Roy Blunt: “I do too. I hope we find out now that while we do not have as much bipartisan support as we would like to have, we will…”

“I do too. I hope we find out now that while we do not have as much bipartisan support as we would like to have, we will have some. Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska, along with Senator Ayotte from New Hampshire and Senator Rubio from Florida and I introduced this bill in August of last year. This is not just something we came up with recently. Members who were in the Senate when the health care act, the affordable health care act passed, said they believed if it had passed in a more normal way, this would have been in the final bill, that would have been an understanding, as it was in the Patients' Bill of Rights draft and legislation that was introduced in 1994 or the health care bill in 1999. This same language was an accepted and bipartisan part of who we are as a country enforcing the first amendment. In fact, in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it says: ``Government shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.'' Even a rule that would generally apply, the government should not burden a person's exercise of religion unless it demonstrates a burden that it is in the furtherance of a compelling government interest. I cannot imagine--nobody has had to do this ever before.…”