Roy Blunt: “the reason this amendment is being debated right now is because the administration issued an order that is…”

“the reason this amendment is being debated right now is because the administration issued an order that is unprecedented. It is unprecedented because the mandate provisions of the health care bill are also unprecedented. That is the reason we are debating this now. The administration brought this up. I am still amazed by the fact that the administration would not have excluded all of at least the faith-based institutions from their order. The Catholic hospitals, the Baptist universities, the Catholic schools of all kinds, the Christian schools of all kinds, the Muslim daycare centers--why would they not have exempted these people? They say: We exempted the church itself, as if the work of the church or the character of the church or the faith distinctives of the church, the synagogue, the mosque are only what happens inside that building. There is a reason we have so much of our health care, our social services provided by faith-based institutions, and one of the reasons is those faith-based institutions want those institutions--that they fund, they support, they encourage--to reflect their faith principles. What is wrong with that? There are a couple of issues here. One is the separation in the President's mind of the work of the church or the synagogue or the mosque from the building itself.…”