By Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU at 6:01pm
After a 1 ½ year hiatus, we're back with more Congress-ese! We hope you've missed us.
Today's fun definition is Budget Reconciliation. You might have heard that term thrown around as the way that the Senate plans to make targeted changes to the health care reform bill that the President signed into law yesterday. So we thought we'd take this opportunity to explain this trick of the congressional trade.
By Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU at 12:38pm
As you well know by now, on Sunday night, the House of Representatives made history, passing the Senate's health care reform bill by a vote of 219-212. The President signed that bill into law yesterday. Later Sunday night, the House also passed a budget reconciliation bill, making targeted changes to the just-passed Senate bill.
By Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU at 2:31pm
"We've come to love our fears more than we love our freedoms," Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio)mused on the House floor just before that chamber voted 315-97 (with 20 members not voting) to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act without any changes for yet another year.
By now, you know the stakes — the tweaks that could have been made to guarantee that Patriot powers are used only against suspected terrorists or spies and to mandate continued reporting to ensure that we actually learn about current and future Patriot abuses. Many of these fixes were, in fact, included in prior iterations of Patriot reauthorization bills introduced in both the House and the Senate.
By Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU at 5:17pm
Thirty-seven years ago Friday, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade, legalizing abortion in this country and giving women another means to decide whether and when to become a parent. The decision, recognizing abortion as a private decision between a woman and her doctor, allowed women to legally end unhealthy or unintended pregnancies and advanced women's equality by giving women the opportunity to make important decisions not only about their health and the health and well-being of their families, but also about education and employment.
By Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU at 4:10pm
Stupak Amendment Round 2. Stupak: 1. Women’s Health: 0. But not for long. In the month since the anti-choice Stupak Amendment passed the House during its debate over health care reform, you have taken tremendous action. Nearly 30,000 of you signed our online petition opposing the abortion coverage restrictions the Stupak amendment would impose, adding your names to the list of 385,273 individuals who signed similar petitions through our sister organizations. Over 1,300 people from 30 states traveled to lobby their members of Congress at the December 2 Lobby Day. And many more of you have taken action at home, whether by meeting with or calling your members of Congress, writing letters to the editor or urging your friends to get involved. We need you to keep the momentum going.
By Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU at 6:22pm
Angry yet? You should be. As you’ve probably heard by now, on November 7, the House passed its health care reform bill. The problem? It also passed an onerous amendment sponsored by Reps. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) that prohibits anyone who participates in the health insurance Exchange and receives federal subsidies from purchasing a plan that covers abortion except in the case of rape or incest or to save the woman’s life. Anyone receiving a federal subsidy who wants abortion coverage would have to purchase a separate abortion rider covering only abortion.
