Political Quotes

“I urge my colleagues to allow us to begin debate on the Protect Women's Health From Corporate Interference Act of 2014, of which I am a cosponsor. One of this Nation's founding principles is respect for religious faith. Most all of us agree that one American should not be able to impose his or her religious convictions upon another. Yet the outcome of the Supreme Court's recent decision in the Hobby Lobby case is that thousands of Americans may lose the ability to make the most personal choices about what health care meets their religious or ethical standards and hand those decisions over to an employer. The Court's reasoning in the Hobby Lobby decision was deeply flawed. As I and several colleagues argued in a brief to the Court, applying the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as the Court did seriously misconstrues the language of the statute and ignores the intent of Congress in passing it. Giving for-profit corporations the power to impose the religious beliefs of managers or owners upon employees is what violates basic religious freedom. It is a central feature of our health care system that millions of Americans receive health insurance through employer-sponsored plans and those employers are most often, as was the case with Hobby Lobby, corporations. Business owners choose to incorporate because forming a corporation means access to limited liability and other government- conferred privileges. But corporations don't have faiths. People do.…”