• Force every American within five years, into a government supervised health plan that includes abortion coverage.
• Compel taxpayers to fund a huge abortion-industry bailout – something 71% of Americans oppose.
• Require some medical providers to violate their consciences and perform abortions or risk losing their jobs.
• Insert government bureaucrats between caring doctors and needy patients and their families when it comes to making decisions about their treatment.
• Result in rationing of care, as we have seen in other nations with government run health care.
• Offer domestic partner benefits to homosexuals.
• Add more government debt.

One area is missing on both Health Care Proposals: Tort Reform. Malpractice lawsuits are a major cause of rising health care costs. Doctors are forced to practice "defensive medicine", asking for multiple tests to confirm their diagnoses. Malpractice insurance rates are unbelievable, but necessary due to high settlements. Congress could set reasonable limits and do much to bring down our medical costs, but so far, they have been unwilling to touch this area.

The District of Columbia Council voted to approve "same-sex marriage" in December. Gay activists have visions of making our national capitol a Mecca for "same-sex marriage." A number of pro-family groups, including the Arlington Group, are pursuing overturning this decision in Congress (who has oversight of the DC), and the courts.

The Washington Post reported that "When the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee voted on Wednesday [December 16] for legislation that would extend employee benefits to same-sex couples (S 1102 IS) nary a contrary word was spoken…A few Democrats spoke in favor of the legislation; Republicans said nothing. Then they voted, 8 to 1, to send the bill to the full Senate." (Washington Post, December 17, 2009). Let us hope that Republicans and other pro-family Senators will wake up and block this bill from being passed.

The President has announced his goal of repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, and now Representative Jerrold Nadler (NY-8th) has introduced a bill to do so (H.R. 3567). The federal Defense of Marriage Act did two things: (1) Established for federal law that marriage is the union of a man and a woman; and (2) Allowed the States the right to determine what they will or will not recognize as a marriage. Nadler’s bill repeals that and states:

"For the purposes of any Federal law in which marital status is a factor, an individual shall be considered married if that individual’s marriage is valid in the State where the marriage was entered into or, in the case of a marriage entered into outside any State, if the marriage is valid in the place where entered into and the marriage could have been entered into in a State."

The National Debt

In December, the House of Representatives voted 218-214 to raise the national debt limit to $12.4 trillion (that is $12, 400,000,000,000). That is approximately $42,000,000 for every man woman and child in America, and the spending continues.