Hypocrisy: Republican Senators Including Snowe And Collins Co-Sponsored Federal Contraception Mandate In 2001
Republicans have gone to war against President Obama’s regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage, portraying the measure as a “government takeover” of health care and pledging to repeal the rule in Congress. The measure, which is part of the Affordable Care Act, says that companies offering coverage must also provide birth control insurance (but exempts houses of worship and nonprofits primarily employing and serving those of the same faith).
The Obama measure closely resembles state laws providing equity in insurance coverage for contraception in six states and actually offers far more conscience protections than previous Congressional efforts to expand women’s access to birth control. For instance, a 2001 bill co-sponsored by Republicans Sens. Olympia Snowe (ME), Susan Collins (ME), Lincoln Chafee (RI), Gordon Smith (OR), John Warner (VA), Arlen Specter (PA) — S. 104 — sought to establish parity for contraceptive prescriptions within the context of coverage already guaranteed by insurance plans, but offered no opt-out clause for religious groups who opposed contraception:
SEC. 714. STANDARDS RELATING TO BENEFITS FOR CONTRACEPTIVES.
`(a) REQUIREMENTS FOR COVERAGE- A group health plan, and a health insurance issuer providing health insurance coverage in connection with a group health plan, may not–
`(1) exclude or restrict benefits for prescription contraceptive drugs or devices approved by the Food and Drug Administration, or generic equivalents approved as substitutable by the Food and Drug Administration, if such plan provides benefits for other outpatient prescription drugs or devices; or
`(2) exclude or restrict benefits for outpatient contraceptive services if such plan provides benefits.
“Women shouldn’t be held hostage by virtue of where they live,” Snowe told a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing in September of 2001. “It simply is not fair.” “All we’re saying in this legislation is that if health insurance plans provide coverage for prescription drugs that that coverage has to extend to FDA-approved prescription contraceptives. It’s that simple.”
At the time, religious groups also raised concerns about the measure and Snowe promised to add a “conscience clause” that is similar to the exemption included in Maine’s law. Incidentally, that language is very similar to the conscience protections included in Obama’s regulation.
By: Igor Volsky, Think Progress, February 8, 2012
Get Ready For Buyer’s Remorse, Rick Santorum Edition
We’ve had two—or is it three?—helpings of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, more iterations of former Gov. Mitt Romney than you can shake $10,000 at, so should anyone be surprised that we’re getting a second dose of Rick Santorum? The former Pennsylvania senator scored a political hat trick with convincing victories in Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota last night. Sure Missouri was a beauty contest and Colorado and Minnesota didn’t actually select delegates, but neither did Iowa and no one said that set of caucuses was meritless.
Now Santorum must accomplish the 2012 political equivalent of defying gravity. For if there has been one rule in this chaotic nomination race, it is that what goes up must come down.
As I wrote in my column this week:
In the wake of Mitt Romney’s convincing victories in Florida on Tuesday and Nevada on Saturday, perhaps the GOP will rally to the former Massachusetts governor and embrace him in a manner which they have resisted thus far.
But through the first month of primary contests, Republican voters haven’t been much about embracing. They’ve been too busy running away from candidates. Romney’s New Hampshire victory, for example, sparked pronouncements that with two wins under his belt (the Iowa caucuses not yet having been retroactively awarded to Rick Santorum), he was marching to the nomination. This prompted a scramble away from Romney, right into the waiting arms of Newt Gingrich.
The former House speaker then easily won South Carolina and gave Republicans another acute case of buyer’s remorse. …
So now maybe GOP voters will settle in with Romney for the long haul. Or maybe they’ll look again at Romney and see a transparently inauthentic conservative of convenience with a propensity for mind-boggling gaffes (“I’m also unemployed,” and “Corporations are people, my friend,” and “Well, the banks aren’t bad people,” and so on.)
And as surely as Mitt Romney rose, bringing new pronouncements of his inevitability, he fell. Conservatives still don’t like him.
But can Santorum avoid a buyer’s remorse come-down? There are a number of factors weighing against him, starting with money and organization. It seems likely that Team Romney will turn its focus on Santorum the way it did on Gingrich after South Carolina (though as of this morning, Gingrich remained in the Mitt-bot’s sights). As Santorum noted Tuesday night, “Tonight we had an opportunity to see what a campaign looks like when one candidate isn’t outspent five- or ten-to-one by negative ads impugning their integrity and distorting their record.” Does anyone think that Santorum will get another clear shot where he isn’t heavily outspent and drilled with negative ads?
As National Journal’s Alex Roarty writes:
Romney won’t have to look hard for way[s] to attack Santorum, whose 16-year career in Washington provides an array of easy targets. The former governor has already criticized his support for congressional earmarks, and Santorum will also be forced to explain his 2004 endorsement of then moderate Republican Sen. Arlen Specter against a Republican challenger (Specter later switched into the Democratic Party).
More broadly, Romney can argue his business background makes him better suited to turn around the country than a career politician–a tactic that helped him overcome Gingrich.
We might also be reminded that Santorum’s last act in public life before running for president was receiving a historic drubbing from the voters of Pennsylvania, losing his seat by 18 points.
As for Romney, he must feel rather like Michael Corleone in the otherwise forgettable Godfather: Part III, who laments, “Just when I thought I was out … they pull me back in.” No pivot to the center and the general election for Mitt. He’ll need to turn his focus back to figuring out how to placate his own party, possibly with a hard tack to the right on the social issues which (a) have been Santorum’s bread and butter and (b) are suddenly at the heart of the national political conversation (birth control and gay marriage). This is not the stuff of which winning general election candidates are made.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, February 8, 2012
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