By Patrick Trueman, AFA Director of Governmental Affairs
August 1994 – Health care
Now it’s crunch time for health care in Congress. President Clinton’s political fortunes may be tied to his ability to get a health care bill passed before midterm elections this fall. He prefers a government take over system which would provide a one-size-fits-all health insurance package for everyone. Major flaws in his plan are that it not only would lessen the quality of health care and would ration care, but it would raise taxes and hurt businesses, particularly small businesses, and it includes abortion on demand. Several bills have been introduced which mirror the President’s desired plan. Republicans, except for a very few, oppose such a massive government intrusion into what is admittedly a flawed system, but still the best in the world. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s challenge to Congress is to give the American public the same health care Congress enjoys. This had a certain rhetorical flourish until Bob Dole shot back, “Why stop at Congress? Why not give them what the President and the First Lady have?” (a full-time physician at your beck and call, unlimited care, a presidential suite at Walter Reed Army Hospital). Actually what Congress has would be fine. But the President’s plan comes nowhere close to that.
All the signs are there for a Democratic party bust at the polls in the fall elections but the President believes passage of a health care bill would boost his party’s fortunes. This explains the all-out push by the President and First Lady and Democratic leaders in Congress to pass a bill now. Similarly, Bob Dole’s political fortunes may be tied to his ability to defeat such a bill. He has proposed his own free market alternative bill which has garnered support of most Senate Republicans, perhaps enough to successfully filibuster a Democrat bill. But, because the Dole bill is silent on the issue of abortion (at the time of this writing), it will mean abortion on demand for the portion of the population covered in the low income subsidy section. This was a concession to pro-abortion Republican Senator Bob Packwood. Hyde Amendment type language will be proposed on the floor of the Senate–if the bill gets that far–by Senators Phil Gramm (R-TX), Don Nickles (R-OK), and Dan Coats (R-IN). Senator Dole said recently on the AFA Report, an American Family Association daily radio show co-hosted by AFA President Dr. Don Wildmon and me, that inclusion of an abortion mandate will kill any health care bill in Congress. He is sure to support a “Hyde Amendment” to his own bill.
Although opinion polls show declining support for a major Clinton type health care reform the Democrats control both houses of Congress. Thus, President Clinton and the Democrats may likely decide the issue of health care, and soon. As a parent, I rue the day when, under the rationing regime of the Clinton style health plan, I have to appeal to my Congressman to get needed care which may be denied to my children by a government bureaucrat.
Obscene art
The National Endowment for the Arts is under attack again. (When hasn’t it been?) Recent grants include: $14,375 for an “artist” who used the tax dollars to disrobe and sexually stimulate himself on stage in a presentation called “My Queer Body”; $19,750 to an organization which used its previous grant to run a pornographic homosexual and lesbian film festival in San Francisco; and $20,000 to an individual who has said the tax dollars will be used to support “sericomic narrative film meditating on the vagaries of sexual obsession.” Many members of Congress are particularly upset by an NEA-funded performance at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in which the “artist,” Ron Athey, who is HIV positive, had two assistants weave acupuncture needles through the scalp of his shaved head. Athey then sliced designs into the flesh of another man, soaked up his own and the man’s blood on paper towels which were hung on a clothesline above the heads of the audience. Even a member of a local homosexual and lesbian group, Nights of Leather, who attended the event, publicly condemned the performance. NEA chief Jane Alexander found nothing wrong with this use of your tax dollars and defended the performance in a letter to Senators Don Nickles (R-OK) and Robert Byrd (D-WV) who had written Alexander to express their outrage.
These obscenities resulted in a House vote in favor of a mere 2% cut in the NEA budget and, at the time of this writing, a Senate committee vote in favor of a 5% cut. An amendment by Rep. Phil Crane (R-IL) to defund the agency garnered only 113 House votes in June. That number is up from 103 last year but it is obvious that Congress just doesn’t get it. The public is not clamoring to have scarce federal dollars spent on obscene art.
Child pornography
The Clinton administration lost a key court test of its new weakened interpretation of the federal child pornography law. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, in U.S. v. Knox, ruled that the Clinton Administration’s interpretation of the federal child pornography law had no basis in law. Neither legislative history nor the numerous court cases interpreting the law supported the Clinton Administration, the court held. We know that! But what we have yet to learn is why the Clinton Administration is soft on child pornography! Soon child pornographer Knox will appeal his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. So it is important that pressure be kept on the President as the Administration decides what position to take in this case in the Supreme Court. President Clinton has refused to order Attorney General Janet Reno to enforce the federal child pornography law as written despite intense public and Congressional pressure to do so.
Religious bigotry
A full scale attack on religion and religious people has been launched by the Democratic Party and President Clinton. Representative Vic Fazio (D-CA), Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in a major National Press Club address, attacked the so-called “Religious Right” for injecting religion into politics. His remarks were obviously intended to be the start of a formal effort by the Democratic party to demonize and alienate those who support a conservative platform. The Democratic party has lost nine major elections since President Clinton took over the federal government. The Democrats, losing on the issues, are lashing out at a Republican coalition that is beating them at the polls.
Fazio acknowledged that people of faith do have a right to participate in politics. (Isn’t that why this nation began?) It is the agenda of those on the political right to which he strenuously objects, Fazio clarified. The Christian Coalition, now the nation’s most effective and vocal arm of the political right, was singled out by Fazio for vilification. So it is important to examine the agenda of the Christian Coalition to learn what Fazio and the Democratic Party find so objectionable. The Coalition’s Congressional scorecard, recently released, rated each member of Congress on 14 votes over the past year. Here’s where the Christian Coalition stands on each: 1) Opposes homosexuals in the military; 2) Favors ban on immigrants with AIDS; 3) Favors tax relief for families; 4) Opposes Clinton pork-barrel spending program; 5) Opposes Clinton tax increase (the largest in history); 6) Opposes condoms for children without parental consent; 7) Opposed nomination of radical activist Roberta Achtenberg to HUD; 8) Opposed nomination of Dr. Joycelyn Elders to Surgeon General; 9) Favors balanced budget Constitutional amendment; 10) Opposes taxpayer funded abortions; 11) Opposes bill criminalizing pro-life free speech; 12) Opposes taxpayer funded pornography by the NEA; 13) Favors school prayer; 14) Favors term limits on Congress. Supporters of this agenda hardly deserve being called “radical,” “intolerant,” or “fringe,” as Fazio asserted. This is the agenda that, in large part, has decided many of those nine elections the Democrats have lost since Clinton was elected.
A few days after the Fazio broadside, Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, no stranger to religious bigotry, joined in the fray, telling a homosexual conference in New York that her opponents are the “un-Christian religious right,” and urged the audience to “be strong to take on those people who are selling our children out in the name of religion.” Then President Clinton, in a whiny radio interview with a St. Louis radio station, also joined in the attack, targeting Rush Limbaugh in particular. At a time when the President’s popularity is in decline, he should know better than to take on Rush. That is tantamount to grabbing a lead life preserver as the ship is going down.
EEOC guidelines
In another example of hostility to religion, the Administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sought to ban religion and religious symbols from the workplace. But this effort seems doomed for now because the Senate and House, under substantial constituent pressure, have each voiced disapproval by overwhelming margins. EEOC religious harassment guidelines would have required all employers to promulgate regulations to assure that the workplace is a completely religion free zone. Prohibited under the guidelines, according to many in Congress, would be a Bible in a desk, a crucifix on the wall, and even Christmas parties and saying “Merry Christmas.” While we can breathe a sigh of relief that the Administration has been halted in this effort, the fact that it would attempt this is frightening.
Yes, it will be a long hot summer. The battle against sound family values takes no vacation. 
