Heritage Foundation

On the morning of Tuesday, February 21, 2012, a debate took place at the World Bank, and the outcome was stunning.

Heritage’s David Kreutzer and Yale University economics professor Robert Mendelsohn debated Marianne Fay of the World Bank and Paul Ekins of the University College London. The proposition was “Green Development is necessary, affordable, and urgent.” The audience was the World Bank’s Sustainable Development Network, whose initial preferences were no surprise. Polled before the debate, over two-thirds of the audience supported the proposition, and most of the others chose “undecided.”

In the formal debate, Fay and Ekins argued for the proposition while Kreutzer and Mendelsohn argued against. The poll following the debate was a shocker—less than half of the audience agreed with the proposition. This result was not caused by a handful of vote switchers—adding those watching from satellite locations at the bank and remote locations around the world to the 300 in the auditorium, the total audience was estimated to be at least 1,200.

So when presented with evidence from both sides, fewer than half of the members of the Sustainable Development Network believed that their mission is necessary, affordable, and urgent. One can only imagine what the results would be with a less biased audience.

President Obama is insistent that taxes must go up to close the deficit. He says it’s just common sense that taxes must go up, because the math says so. But if he gets his way, the numbers won’t add up the way he says they will.

President Obama wants to raise taxes on “the rich.” But the Treasury will never collect the revenue he says will come from such hikes, because the rich will change their behavior to escape the punitive levies.

Case in point from Britain, where Parliament recently implemented a 50 percent tax rate on the rich:

The Treasury received £10.35 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month, a drop of £509 million compared with January 2011. Most other taxes produced higher revenues over the same period. Senior sources said that the first official figures indicated that there had been “manoeuvring” by well-off Britons to avoid the new higher rate. The figures will add to pressure on the Coalition to drop the levy amid fears it is forcing entrepreneurs to relocate abroad.

This should be no surprise. When governments raise taxes on the rich, the rich change their behavior to avoid the higher taxes. Liberals understand this phenomenon when they raise taxes on cigarettes to discourage smoking, but they never seem to apply the same principle to income. If you tax income more heavily, you’ll end up with less income to tax, just like if you raise taxes on cigarettes, smokers purchase fewer packs.

When tax rates on the rich go up, the rich can respond in a number of ways:

• Work less. They can work less, thereby earning less income to tax. This makes sense for high earners when their rate hits or exceeds 50 percent. Who wants to work when you take home half or less of the additional money you earn?
• Earn differently. They can also change the composition of their income. In the U.S., capital gains and dividends are properly taxed at a lower rate than wage and salary income (ideally, they wouldn’t be taxed at all). Since the rich are often business owners, they can shift their compensation from wages and salaries to these less-taxed forms. They can also take compensation in forms that are excluded from taxation, like more comprehensive health insurance plans.
• Seek shelter. Lastly, when the IRS comes calling for more, the rich can pay high-priced lawyers and accountants to scrounge the tax code for every last deduction, credit, and exemption to minimize their tax liability. This diverts resources that could’ve gone into creating jobs in other areas of the economy.

Taxing the rich more heavily distracts from the real cause of our debt and deficit woes: entitlements like Social Security and Medicare driving overspending. Washington has an overspending problem, not an under-taxing one. It would be better for Congress and the President to focus on the true cause of the problem than to waste time on counterproductive tax hikes that would never raise the expected revenue and would slow the already stagnant economy to boot.

A recent report from the RAND Corporation on al-Qaeda’s future says that the terrorist organization remains extremely dangerous and will demand America’s continued attention for years to come, echoing points Heritage has been making for some time now.

The report, “Al Qaeda in Its Third Decade,” by Brian Michael Jenkins, takes a step back from the political rhetoric surrounding ongoing U.S. counterterrorism efforts at home and abroad to critically assess al-Qaeda’s current status and future prospects. RAND’s report comes at a critical time, as last week saw the 45th attempted terrorist plot on U.S. soil since 9/11.

In a blunt assessment, the report declares that “claims of [Al-Qaeda’s] imminent defeat are hyberbole,” noting that the organization is “in decline, although not finished,” remaining “resilient and opportunistic.” Jenkins goes on to highlight that al-Qaeda’s operations are largely being carried out by various regional affiliates and partners rather than by the core organization itself, due in part to U.S. counterterrorism efforts worldwide. Al-Qaeda’s threat has been diffused across a broader spectrum, leading to a higher probability of less-destructive—and harder to detect—“do-it-yourself” terrorist attacks.

Regarding the war in Afghanistan, Jenkins notes the symbolic, as well as strategic, significance to al-Qaeda of the Taliban regaining influence there. Jenkins sees a premature U.S. withdrawal as jeopardizing hard-fought gains against the Taliban and notes that al-Qaeda would surely benefit from a Taliban victory. He casts doubt upon the viability of nascent U.S.–Taliban peace talks, noting that it is unlikely that the Taliban would abandon al-Qaeda for political concessions. Instead, following a U.S. drawdown, a resurgent Taliban would control large portions of Afghanistan and become a “more congenial host” to al-Qaeda, providing the terrorist organization with political support.

Indeed, Heritage’s Lisa Curtis has voiced the same concerns, warning that a precipitous withdrawal would “provide the conditions for al-Qaeda to revive in the region.” Jenkins also echoes Curtis’s warning that a hasty drawdown would jeopardize the U.S. drone campaign, as successful strikes rely on sound intelligence and logistical support provided by a strong U.S. presence.

Moving away from Afghanistan, Jenkins raises an important point in highlighting that subscribers to al-Qaeda’s ideology believe they are fighting a centuries-old war that will continue well beyond their own lives. This is fundamentally different from the perspective of Americans, who view war as having finite times, methods, and locales.

This raises a larger question: How long will the fight against al-Qaeda continue? In the current political climate, many in the U.S. point to Osama bin Laden’s death and the absence of an attack on U.S. soil—the Fort Hood shooting notwithstanding—as reasons for scaling back counterterrorism commitment, especially overseas. It’s been 10 years since 9/11, and already complacency could become our own worst enemy, a point on which Heritage and Jenkins agree.

The RAND report addresses this in warning against retreating to a pre-9/11 style of defensive isolationism. Such a strategy, Jenkins argues, “could increase the risk of a terrorist attack.” Moreover, he advises against formally declaring the war on terrorism over because such a declaration would alter the legal framework for intelligence activities, including targeted strikes against al-Qaeda leaders.

Finally, Jenkins credits intelligence sharing and cooperation, both domestically and abroad, as the fundamental reason behind the prevention of further attacks on U.S. soil. He attributes the breaking down of institutional barriers that have led to increased sharing and dissemination of intelligence among federal, state, and local authorities as a key factor for progress in the struggle against terrorism at home, whether homegrown or not.

The Heritage Foundation’s Counterterrorism Task Force Report recommends improving interagency cooperation, maintaining essential tools such as the PATRIOT Act, and expanding efforts to coordinate with local communities in countering violent extremism. America cannot simply rely on drone strikes to keep us safe. As Jenkins suggests, contrary to what the Obama Administration may think, drone strikes are a tool, not a strategy in itself.

The report ends on a somber note: The fight against al-Qaeda could continue, in one form or another, for decades. Americans will have to live with the threat of terrorism for the foreseeable future, their subjective security constantly under fire from those determined to harm us.

Living in such times, according to Jenkins, requires “perpetual vigilance without succumbing to imagined fears.” Bin Laden is dead, al-Qaeda is wounded, but the threat remains as real as ever. For our part, American citizens must resist complacency and urge Washington to pursue the initiatives necessary to combat al-Qaeda’s influence at home and abroad.

With his corporate tax reform “framework,” President Obama today added another element to his ultimately harmful economic agenda.

Previously announced anti-growth policies include massive budget deficits, a huge tax hike on individuals and small businesses in 2013, and his proposal to nearly triple the dividend tax rate.

His new proposal starts strong by reducing the federal corporate income tax rate to 28 percent from the current 35 percent. This is a good and long-overdue policy change. Regrettably, he marries rate reduction to a net corporate tax hike based in part on extending his policy to hammer and ultimately deconstruct U.S. multinational companies. The net effect is that his corporate tax reform would do more harm than good, representing yet another missed opportunity to help American workers.

The U.S. corporate tax rate is the world’s second highest—and soon to be highest in the world by far. The average of the OECD nations (nations considered to have developed economies) excluding the U.S. is just over 25 percent. The combined state and federal U.S. rate is nearly 40 percent. It is miraculous that U.S. companies can compete at all in the global economy with such a tremendous handicap.

At the same time, economists and policymakers increasingly understand that while the tax is paid almost exclusively out of profits that would otherwise go to the shareholders, the true economic burden falls primarily on workers. The reason is simply that the higher the effective corporate tax burden, the higher the hurdle rate on corporate investment. (The hurdle rate is the minimum rate a business must earn on investment to make the investment.) The higher the hurdle rate, the less investment takes place. The less investment takes place, the slower labor productivity grows, and the slower labor productivity grows, the slower wages grow.

This may seem a long chain of events, but every link in the chain is solid steel. In the end, it means the higher the corporate tax is, the lower workers’ wages are. This is why Democrats like President Obama and Senator Ron Wyden (D–OR) are now joining with Republicans anxious to see a lower corporate income tax rate. It’s certainly not to reward corporate executives or shareholders but to protect workers from further degradation of their wages.

Unfortunately, President Obama marries this extremely important policy to two very bad policies. He calls this corporate tax reform. But tax reform is revenue neutral. His policy is to expand the tax base—the measure of income subject to tax—by closing “loopholes and subsidies” so that the net effect is to increase corporate taxes substantially. That’s not tax reform. That’s just another tax hike in disguise. So Obama argues that we need corporate tax reform for economic growth and then proposes corporate tax hikes that would inhibit growth. Go figure.

There’s no doubt the corporate income tax code is laden with loopholes and subsidies, just as there is no doubt the President’s recently released budget adds to the list some of his own. His framework lists a handful of minor proposals carried over from his budget and then references three areas for reform without providing any details. Specifically, he references depreciation schedules, suggesting significantly higher taxes on business investment. He suggests paring back the deduction for interest expense, again raising the hurdle rate on business investment. And he suggests “establishing greater parity between large corporations and large non-corporate counterparts,” which is generally assumed to be code for levying a dividend tax on distributed profits of these non-corporate businesses.

Debating tax deductions is a Washington parlor game. However, suppose Obama chose wisely and that every such subsidy or loophole mentioned is a valid target for repeal. Rather than raising tax burdens, he should then cut the corporate tax rate further. Recall that the average of the OECD (excluding the U.S.) is just over 25 percent. At a 28 percent federal rate, the combined federal and state tax rate would then be nearly 33 percent, still well above that of the nation’s competitors. The U.S. federal rate needs to come down further, and Obama’s additional base broadening would permit it. But instead, Obama takes a pass on further rate reduction in favor of taking the cash for the federal government.

Raising corporate taxes is his first big mistake. Targeting U.S. multinationals specifically for higher taxes is his second. The issue is complicated, but it boils down to some simple points. U.S. multinationals compete on a global stage, earning income at home and abroad. Income earned abroad is taxed by the foreign government. The U.S. also taxes income earned abroad and employs some complex rules to prevent double taxation. In contrast, most of the rest of the world now recognizes the folly of adding domestic tax to the tax their companies pay overseas. This would just make their companies and their workers less competitive at home and abroad, as it does for U.S. companies today.

President Obama, however, wants to make an economically harmful policy worse by taxing U.S. companies’ foreign earnings even more heavily. The vision Obama outlines is to punish firms that outsource jobs and incentivize “insourcing.” The net effect, however, would be quite different. The net effect is to put a “for sale” sign on every profitable U.S. multinational company. The buyers, however, won’t be U.S. companies. The buyers will all be foreign companies.

The reason for this tax-induced fire sale is fairly simple: The reach of U.S. tax policy into income earned overseas extends only when it applies to U.S. companies. The U.S. has no taxing jurisdiction when it comes to the foreign earnings of foreign companies. For example, the U.S. taxes Toyota on what Toyota earns in the U.S. But the U.S. does not tax Toyota on what Toyota earns in Japan.

Suppose a U.S. company like HP earned all of its foreign income through a single foreign subsidiary called Globalsub. Now suppose Globalsub were taxed under Obama’s plan. Globalsub’s foreign profits would then be subject to foreign tax and an even more punitive U.S. tax.

If a foreign company like Sony were to buy HP, shifting Globalsub out of HP into its own foreign operations, then all of Globalsub’s profits would immediately be exempt from U.S. taxes. This sort of tax arbitrage would be very big business. It would also substantially reduce U.S. tax revenues.

Sound far-fetched? It isn’t. Remember when Mercedes-Benz bought Chrysler in 1998? Had Chrysler bought Mercedes instead, all of the German company’s profits would have been subject to U.S. tax, rendering the entire operation uncompetitive. This was all laid bare by John Loffredo, then the tax counsel for Chrysler, in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee.

Another high-profile example occurred when the Belgian company InBev bought Anheuser-Busch in 2008 for $52 billion. The more U.S. tax policy in this area gets out of step with worldwide norms, the more U.S. companies become natural targets for foreign acquirers. President Obama’s tax policies would make matters much, much worse.

The right solution is to pursue a revenue-neutral corporate tax reform, reducing the corporate tax rate as far as sound base broadening will allow. At the same time, in international matters the U.S. should move in exactly the opposite direction from what President Obama proposes so that U.S. companies can compete globally and not become tax-induced targets for foreign acquirers.

In a recent speech to the Conference on Global Zero, Rose Gottemoeller, the Assistant Secretary for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, told the cheering masses, “New START was just the beginning. Going forward, we know that we are going to have to think bigger and bolder.” For those who don’t follow the play-by-play of nuclear arms control, “Global Zero” is a utopian plan embraced by President Obama: that if the U.S. gets rid of all of its nuclear weapons, the rest of the world will follow suit.

Put aside, for now, research that suggests such a strategy is more likely to lead to nuclear war. Just the thought that Obama still thinks New START was a good deal is scary enough. All the arms control treaty that the President signed with the Russians did was make Moscow a bigger nuclear power than the U.S.

On top of this, Obama wants to gut the U.S. nuclear arsenal even more—a policy that is more likely to take us back to the days of mutually assured destruction and massive retaliation than to a world without nuclear weapons.

For those who don’t have time to catch up on all the nuclear news, here are two very short videos that illustrate where Obama’s policies are leading the nation. One shows a plausible future we might face under Obama. The other explains the EMP threat.

Under Obama’s policies, these frightful flicks could one day become history.

Iran’s decision to halt oil shipments to the U.K. and France last weekend is a weak retaliatory measure against European actors for tougher sanctions. Despite this largely symbolic measure, Iran did manage to surprise world markets and drive up the price of oil.

The U.K. imposed its hardest-hitting sanctions to date on Iran last November, but its crude oil imports amount to less that 1 percent of Iranian sales. France accounts for only 2 percent of Iranian sales. Both countries are parties to last month’s European Union sanctions on Iran. Despite this largely symbolic measure, Iran did manage to surprise world markets and drive up the price of oil.

In Monday’s oral debates in the House of Commons, U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague acknowledged that Britain is “already imposing an oil embargo that will have no impact on Britain’s energy security or supplies. Britain has also adopted stringent sanctions against Iran’s financial sector, severing all links between British banks and Iran, alongside similar measures taken by the U.S. and Canada.”

Likewise, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé brushed off Tehran’s taunts, stating, “Undoubtedly, Iran is very imaginative with regards to provocation. It is not Iran that decided to cut off its deliveries, we are the ones who decided to terminate our orders.”

While Europe will be able to reallocate oil resources, Spain, Greece, and Italy, already suffering from economic turmoil, are most affected. Greece imports up to 35 percent of its oil from Iran, whereas Italy and Spain each import approximately 13 percent. It was because of their pre-existing contracts with Iran that the EU oil embargo will not take full effect until July 1.

Strict financial sanctions, though belated, by the Obama Administration last year have left Tehran scrambling to maintain oil production levels. Finding a more friendly market in Asia, Iran relies on China, India, and Japan as its most valuable customers, comprising 45 percent of Iranian oil sales. However, western sanctions are making it more difficult to buy imports and receive payment for oil exports. As such, China, India, and Japan have announced that they are scaling back crude oil purchases by 10 percent.

Iran’s economy is starting to feel the heat, and it will only get worse. Despite possessing the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves, Iran produced only 3.5 million barrels of oil per day in 2011—well below its potential capacity of 6 million. This is largely due to economic mismanagement, skewed priorities, and technical incompetence. In addition to Iran’s already shaky business practices, international sanctions have driven foreign investors from the country. Unemployment stands at 15 percent, and the government has had to cut gasoline, wheat, and bread subsidies. As a result of this and more, economic growth is only half the average rate of other oil-producing countries in the region.

Economic difficulties alone will not jeopardize the Iranian regime. Sanctions require widespread international cooperation and time. Symbolically, U.S. sanctions followed by EU sanctions sent a clear message to Iran, but this is only a small step toward taking Iranian barrels completely off the market.

We keep hearing that the economy is in a “jobless recovery.” What’s holding American companies back? Why aren’t they hiring more people?

High taxes draw a lot of attention, and rightly so. They depress investment and discourage innovation. But escalating regulatory costs also undermine our economy. And small businesses, which fuel so much economic growth and hire so many people, often wind up particularly hard-hit by them.

You don’t have to be a doctrinaire conservative to realize this. The Economist, the London-based news weekly – and a supporter of President Obama’s candidacy in 2008 – highlights the problem in its latest cover story, “Overregulated America.” They note the irony: “The home of laissez-faire is being suffocated by excessive and badly written regulation.”

Mr. Obama also has emphasized the problem. The “rules have gotten out of balance,” he said in a speech last year, resulting in “a chilling effect on growth and jobs.” When the National Federation of Independent Businesses asked small-business owners in December to name their single biggest problem, 19 percent cited regulations and red tape – up from 15 percent a year ago. That’s more than any other category except for “poor sales.”

The sheer number of regulations alone is staggering. Consider the size of the Federal Register, the daily official chronicle of regulatory changes. Before a new rule can take effect, it must be published in the Register. In 2009, it was 68,598 pages long. In 2010, it ballooned to 81,405. In 2011, the Register hit 82,415, a new record. The president’s reassurances to the contrary, the number keeps going up.

Regulations add $10,585 in costs per employee, according to a study for the Small Business Administration. With a price tag like that, it’s no wonder hiring has taken a hit in the midst of a fragile recovery.

Beyond the number and the total cost are the regulations themselves. Many are ludicrously nitpicky and easy to lampoon. “There are nine codes relating to injuries caused by parrots, and three relating to burns from flaming waterskis,” the Economist writes. The Heritage Foundation keeps a running tab of such rules on its “Tales of the Red Tape” weekly blog posts.

But while it’s entertaining to ridicule them – and it’s certainly well-deserved – we shouldn’t overlook the bigger rules. Take these three major new regulations from 2011:

1) March 21: New emissions standards are adopted for hundreds of thousands of commercial, institutional and industrial boilers. The price tag, according to a study by the economic forecasting firm IHS Global Insight: $20 billion. The rules would cause “significant new regulatory costs” for businesses, institutions and municipalities nationwide, the Small Business Administration warned. A Commerce Department analysis found they would result in 40,000 to 60,000 lost jobs.

2) Aug. 8: A new rule forces 27 Eastern, Midwestern, and Southern states to achieve more stringent emissions reductions from power plants. Texas and 26 other states have challenged it, calling it a threat to the reliability of the electrical supply. Annual cost: $846.33 million. Don’t expect this one to reduce unemployment, either.

3) Sept. 15: New fuel efficiency and, yes, emissions standards go into effect for combination tractors, heavy-duty pickups and vans, and vocational vehicles (like transit buses and refuse trucks). The rule is expected to drive up prices for trucks by up to $6,000. And who does the added burden fall most heavily on? Small, independent owner-operators of trucks. Annual cost: $606.9 million.

Many of these regulations, not surprisingly, are created not by politicians but by bureaucrats who are unaccountable to voters. This points to one obvious solution: We need to require congressional approval of major new rules. A new congressional office to analyze proposed regulations and their likely effect would also help, as well as a “sunset,” or expiration date. That would help clear outdated rules off the books.

The stakes are high. “Regulation may crush the life out of America’s economy,” the Economist concludes. Is Congress going to stand by and let that happen?

Ed Feulner is president of the Heritage Foundation.

Cross-posted from The Washington Times.

Talks between Iran and the U.N. “watchdog” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) just failed big time.

You would never know that talking to Ali Asghar Soltanieh, the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA. “The second round of talks about cooperation between Iran and the agency and interaction with each other was held, and the talks will continue in the future,” he declared.

This came as a bit of surprise to Gill Tudor, spokesperson for the IAEA Director General, who told Reuters, “At this point in time there is no agreement on further discussions.”

Should we be surprised? Tehran is a graduate of Pyongyang 101—the school where they teach you how to string along with negotiations and threat while proceeding to merrily build your nuclear weapons and then, after you get nuclear weapons, really start to make a scene. In case Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad missed it, North Korea gave another class last week when it threatened to attack South Korea for conducting training exercises. In the not-too-distant future, Ahmadinejad will be having his own nuclear tantrums—in the middle of the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the White House spends it time sending U.S. officials to lecture the Israelis as being reasonable. Does President Obama not get it? He is pressuring the wrong country! Rather than being played for a dope, the White House ought to get serious about dealing with Iran’s mad mullahs.

Today is Ash Wednesday — the first day of Lent — the beginning of 40 days of prayer and fasting observed by Christians across the country, culminating in the Easter feast. Likewise in April, Jews will gather to celebrate Passover, one of many traditions observed under the religious freedom that the U.S. Constitution was designed to preserve. Now, though, that freedom is under direct attack by the very government that purports to represent the people, and that is but the first step in Obamacare’s re-writing of America’s blueprint.

This week, two more Christian colleges joined other religious institutions in fighting back against that attack when they filed lawsuits against the Obama Administration for imposing an anti-conscience mandate under Obamacare. The controversial regulation forces almost all employers to provide health insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization, without a co-pay.

Heritage’s Sarah Torre writes that Geneva College, a private institution in Pennsylvania associated with the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, and Louisiana College, a small Southern Baptist school located in the middle of the state, have deeply held moral objections to the mandate and are left with no choice but to take their case to court:

With an offensively narrow religious exemption that will cover only some formal houses of worship, the mandate leaves many religious employers who hold moral objections to abortion and contraception without recourse. The mandate places the many non-exempted religious employers in an untenable situation: forced either to violate their beliefs by providing coverage of morally objectionable services or forgo providing employee health insurance altogether and pay hefty fines for doing so.

To date, seven lawsuits have been filed in response to this mandate, and those legal actions are but the tip of the iceberg of opposition to the Administration’s despotic directive.

The controversy began last August when the White House announced the anti-conscience policy as an interim final rule. Individuals and leaders from various faith backgrounds, including Roman Catholic, Jewish, evangelical, and Protestant traditions spoke out, prompting President Obama to announce an “accommodation” in response. But the proposal announced at a February 10 press conference would have done nothing to resolve the moral problem at the heart of the matter. In fact, more than 300 leaders to signed a letter deeming the gesture “unacceptable.”

Moreover, the so-called “accommodation” turned out to be nothing more than a smokescreen, since the Obama Administration ultimately finalized the August version of the rule that had caused the controversy in the first place. Adding insult to injury, the White House finalized the rule within hours of holding a press conference in which the President implied further changes — repeating the disregard for accountability to the American people first seen when they were told that Congress would have to pass the bill to find out what was in it.

The fight, though, extends beyond the issue of the anti-conscience mandate and speaks to the dangerous, endemic flaws at the root of Obamacare. In a new Heritage video, several political leaders speak out against the anti-conscience mandate while warning that this first assault on religious freedom is but a taste of what’s to come under the President’s health care law. George Weigel, a prominent Catholic scholar, says that Obamacare puts our society’s core in jeopardy:

What is at stake here ultimately is whether civil society will survive, and whether voluntary institutions or voluntary associations ranging from the traditional family to multimillion member organizations like the Catholic Church to small businesses will be allowed to function only if they imitate the government, only if they imitate the state.

Truly, the state will attempt to refashion society using Obamacare as its cudgel and awl. Matthew Spalding, vice president of American Studies at The Heritage Foundation, writes that this new, unaccountable regime of unelected bureaucrats — with regulatory authority over one-sixth of the American economy — will issue regulations that will fundamentally alter Americans’ way of life. Spalding says the anti-conscience mandate is but one of the ways that individuals will be affected under this new order of governmental dominance:

What is happening has little to do with health care or even public policy and everything to do with the role of government in the most immediate and intimate matters of our lives. All is subject to government control, regulatory dictate, and administrative whim. Nothing will be allowed outside of the new regulatory scheme: no independent state programs, no individuals or businesses permitted not to participate, no true private market alternatives.

In announcing his school’s Obamacare lawsuit, Louisiana College president Dr. Joe W. Aguillard declared, “The time for silence is over. Louisiana College will not sit by and allow this or any government to usurp our God-given religious freedoms and our time-honored Baptist heritage.” Like Louisiana College, Americans collectively are witnessing their time-honored liberties being trampled upon. They should not sit idly by, either. And Congress should repeal Obamacare forthwith in order to preserve the people’s freedom.

Click here to watch our new video, Religious Liberty: Obamacare’s First Casualty, to learn more about this issue.

Quick Hits:

• One hundred and forty days later, the White House has missed another deadline to produce internal documents about the Solyndra debacle as called for by a House subpoena.
• Only 22 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the direction America is headed, nearly as low as the approval rating during Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
• White House press secretary Jay Carney yesterday claimed that “the President didn’t turn down the Keystone pipeline” and blamed Republicans for making the issue political.
• Iran has blocked International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from visiting a key military site which is suspected of housing a secret underground nuclear facility. Iran denied a similar effort to inspect the site in January.
• The Supreme Court has granted review in Fisher v. University of Texas, a case involving racial discrimination policies of the University of Texas. Learn more about it at Foundry.org.

Two years ago, everything about Obamacare was in the future. Recall the revealing comment at the time by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–CA) that Congress had to pass the legislation to see what was in it. Now that the disputed law is in its implementation stage, Americans are beginning to see what is in it and what it means for them. Welcome to the future.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is the centerpiece of the current progressive agenda. At its core is the requirement for individuals—under penalty of law—to buy health insurance. As we have argued before, this requirement is unprecedented and unconstitutional. The concern is that if government can regulate inactivity, it can do anything and everything.

We now see how this new regime will operate. Massive regulatory authority over one-sixth of the American economy is transferred to a collection of more than 150 federal agencies, bureaus, and commissions, along with an unprecedented delegation of power to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. As a result, key policy decisions are given over to bureaucrats whose “rules” in the guise of “regulations,” mostly unaccountable and invisible to the public, have the full force and effect of laws passed by Congress.

This new bureaucratic reign, its arbitrary discretion, and the resulting potential for cronyism can be seen in Obamacare’s earliest actions. Even before the law is fully implemented, administrators have granted almost 2,000 waivers (mostly for union and business friends) to its own health care regulations. One whole program (the CLASS Act, Obamacare’s long-term care insurance plan) has been unilaterally cancelled as completely unworkable—but kept on the books for possible future implementation.

We now have the first real taste of what is to come. Not only do we have to buy health insurance, but now they’re telling us what that health insurance will look like.

It turns out that under Obamacare—earlier denials to the contrary notwithstanding—all insurance plans must cover, at no charge, abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, sterilization, and patient education and counseling for women of reproductive age. Religious employers such as Catholic hospitals, Christian schools, and faith-based pregnancy care centers will have to provide and pay for such coverage for their employees regardless of their religious beliefs. Although religious institutions vehemently objected that the proposed rule would force them to provide services that as a matter of faith they find morally objectionable, Health and Human Services issued the final rule in its entirety and without the slightest change.

This is not a one-time exception to the rule of Obamacare; it is the establishment of the rule itself. One can only imagine what life will be like when the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) begins rationing health benefits to reduce Medicare spending. It is not the details in Obamacare that are the real problem but the form of governance it establishes, by which unelected experts are empowered to make the rules as they go along.

What is happening has little to do with health care or even public policy and everything to do with the role of government in the most immediate and intimate matters of our lives. All is subject to government control, regulatory dictate, and administrative whim. Nothing will be allowed outside of the new regulatory scheme: no independent state programs, no individuals or businesses permitted not to participate, no true private market alternatives.

There should be no surprise here. This is the heart of the progressive project. It is what happens when a model of government focused on determining outcomes, despite good intentions, finally acquires the unlimited authority to reshape society to its bureaucratic blueprint.

The Obama Administration, still clinging to its failed engagement policy on Iran, is pressuring Israel to hold off launching an attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in self defense. The public admonishment of a close ally is a grave error that is likely to backfire by easing pressure on Iran and ultimately increasing the chances of war.

In a Sunday CNN interview, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that U.S. officials had advised Israel that an immediate attack would be “premature” and counterproductive. He said U.S. officials are not convinced that Tehran has decided to pursue nuclear weapons and that sanctions are starting to bite: “On that basis, I think it would be premature to exclusively decide that the time for a military option was upon us.” General Dempsey said that he is confident that the Israelis “understand our concerns, that a strike at this time would be destabilizing and wouldn’t achieve their long-term objectives.”

That message is likely to be a welcome one in Tehran, where it is likely to reduce the pressure on Iran’s defiant regime to halt its nuclear weapons program. It suggests that the Obama Administration is more concerned about preventing an Israeli attack than in preventing an Iranian nuclear capability, as The Wall Street Journal pointed out today in an editorial.

Sanctions have imposed an increasingly steep price on Iran’s hostile regime for continuing its dangerous policies. But sanctions alone are unlikely to decisively alter Tehran’s nuclear plans any more than they halted North Korea’s nuclear plans. Even many officials within the Obama Administration reportedly recognize this fact.

Only sanctions backed by the credible threat of the use of force are likely to dissuade Tehran from continuing on its nuclear path. Iran in fact did freeze its nuclear program in 2003 after the Bush Administration presented such a credible threat by invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein when he failed to live up to his obligations to destroy his prohibited missiles and weapons of mass destruction programs. Libya’s Muammar Qadhafi also gave up his nuclear and chemical weapons program when he thought that he might be the next target.

But the Obama Administration has preferred to engage the murderous regime in Tehran and misses few opportunities to stress its preference for diplomacy and abhorrence of the military option. This reduces the chances of resolving the problem satisfactorily and ultimately only increases the chances of war. It could lead Israel to take unilateral action to defend itself against Iran’s nuclear menace. Worse yet, it could lead Tehran to miscalculate that it has little to fear if it continues its nuclear defiance.

Instead of pressuring Israel, the Obama Administration should be focused on bringing maximum pressure to bear on Iran.

Add this story to the file of union policies that are good for adults and not in the best interest of children.

In Buffalo, N.Y., the local education union has secured a compensation package that allows all of its teachers to get free plastic surgery as part of their contract. CNN reports:

As thousands of teachers face layoffs across the country, teachers in Buffalo, New York, are getting lipo? Yep. And nose jobs and whatever else they want. All on the taxpayers’ dime. How is this happening?

Dr. Kulwant Bhangoo has been a plastic surgeon in Buffalo for almost four decades. He says, “I feel the teachers have paid their dues, and it would be wrong to take it away from them.” Bhangoo has a large number of customers who are Buffalo teachers and says he advertises his services in the teachers union’s newsletter along with other prominent area plastic surgeons. Buffalo firefighters and police have a similar policy in their union contracts.

The Buffalo Board of Education, headed by Louis Petrucci, has stated that the school system spent $5.9 million on plastic surgery last year and is running a $42 million deficit for the next fiscal year. Worse still, three out of four Buffalo schools are on administrative watch for poor performance.

The complimentary plastic surgery perk is not a new benefit, either. Union head Phillip Rumore says the policy had been on the books since the Nixon Administration. But with taxpayers across the country demanding more fiscal austerity at all levels, Rumore has said that his union will agree to come to the table and take a scalpel to its plush plastic surgery perks.

Evan Walter is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, George Will criticizes the GOP for failing to provide a national security policy that Americans would agree upon. Will argues that Obama has stolen the GOP advantage on national security as a result of the GOP’s reluctance to gut the defense budget.

Will notes that the U.S. defense budget “is about 43 percent of the world’s total military spending—more than the combined defense spending of the next 17 nations.” To put this argument in perspective, Americans spend 14 times more money on charitable giving ($307 billion in 2008) than the Italians, seven times more than the Germans, and three-and-a-half more times than the French. Does this mean that Americans should discontinue their generosity because it far outweighs similar spending in other nations? Also, Americans spent approximately $48.3 billion on pet care in 2011. This figure is higher than the individual defense expenditures of France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Brazil, South Korea, Canada, Australia, and Israel.

In the end, the U.S. defense spending should be based on what is needed to defend Americans and not on arbitrary comparisons to other countries.

The U.S. should deter rogue nations from offensive action against its homeland and allies. The U.S. has the world’s largest economy and, unsurprisingly, spends more on protecting it. It costs more to insure a brand new Lexus LS than a 30-year old Honda Civic. Furthermore, Obama’s proposed budget fails to recognize that it is the constitutional priority of the federal government “to provide for the common defense.”

U.S. military spending embodies approximately 20 percent of the total budget and is only 4 percent of overall gross domestic product. In contrast, entitlement spending will soon represent the entire federal budget if left unbridled.

Despite the dangers of entitlement spending, some still choose to make defense the focal point of budget cuts. If the fiscal year 2013 budget is enacted without any changes, the U.S. might not be able to deny Iran the objective of blocking the Strait of Hormuz. The Navy and Coast Guard would be so thinly stretched that they would be incapable of protecting U.S. borders. The Army and the Air Force would suffer similar outcomes.

In the midst of global instability, defense spending is near historical lows, and military equipment is aging quickly. Drastically cutting defense would not balance the budget but only jeopardize the safety of America and its allies by ensuring that America is ill-equipped to deal with the inevitable dangers ahead.

Bryan Kimbell is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm

The Obamacare anti-conscience mandate has suffered two more blows this week.

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) announced it has filed legal complaints on behalf of two private, religiously affiliated schools, each opposing the Obamacare mandate that forces almost all employers to provide health insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization, without a co-pay. The schools, both affiliated with Protestant denominations, join a growing list of diverse religious employers who are challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare’s anti-conscience mandate.

Today, Geneva College, a private institution in Pennsylvania associated with the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, held a press conference announcing it has filed a lawsuit against the Obama Administration over the mandate’s infringement on religious liberty.

The college takes issue with the mandate’s requirement to provide health insurance coverage of drugs like Plan B and ella, which can sometimes cause abortions in early pregnancy, at no cost to the insured. To effectively subsidize chemical abortions violates the college’s deeply held moral and religious beliefs and runs roughshod over the institution’s religious liberty and conscience rights.

“The government shouldn’t be able to force anyone to buy or sell insurance that subsidizes morally objectionable treatments,” said Geneva College President Ken Smith.

While the lawsuits filed this week focus on the mandate’s threat to religious freedom, the violations of liberty enabled by Obamacare’s unprecedented federal overreach could extend far beyond religious institutions.

“People of faith shouldn’t be punished by the state for following that faith in making decisions for themselves or their organizations,” said Greg Baylor, senior counsel at ADF. “Every American should know that a government with the power to do this to anyone can do this—and worse—to everyone.”

The Alliance Defense Fund also filed suit against the Obama Administration over the weekend on behalf of Louisiana College, a small Southern Baptist school located in the middle of the state. Like Geneva College and many others, Louisiana College holds deep moral objections to abortion and cannot in good conscience subsidize health insurance coverage of drugs that can end a pregnancy.

With an offensively narrow religious exemption that will cover only some formal houses of worship, the mandate leaves many religious employers who hold moral objections to abortion and contraception without recourse. The mandate places the many non-exempted religious employers, like Geneva College and Louisiana College, in an untenable situation: forced either to violate their beliefs by providing coverage of morally objectionable services or forgo providing employee health insurance altogether and pay hefty fines for doing so.

“The time for silence is over,” said Louisiana College President Dr. Joe W. Aguillard, according to a press release. “Louisiana College will not sit by and allow this or any government to usurp our God-given religious freedoms and our time-honored Baptist heritage.”

Louisiana College’s legal complaint argues that the mandate’s coercive requirement and lack of a robust religious exemption infringe on the school’s First Amendment rights to free exercise and free speech and Fifth Amendment right to due process. In addition to constitutional violations, Alliance Defense Fund argues, the mandate also defies existing federal laws including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

With ADF’s two lawsuits and a legal complaint filed today from Ave Maria University (the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty’s fourth lawsuit on the issue), there are now six constitutional challenges pending against Obamacare’s coercive anti-conscience mandate.

The anti-conscience mandate’s violation of employers’ religious freedom is only the beginning of the law’s profound threat to limited government and personal liberty. Obamacare represents an unprecedented federal overreach into the health care decisions of employers, employees, and individuals—religiously affiliated or not—and further implementation of the law will only increase conflicts between government regulations and individual liberty. The lawsuits filed this week reinforce the need to protect religious liberty specifically and personal liberty more generally by repealing Obamacare.

Despite the fact that the “cost of basic knowledge is cheaper than ever before,” the cost of attending college continues to skyrocket. In large part, dramatic increases in college tuition are the result of ever-growing federal higher education subsidies, which have allowed universities to raise prices while incentivizing students to take on more loan debt. But the college price bubble could soon be on the verge of busting, thanks to budding innovations and entrepreneurs in the higher education market.

Udemy and Udacity are two new and innovative online learning platforms providing access to educational content to anyone, anywhere, at little or no cost to the user. Both Udemy and Udacity were founded on a single principle: that everyone in the world should be able to access knowledge.

Both companies operate using an online, open-source model: Anyone who has Internet access can take a class. It is an important step toward the democratization of access to course content and an important new market pressure being placed on a bloated higher education system.

Udemy, founded in 2010, provides open-source educational content to students and teachers. Deemed the “The Academy of You” by its founders, Udemy prides itself on its ease of access for students, offering all of its courses for little or no cost. As it nears its second anniversary in May 2012, Udemy is starting a spinoff called The Faculty Project. Udemy is not seeking accreditation of its courses and does not grant credit for coursework completed by students.

Udacity, founded this January by ex-Stanford professor and Google Vice President Sebastian Thrun and University of Virginia professor David Evans, is emerging as another potential disruption to the traditional higher education industry. Thrun’s initial idea for Udacity came when he decided to offer one of his Stanford robotics courses online, free and open to the public. More than 160,000 students from around the world enrolled in the online course. Thrun says that there were more students in his course from Lithuania than there are students at Stanford. Thrun cites Salman Khan, an ex-hedge fund manager-turned-educator, as his inspiration in this endeavor.

Khan is the innovator behind Khan Academy, a series of videos designed to teach and illustrate ideas and concepts to students. From the French invasion of Russia to black holes to a wide range of calculus classes, Khan Academy offers more than 2,800 engaging video lectures. Khan’s lecture series is unique compared to traditional classroom methods in that his lectures are available at any time online, which allows the student to learn at his or her own pace.

Khan’s model is revolutionizing the delivery of content and democratizing access to knowledge. But it’s a model that could also soon upend the traditional higher education establishment. Udemy and Udacity are seeking to take the Khan model and apply it to college-level coursework. Heritage’s Stuart Butler recently published an article in National Affairs detailing how the traditional model of higher education could soon become a thing of the past. He writes that “the larger threat to the traditional university system seems more likely to come from institutions that combine online education with new, innovative business models.”

Like the Khan Academy, Udemy and Udacity are on the forefront of a brand new system of learning that takes human ingenuity and desire for knowledge and combines it with 21st century technology. So instead of continuing to increase federal subsidies for college—which has only exacerbated college costs over the past few decades—policymakers should rely on the free market to ultimately innovate and drive down college costs.

Evan Walter is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm

On February 21, President Hugo Chavez told the Venezuelan people he will soon undergo another round of surgery. The breaking story was characteristically brief and uninformative. Chavez said doctors had detected a new lesion in the area of previous cancer surgery. He claimed the lesion is small.

Following the removal of an undisclosed malignancy in June 2011 and repeated rounds of chemotherapy, Chavez reassured his country in October that he was cancer-free. Venezuelans loyal to Chavez took comfort in the fact their president appeared healthier, re-grew lost hair, and was even able to deliver a nine-hour state of the nation speech in early January. Chavez was also sufficiently healthy to host a major conference, welcome Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and accuse the U.S. of inducing cancers in Latin leftists. Chavez insisted he was ready for another six-year term, as the October 2012 election nears.

Following the February 12 primary that selected Henrique Capriles Radonski as the single opposition candidate, Chavez launched a savage attack against his opponent, calling him a “low-life pig.” He also met with U.S. celebrity and Chavez sycophant Sean Penn. While praising Chavez, Penn railed at the U.S. Republican presidential candidates for their acts of “demonization.”

Yet professions of good health and political invincibility did not stop what appears to be the inexorable advance of Chavez’s potentially fatal disease.

Operating with customary state secrecy, Chavez flew to Havana for further medical examinations during the weekend of February 17–19.

With Venezuela’s head of state absent, rumors quickly circulated regarding his health. On February 20, Chavez’s Minister of Information denounced the report that Chavez was back in Havana for emergency treatment as part of a “dirty war by scum,” launched by the opposition ahead of the October 7 presidential election.

The news of February 21 was a fresh bombshell on an already cratered battlefield.

The chronic incapacity of Chavez and company to speak the truth or offer genuine transparency in a matter so critical to the nation’s future indicates the ongoing course of deception, trickery, and internal conspiracy that will loom ever larger in the months leading up to the October election. Under these conditions, it is important that the Obama Administration and the friends of Venezuelan democracy work to bring “a semblance of political and social order to a country that is unraveling.”

Coal energy powers the small Colorado town of Craig — quite literally. The community relies on the energy produced at the Craig Station plant to keep the lights on and the economy moving.

New regulations, however, threaten the community’s prosperity. Colorado imposed a renewable energy mandate that stipulates 30 percent of energy production must come from wind, solar and other renewable sources by 2020.

“Society cannot have reliable power based on when the wind blows and/or when the sun shines,” said Rick Johnson, plant manager at Craig Station, in a new video about the town’s plight.

Johnson oversees the 1,311-megawatt Craig Station plant, one of the largest coal-fired power plants in America. To illustrate his point, Johnson notes in the video the drastic difference in megawatts produced by coal energy compared to renewable sources.

The Cimarron Solar Facility in New Mexico, for example, has a capacity to produce 30 megawatts. The Kit Carson Windpower Project in Colorado has a capacity of 51 megawatts. Neither plant was operating even close to that capacity during filming of the video.

Heritage’s Nick Loris, an expert on energy policy, warned that additional regulations would ultimately mean higher electricity prices for consumers and economic consequences.

“Coal-fired electricity provides nearly half of America with affordable, reliable electricity generation but environmental activists have been intent on significantly reducing that percentage,” Loris said. “Adopted, proposed and pending regulations that are both expensive and stand on a weak scientific foundation would significantly increase compliance costs for existing coal plants, and make it more difficult to build new coal plants, increasing the cost of electricity and destroying jobs.”

Aside from producing energy, the Craig Station plant offers other benefits to the community. It employees more than 300 people and helps generate revenue for other businesses in the area — like so many other energy companies in Colorado.

Some of those businesses are already suffering as energy companies, facing Colorado’s new regulations, look elsewhere to invest their resources. Revenue at the local Best Western Hotel is down significantly, forcing the owners to lay off workers for the first time.

“Really what’s happening in Colorado is this perfect storm of federal regulations hammering down on the energy industry and state regulations that are having a tremendous impact on the cost of electricity,” said Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research. “This is happening in places all around the country where we see this attack on the very energy sources that have powered our economy and made this engine run.”

In what is most likely a positive development, the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Fisher v. University of Texas, a lawsuit filed by Abigail Fisher, whose application to UT Austin was rejected in 2008.

As I explained in an article at National Review, Fisher would almost certainly have been accepted if she were black or Hispanic because of the racial discrimination policies of the University of Texas. Hundreds of colleges use the same type of “preferences” that UT Austin implemented, in which admissions officers consider an applicant’s skin color and ethnicity—an immoral and unjustified practice that was unfortunately sanctioned by the Supreme Court in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger.

The Grutter decision written by former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was indefensible, but fortunately, O’Connor has been replaced by Justice Samuel Alito. Also, Justice Elena Kagan is recused, because she approved the filing of an amicus brief in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in this case that supported the university’s discriminatory admissions policy when she was still the Solicitor General at the Justice Department.

When UT’s previous discriminatory policy was thrown out by a federal appeals court in 1996, Texas implemented its “top 10 percent” rule for admissions to the state college system. That rule led to diverse enrollment at UT Austin and minority students with higher grade point averages and better retention rates. Despite that success, UT Austin re-implemented race-based admissions the day the Grutter decision was announced.

The Supreme Court’s acceptance of the Fisher case, in which lower courts upheld the race discrimination practiced by UT Austin against Fisher and other students, gives the Court the opportunity to overturn or significantly narrow the wrongly decided Grutter decision. It can finally put an end to the pernicious “preferences” (blatant racial discrimination) practiced by colleges and universities that violate fundamental principles of equal protection.

As Chief Justice John Roberts said in a 2007 case, the “way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Here’s hoping that is exactly what the Supreme Court forces Texas to do.

President Barack Obama wants to see one million electric cars on the road by 2015, and he wants to spend more taxpayer dollars to make it happen. But if electric vehicles were economically competitive, they wouldn’t need the government’s help. It should be no surprise that, with the nation $15 trillion in debt, taxpayers overwhelmingly oppose the plan.

Rasmussen reports that according to a new poll, 58% of Americans oppose the President’s proposal to offer $10,000 tax credits for buyers of high-cost electric vehicles like the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf:

President Obama in his latest budget has proposed $10,000 subsidies to encourage the purchase of electric cars with his goal of having one million of the vehicles on the road by 2015. But voters by a two-to-one margin oppose taxpayer-funded subsidies for this purpose.

Just 29% of Likely U.S. Voters favor $10,000 government subsidies to encourage the purchase of electric cars, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Fifty-eight percent (58%) are opposed to such subsidies. Thirteen percent (13%) are undecided.

Keep in mind, the Obama Administration already offers a $7,500 taxpayer-funded subsidy for the cars, some of which cost more than $40,000. It’s also worth nothing that the government heavily subsidizes the production of electric vehicles and batter technologies, as well. But even with those subsidies, consumers aren’t pulling the trigger on making a purchase.

In January, General Motors sold 603 Volts — almost twice as many as in January 2010, but less than half of its total sales in December. And in 2011, GM missed its projected sales volume for the vehicle, shipping 7,671 of the vehicles — well short of its target of 10,000. Compare that with sales of pickup trucks. In 2011, Ford sold  584,917 of its F-Series, and GM sold 415,130 Silverados. And those sales weren’t fueled by taxpayer-funded subsidies.

If straight-up sales figures are any indication — even with gas prices at record high levels — American consumers aren’t buying into the Obama Administration’s push for electric vehicles. And according to the poll numbers, they’re not buying into the President’s push to grease the wheels on the sales of the costly green vehicles, either.

In Obamacare’s collision course with Americans’ freedom, one of the first casualties is religious liberty. Despite the Administration’s obfuscating press comments, the finalized preventive services mandate changed nothing from the interim rule. It put into law the requirement that many religious employers violate their deeply held beliefs by paying for abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization. Many recognize the religious liberty violations in the mandate—and Obamacare’s broader threats to individual liberty—will not be rectified unless the health care law is repealed.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops explains that the President’s February 10 announcement of a supposed “accommodation” amounted to nothing more than a smoke screen for the submission of the final mandate without any greater protection of religious liberty.

The rule that created the uproar has not changed at all, but was finalized as is. Friday evening, after a day of touting meaningful changes in the mandate, [Department of Health and Human Services] HHS issued a regulation finalizing the rule first issued in August 2011, “without change.” So religious employers dedicated to serving people of other faiths are still not exempt as “religious employers.” Indeed, the rule describes them as “non-exempt.”…The new “accommodation” is not a current rule, but a promise that comes due beyond the point of public accountability. Also on Friday evening, HHS issued regulations describing the intention to develop more regulations that would apply the same mandate differently to “non-exempt, non-profit religious organizations”—the charities, schools, and hospitals that are still left out of the “religious employer” exemption. These policies will be developed over a one-year delay in enforcement, so if they turn out badly, their impact will not be felt until August 2013, well after the election.

Perhaps one of the most troubling aspects of the anti-conscience mandate is the Administration’s insinuation that religious faith should remain behind church doors, away from public service. As Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer, after outlining the many services provided to the Philadelphia community by Catholic institutions:

Many critics are focusing on the details of this or that particular version of the HHS regulation—the narrowness of the religious exemption, the breadth of the mandate, the hollowness of the grace period. As useful as this approach may be, it risks wandering into the weeds. The White House response on these points is ambiguous and weak. The true magnitude of the issue is getting lost as just another debate about details. In reality, no similarly aggressive attack on religious freedom in our country has occurred in recent memory….At its heart is a seemingly deep distrust of the formative role religious faith has on personal and social conduct, and a deep distaste for religion’s moral influence on public affairs. To say that this view is contrary to the Founders’ thinking and the record of American history would be an understatement….Catholics should not be misled into accepting feeble compromises on issues of principle. The HHS mandate is bad law; and not merely bad, but dangerous and insulting. It needs to be withdrawn—now.

Yuval Levin, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, similarly noted that the continuing outcry over the anti-conscience mandate’s violation of religious freedom is revealing Obamacare’s inherent threat to liberty in general.

The White House’s reaction is yet further proof that the debate surrounding the HHS rule is about much more than religious liberty—and indeed is about much more than the HHS rule. It is about liberty as such, and the threats posed to it by Obamacare as a whole. It powerfully reinforces the case for replacing this detestable law, and for replacing its authors, with alternatives far more friendly to freedom and a properly limited government—not to mention far better able to actually address the problems with our health-care system.

Numerous individuals and leaders from various faith backgrounds, including Roman Catholic, Jewish, evangelical, and Protestant traditions, continue to reject the Administration’s trampling on religious leaders. More than 300 leaders have now signed on to a letter asserting that the mandate’s violation of religious liberty is “unacceptable.” The letter states:

The simple fact is that the Obama administration is compelling religious people and institutions who are employers to purchase a health insurance contract that provides abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization. This is a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand.

In The Wall Street Journal last week, David Rivkin, who was counsel for the 26-state challenge to Obamacare in the lower courts, joined Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, in outlining some of the ways the mandate violates constitutional principles. In addition to infringing on the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion, the authors argue the mandate also violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which prohibits a governmental burden on religious freedom without “a compelling governmental interest.”

The anti-conscience mandate was also included in new amicus briefs submitted last week to the Supreme Court, supporting the challenge to the constitutionality of Obamacare. The Independent Women’s Forum submitted an amicus brief in the case, commenting on the mandate:

Whether contraception ought to be available free of charge to all who want it is an important and complex social question that ought to be left open to debate. We fear that the failures by Congress and the Executive Branch to exempt conscientious objectors is but a “precursor of the state’s hostility” to ideas that it disagrees with.

Americans United for Life, the Alliance Defense Fund, and other pro-life groups also filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court last week, arguing that Obamacare’s provision of taxpayer funding for abortion violates many Americans’ conscience rights. Drawing a parallel between the anti-conscience mandate’s attack on religious liberty and Obamacare’s general assault on individual liberty, the brief states:

Not surprisingly, Congress’ act of overreaching via the challenged Act to impose a coast-to-coast one-size-fits-all mandatory insurance regime has subsequently infringed religious liberties in other severe ways. In particular, the recent regulatory decision by HHS to force virtually all employers to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs will force many religious individuals and organizations into a choice to either violate their religion or pay exorbitant penalties that could put them out of business….Under the Interim Final Rule on Preventive Services,…HHS has provided a grossly inadequate religious employer exemption that would not cover most religious organizations….HHS has not explained the basis for this extremely cramped view of religious liberty. But regardless of HHS’s reasons, it was never supposed to have the power to put religious objectors in this position in the first place because the Founders wisely denied Congress the power to pass onerously invasive laws such as the challenged Act.

With last week’s publication of the final rule in the Federal Register, Obamacare’s anti-conscience mandate will threaten the right of employers and individuals to act according to their deeply held beliefs. Until Obamacare—along with its many violations of liberty—is repealed, outcry against such restrictions of freedom is likely to continue as well.