Promises, promises

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Nov 11, 2009

Addressing a joint session of Congress to promote his health-care plans, President Obama promised that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.” If you think that promise was sincere, you might assume that Obama was grateful to the House of Representatives for passing the Stupak amendment, which ensured that the presidential promise would be kept. But in a subsequent interview with Jake Tapper of ABC News, the president announced that one flaw in the health-care legislation, which would have to be corrected in the Senate debate, was the Stupak amendment. Reasonable people might conclude that the president was not sincere in that message to Congress. Come to think of it, reasonable people suspected that at the time.