Peter Deutsch: “I would take second place to no one in this Chamber in my faith and my belief in God. I would take second place to no…”

“I would take second place to no one in this Chamber in my faith and my belief in God. I would take second place to no one in this Chamber in terms of my personal commitment to supporting faith-based organizations. But I cannot support the bill as presently drafted and specifically focusing on the discrimination aspect of the bill. No one in this Chamber would ask that a Jew serve as a Catholic priest or a Muslim serve as a Christian minister. But what this bill specifically does, and we should face it and we should talk about it and think about the implication, is that the person serving the soup literally with the ladle would be allowed to be only of a certain faith, whatever that faith may be, with Federal funds. That is a very scary concept, I think, for many Americans. I ask my colleagues to sensitize themselves about that. We could talk around that issue. We could talk any way that we want. If that money is coming from my donation as a free will offering, and that institution chooses to do that, they have the ability, but not with Federal funds, not with taxpayer dollars.”