a series. You can view the full series on one page here.]
My apprehension about the future of this country as it is now being reshaped by the current administration and congressional leadership was well-expressed a couple of days ago by a man who is far more knowledgeable about deficits, government spending, and economics than I ever will be. In the aftermath of the health care legislation vote, Indiana Governor and former federal budget director Mitch Daniels said: “In a life of optimism about America and its future, this morning I am as discouraged as I can remember being.”
If my amateur evaluation set out below is even half-correct, and if the newly-enacted health care legislation actually is translated from paper into full implementation in the coming years, we risk national insolvency, the punishing debt levels of an impoverished third-world nation, an ongoing and permanent recession, sluggish employment, declining standards of living for everyone, fewer opportunities for our children. “The End of the American Dream.” Apocalyptic words. Are they more than the pessimistic ramblings of a conservative suffering a post-health-care-passage hangover? After you read what I ’ve set out below, you can judge for yourself.
In the closing days of the arm-twisting campaign to build a slender House majority for his health care bill, the Washington Post reports that President Obama “draped one arm over [Pennsylvania Democratic Representative Jason] Altmire’s shoulder, turned away from the others and leaned in close to his intended target.” “‘Jason,’ Obama said. ‘We have to do this. It is essential to bringing down the deficit.’”
I’m not sure what unsettles me more about this story. That President Obama would cynically appeal to a Democratic representative from a moderate district reluctant to vote for a new big government entitlement program by snookering him into thinking this health care spending program would reduce the deficit? (To his credit, Rep. Altmire didn't buy it and still voted “no” on Sunday.) Or that President Obama might actually believe that his massive new spending program will reduce the size of the federal budget? If it is the latter, then the Obama White House has become an Orwellian enclave in which “Spending = Saving”.
Congressional Budget Office Estimates: “Fantasy In, Fantasy Out”
But, someone may protest, the non-partisan, independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) put its gold seal of approval on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. We are told the CBO assured Democrats that the latest, “fixed” version of the health care plan would save trillions of dollars. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago while campaigning for his health care agenda in Pennsylvania, President Obama asserted that the legislation “brings down our deficit by up to $1 trillion dollars over the next decade because we’re spending our health care dollars more wisely. . . Those aren’t my numbers. They are the savings determined by the Congressional Budget Office, which is the nonpartisan, independent referee of Congress for what things cost.”
Well, not to mince words, but President Obama was both wrong and disingenuous. Even with the questionable premises underlying the CBO estimate, President Obama’s plan was supposed to save a little more $100 billion in the first decade, not $1 trillion. Not only was President Obama wrong, he was exponentially wrong by a multiplier of nearly ten. (Oh well, a trillion dollars, a hundred billion dollars; potayto, potahto, tomayto, tomahto.) When called on the error, the White House insisted that President Obama meant to refer to the trillion dollars of savings projected for the second decade (although the CBO carefully notes that projections that far into the future are not reliable.)
Moreover, every CBO assessment of the budgetary impact of a legislative initiative is based on a set of assumptions, both those offered by the bill drafters and those made by the CBO in its ongoing economic forecasts. In particular, when bill-drafters promise future congressional steps, however improbable they may be, the CBO must proceed accordingly. Thus, as former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin explained in a New York Times column, when it comes to CBO projections, “fantasy in, fantasy out.”
To spell it out, if the bill drafters tell the CBO to assume that Congress will pay for new spending by making cuts in popular programs and by raising taxes even during hard economic times, the CBO must assume that will happen. “But,” as the Washington Post observes, “that falls apart if a future Congress finds the cuts or taxes too painful to handle and overturns them.”
(As I’ll address in more detail in tomorrow’s post, the likelihood that Congress will have the necessary discipline to stay the course is greatly diminished when one party pushes through a partisan agenda over the unanimous opposition of the other party and against a majority of the citizenry.)
With that understanding, let me outline just a few of the guesstimates and contingencies underlying the supposed deficit-reducing features of the Democratic health care legislation. You the readers can decide whether these suppositions constitute hard-headed, real-world premises by those serious about controlling spending or Disney-esque fantasies.
… someone “claiming the banner” of Catholicism who says,
(1) “the plight of poor people who do not have access to health care is
no concern of mine (except, perhaps, as a matter of private charity)
and is not a legitimate subject of public deliberation and
policy-making, and (2) “the unborn must be protected by law against
being killed by abortion,” is being morally incoherent. By the same
token, someone who says (1) “we must reform the health care system to
ensure that basic care is reasonably accessible to all members of the
community,” and (2) “the unborn have no right to legal protection
against being killed by abortion,” is being morally incoherent.
Or so it seems to me.
I don’t know whether John Schwenkler would agree. I’m sure that Ross
Douthat would.
Well yes, I do agree! But it also seems to me that I shouldn’t really
have had to go through that ritual, given that not only does my dotComm bio
indicate that I’ve gone through the sort of advanced study in
philosophy that enables one to recognize that the charge of moral
incoherence can be applied bidirectionally, but I also identified
myself as pro-life in the very post Prof. George is discussing. At
this point it strikes me that it might be permitted by the rules of the
game to demand that Prof. George swear fidelity to Rome on such matters
as transubstantiation and the Virgin Birth, but that would likely be
taken as mere pertinacity.
Prof. George also reminds us, presumably bearing in mind my stated
opposition to the Democrats’ health reform bill, that the question of
how best to ensure access to adequate health care is a prudential one:
The Church (”that very same church”) teaches that efforts
must be made to ensure that all members of the community, including
the poor, have reasonable access to basic health care; but it does not
prescribe a government run health insurance or health care system or a
particular scheme or degree of government regulation of health care
providers or insurers. People can reasonably and responsibly “claim
the banner of church teaching” while advocating different policies for
the structure (or reform) of the health care system to make sure that
as many members of the community as possible have reasonable access to
basic care (and insurance against medical catastrophes).
Indeed they can, and in fact this is a point that I’ve argued
at some length. But the fact that there can be health care
policies that will do an equal (or better!) job than the Democrats’ of
ensuring widespread access to health care does not alleviate the problem
I was identifying, namely that of “conservatives’ stunning inability to
propose a coherent and forward-looking agenda of their [read our]
own to address this country’s very
real need for serious health care reform”. Appeals to prudence
are fine and good, but absent a political agenda that centers on more
than simply saying “No” to the Democrats, mainstream conservatives are
in a poor position to complain when they’re accused of incoherently
regarding the bishops’ statements on health care with something less
than the seriousness with which they treat their views on abortion.
Or so it seems to me.
I’m sure that Ross Douthat agrees; he says just this in the
very post I was discussing. And I’ll assume for charity’s sake that
Prof. George would, too.
I appreciate the comments, both posted to the Mirror of Justice and by email, on my continuing series on what I believe are the serious flaws in the health care legislation enacted this week, as well as my hopeful suggestion that the potential is still out there to do it right (Post 1 and Post 2). (I'll post the third in the series, on the fiscal implications of the health care bill, this afternoon.) I especially welcome my colleague Rob Vischer's direct engagement, asking "is the Church opposed to big government?"
I am tempted to respond simply, well, if the Church isn't yet opposed to big government, it should be! But the better answer is more nuanced than that, even if one believes, as I do, that our Catholic-grounded belief in the dignity of each human person and in the liberty that God bequeaths to all of us should lead to a presumption against government solutions when adequate alternatives are available.
I agree with Rob that the judgment as to the best mix of government and alternative public solutions to problems calls on prudence and that these are judgments on which reasonable, faithful Catholic can and will disagree. (I would add, as well, that this prudential judgment includes the decision about which matters of human relations should be left to individuals, families, neighborhoods, employers and employees, private intermediary groups, etc. rather than calling for public mandates or legal regulation of any kind.) For some things, such as national defense, "big government" appears to be the best solution, or at least is inevitable. For other "big" things, such as interstate highways and government buildings, government is a necessary part of the partnership, in terms of planning and funding, but the actual construction is better accomplished through contracts with private enterprises rather than creating government construction companies staffed by government construction workers. For social welfare programs, again, the right mix is one that deserves thoughtful debate, with those on both sides still being comfortably under the big tent of Catholic social teaching.
I do want to submit, however, that all things being equal (in terms of quality solutions to social problems, effectiveness in administration, cost, etc.), we should presume against "big government" solutions and prefer partnerships with private enterprise and voucher-type programs. And we should do so not only for the most nitty-gritty of practical reasons but as a matter of moral principle. Let me identify five reasons why I think this is right:
Departing for a moment from my series of posts on the health care reform legislation, I wanted to add a word of support for Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak, even though I think he stumbled at the finish line.
I do think he made an error in judgment in accepting President Obama's dubious executive order as justifying withdrawal of his objection to the inadequate abortion language in the Senate version of the health care reform legislation and agreeing to cast his vote for the bill. But, while mistaken in my judgment, he made a call on the fly, his heart was always in the right place, and he has a solid record of principled support for the sanctity of human life. His ultimate vote for the health care legislation is not an act of deliberate betrayal, as he had always been on record as supporting the merits of that proposal. And, for that matter, the Obama executive order may prove to have some value, as it at least puts this White House on the record about use of federal funds, even indirectly, for abortion and about the need for a conscience clause for medical providers opposed to abortion.
Would it have been better if he had stood firm, even to the bitter end? Yes, which is why he gets two cheers and not three from me. But as far as I am concerned, and even with my disagreement over the wisdom of bargain with the White House, Rep. Stupak remains a member in good standing of our diverse pro-life community. At any dinner of pro-life leaders, I would be proud to have Rep. Stupak at my table.
