Category: Elections - California Church IMPACT

The Affordable Care Act survives for now. Your voice mattered in this!

7/18/2017

Dear Friends:

The U.S. Senate has failed to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Three GOP Senators plus every Democrat and Independent refused to vote for a poorly crafted bill that would cost tens of millions their insurance and raise premium costs on everyone else.

The straw vote for "repeal and don't replace" is equally doomed by the same votes. Were ACA - Obamacare - simply repealed, it would throw 32 million off health care immediately and would double the cost of premiums over the next several years.

Your calls, emails, FAXes, and visits to your Senators - even friendly ones who already agreed not to harm ACA - were critical in this action today. Americans, united in a single voice about the importance of health care, kept the focus on preserving what we had and not doing harm by repealing some or all of the plan.

Now we can see, as we did in the passage of ACA, that we have strength as citizens and as people of faith.

We will keep watching the next issue - the federal budget - to keep up on cuts to ACA, to Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California) or any other budget cuts, transfers, omissions that might impact our health care. This will include cuts to items that lie outside the operating budget including Medicare and Social Security that have their own accounts but that are targets for cuts nonetheless.

The importance of your advocacy cannot be overstated. Without your voices and your presence, we would be at high risk of losing health care for middle income to very poor people. We won this dispute. We will help you stay on top of new developments. This is not over. We will be called once again we're sure.

Thank you for all you do for justice!

Separation of Church and State at immediate risk - Preserve the Johnson Amendment today!

7/12/2017

Dear Friends:

We hope you were able to join us on the Webinar jointly sponsored by California Council of Churches and California Association of Nonprofits.

The preservation of the "Johnson Amendment" passed in 1954 to preserve both church and state, holds that churches may not endorse partisan candidates. This is a great good for faith communities keeping them immune from the political fray and upholding their tax exempt status.

However, there are forces at large that want pastors to endorse from the pulpit. But think how corrupt that will be. Donors can enrich the church and get a tax deduction, all just for the pastor to endorse a particular candidate. And what if some in the congregation want someone else? They would have no say. The entire congregation could be held hostage to whoever has the greatest donation that would influence endorsements.

TOMORROW July 13 House Appropriations is reviewing Section 116 of the Budget to slide revocation of the Johnson Amendment into law.

We must OPPOSE Section 116 as the start of a slippery slope to creating a nightmare of partisanship within our congregations and in all non-profit organizations.

Our allies at California Nonprofits are making it easy for you to express your opposition. Information on the issue and on Section 116 is on their web site with a place for you to sign on to express your opposition. The California members of the Appropriations Committee are also listed with their Washington DC phone numbers.

Here is the link: http://calnonprofits.org/publications/article-archive/539-urgent-action-needed-on-johnson-amendment

Of course you may also call your specific House member via the Capitol Swiotchboard, 202-224-3121.

The vote in Appropriations is at 7 am Eastern Time tomorrow, so please call today! Keeping church and state separate has benefitted both church and state - this is not the time to change our laws that undermine that critical Constitutional principles.

Thank you!

Reminder: Free webinar on separation of church and state tomorrow, July 12. Join us!

7/11/2017

Dear Friends:

We are sending a reminder about a very important webinar you may want to do with us tomorrow, July 12 at 10 am Pacific Time.

One crucial and under-scrutinized component of President Trump's tax reform package concerns the Johnson Amendment, which guarantees that nonprofits — including churches and religious organizations — cannot endorse candidates for election.

This law, named after then-Senator Lyndon Johnson and signed by President Eisenhower, protects nonprofits from being pressured by donors to support particular candidates in any election. (Nonprofits can take positions on propositions, but not on candidates.)

On Wednesday, July 12th at 10AM (PDT), CalNonprofits and the California Council of Churches will be presenting a fast-paced webinar to educate church and nonprofit members, staff, and board members about who supports and who opposes repeal of the Johnson Amendment, and what the arguments are on each side.

We’re pleased that the National Council of Nonprofits — which is tracking the issue closely in Washington — will be on hand to explain the specifics of the Johnson Amendment and give an up-to-the-minute status report.

Key topics:
• What is the Johnson Amendment and why is it so important to the nonprofit community?
• What are the various groups supporting and opposing repeal, and what are their reasons?
• What are the projections for whether repeal will succeed?
• What steps are nonprofits, religious organizations and foundations taking?

Speakers:
Nancy Berlin, Policy Director, CalNonprofits
Rev.Dr. Rick Schlosser, Executive Director, The California Council of Churches
David L. Thompson, Vice President of Public Policy, National Council of Nonprofits
Tiffany L. Gourley, State Policy Counsel, National Council of Nonprofits

To register for this important webinar as either a Cal Nonprofit member or non-member, please click here

We hope you will join us for the important and timely look at an issue critical to us all.

Thank you!

Facing a Grave Constitutional Crisis? What You Can Do

5/10/2017

Dear Friends:

Yesterday's firing of the FBI Director, James Comey, has led to what is now a grave Constitutional crisis. Comey was the key figure investigating whether American citizens, including key federal office holders and staff, colluded with a foreign government to corrupt our 2016 presidential election.

Firing the man in charge of the investigation is a most dangerous step toward totalitarianism and certainly to a cover up. Our system requires unfettered access to information by our duly elected representatives. Anything that thwarts this action is anti-democratic and a threat to the survival of truth and the operation of a functioning Republic.

While Congress continues its own work, we now must have an absolutely neutral outside force continuing the inquiry.

Please call or contact the Department of Justice and contribute your voice to the call for an independent investigation.

Contact information is here

You may make a written comment on this site or call the DoJ main public comment number 202-353-1555 Tell Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that you want him to appoint and independent investigation of the issues and people involved in the ongoing inquiry to Russian tampering with our election.

We never thought this would be an issue for us again. After the lessons of Watergate 1972-1974, we thought our nation and beloved democracy was safe from craven personal manipulation, from exploitation and abrogation of due process. We at Church IMPACT are charged with examining public policy, but we did not excpect to have to mobilize all of you to defend the basic principles of open and honest government, especially not at the federal level. But we cannot stay silent in the face of such a threat to our system of justice and right.

Please pass this on to your friends, allies, family - anyone who thinks we must speak out on the basic principles of democratic justice. Please encourage them to sign up with us to stay abreast of developments and actions they can take. We face a real crisis in our government, and it will take all of us working together to make sure we pass safely through these rough seas.

They may sign up at http://www.churchimpact.org/take-action.html

Thank you. May Peace and Justice prevail for us and our nation.

Alt-Information - and what we need to do to save the First Amendment, Open Government

1/25/2017

Dear Friends:

In the past few days Congress and the Executive Branch have taken steps that are deeply troubling. There is an assault on our system of democracy that, unopposed, will change forever the trust we may have in our government, the capacity for us to even know what is happening in our federal agencies.

The public voices of our nation’s agencies from the National Park Service to the Environmental Protection Agency were silenced earlier this week. Web sites and Twitter accounts were frozen, and our access to them to ask questions or obtain information was ended.

Some enterprising NPS employees, using their own resources and time, have created an “Alt NPS” Twitter account through which they continue to post scientific information on climate change and other NPS related issues. It’s not a lot of access, but it’s a start. The US Department of Agriculture site, also silenced, is now back online, but their posts of critical scientific information is under scrutiny.

This has a horrible impact on our ability to trust what we read, to obtain what we want to know.

Far more troubling is a Congressional bill, HR 5, The Regulatory Accountability Act of 2017. This bill, passed in the dark of night by the House, changes the entire nature of how we will regulate business, industry, agriculture, mining, or any business at all.

Every proposed regulation will be vetted in terms of the “burden” it might place on the entity being regulated, not the benefit to our nation and our people.

Every regulation will be open to objection, and every business objecting to being regulated will be given more weight than those negatively impacted by the actions of said businesses.

Although amendments were offered to exclude areas from this regulatory roll back, no exemptions were made for public health and welfare, for assuring food safety, for protecting employees not even from exposure to toxins and carcinogens, not for communities exposed to toxic materials, and not even to protect our children by assuring their toys are safe.

Under the pretense of “restoring” Constitutional balance, courts will be restricted in terms of how they may rule. They may not appeal to precedent. They may review regulator laws in light of the burden provision of HR 5 only. In other words, the 228-year-old Constitutional separation of powers and the millennia-long use of precedent by our courts has been ended for these purposes.

You must contact your Senators now to stop this bill. The consequences are dire, and the threat to our Constitution itself is on the line. Please call and keep calling your Senators to insist this bill be defeated! Please call them at the Capitol Switchboard – 202-224-3121. If you want to send a FAX letter, please go to our site http://www.churchimpact.org/take-action.html and obtain the FAX number for your Senators' offices.

This bill sets a totally unacceptable standard. It takes us back to the 1890s where no protections for workers, families, our communities, or our environment even existed. It will allow some to be “more equal than others” and will strip the courts of their Constitutional role as arbiter of fairness.

HR 5 cannot be allowed to undermine all we care about and our standards for due process. Please call today even if you know your Senator will agree. Numbers matter here, and the weight of your opinion can help us block this dreadful threat to open and transparent government and to democracy itself.

Thank you!

Two-step advocacy for health care! Please take action!

1/25/2017

Dear Friends:

Today 5700 doctors broke with the American Medical Association's endorsement of Tom Price for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Why? They know Price may be good for doctors, relieving them of caring for low-fee patients, but he will be horrible for patients.

Price is in policy concert with the anti-Affordable Care Act movement that seeks to cut and cap Medicaid and Medicare down the road. Medicaid - Medi-Cal in California - covers those already living on the margins financially including elders and those with disabilities whose Social Security income is too small to pay their Part B premiums or the 20% cost share. It also has recently covered the truly indigent, our large and growing homeless population of adults without children. This has been a godsend for people, often working but not earning enough for our skyrocketing rents, for whom even ACA is out of reach.

Tom Price and much of Congress want to convert Medicaid to a block grant with a fixed amount meaning few or no new people could be added by their respective state and/or their coverage could be capped no matter how ill they may be. Block grants are also not mandated spending meaning truly heartless states could use the money for other purposes including, yes, tax cut offsets for the wealthy.

Jesus gave his disciples the authority to cure those whom they served. Before any other deed, he told them, "Cure the sick, raise he dead, cleanse the lepers, cast our demons. You received without payment; give without payment. Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts." " (Matthew 10:8-9)

We cannot endorse our nation's health care planning being placed in the hands of someone who wishes to kill the program. It is critical that we raise our voices in opposition to this appointment. We do this in the name of every man, woman, and child whose health hangs in the balance.

If states obtain the right to eliminate services, the conditions no longer covered could be massive. In MN, a state representative, Steve Drazkowski, proposed eliminating maternal benefits and permitting physicians to reject care for unmarried pregnant women; doctors and insurance companies may omit coverage for: in-patient care for post birthing longer than 48 hours for natural childbirth, 90 hours for C-section; services for those on ventilators; diagnostic processes for cancer (blanket omission, no exceptions); prostate cancer screening; mental health; diabetes; and even emergency services.

This list is longer. It's too grim a picture of our future to fully post. No - we are not making this up. It's one legislator's state proposal under a fully decentralized and deregulated health care plan.

Please call your Senators to oppose Tom Price who would willingly support decentralizing health care coverage and turning our health care over to the likes of MN Rep. Drazkowsi. Ask them to take whatever measures they can including a block or filibuster to stop Tom Price's nomination. If your Senator is already in opposition, please thank her or him. This is a key position that cannot be allowed to move forward to abet the dismantling of our health care system.

Please call the Capitol Switchboard, 202-224-3121 to be connected to your Senators. Then call again for your Representative to make sure we get a full look at any replacement bill before we take any more stesps in changing the Affordable Care Act or Children's Health Insurance Plan, or Medicaid, or Medicare.

Our lives and those of people with far too little say are on the line. Please act today to stop the nomination of Tom Price and to demand full accountability to us on any health care plan.

Thank you!

Please oppose Tom Price as head of HHS to save our health care!

1/19/2017

Dear Friends:

Over 250,000 of you raised your voices to support the creation and passage of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. As you probably know, its very survival is under serious threat from this Congress and new Administration.

Tom Price is the new president's choice to be head of Health and Human Services. He is one of the architects of "repeal and replace" health policy, eliminating ACA and putting in...something. No one know yet what that would be.

Of the numerous and often conflicting suggestions about what would come, we have a clear assessment of their flaws from our allies, Families USA.

http://familiesusa.org/product/republicans-aca-replacement-proposals-fall-short-providing-protections-and-care-people

There are larger and more immediate problems, however. Price supports using budget reconciliation (a process that cannot be filibustered and that requires only 51 votes to pass) to cut the funding for subsidies, for Medicaid expansion support, for all manner of fiscal issues attached to ACA. To cut the funding means families would be left with the mandate to have insurance but no way to pay for it.

It is not possible to cut almost any part of ACA without its unraveling entirely. If we kept the mandate on insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions but with no "community rating" making the premiums no higher than for healthy people, it would be a "right" that existed in name only. If we continue the House notion of restoring "risk rates" - age, gender, even ZIP code" - as a way of raising premiums, women, older people, and those living in the "wrong" part of town will pay more without subsidies.

It is true that in some states the premiums have risen. ACA has offset those with increased subsidies. The actual facts are that premiums for non-ACA policies are the ones rising more, less so for ACA plans.

To have the Secretary of HHS support the gutting of ACA, a man who has not proffered anything else, is unthinkable. He has also made clear he will not guarantee women and family access to contraception or even to unbiased doctors who do not discriminate against LGBT people or - and this is actually now an issue - women who have once had an abortion. He has made clear that he will not be our champion on any issue at all.

It is very clear that Price and Congress are unified on one and only one point. The abolition of funding for ACA is more important to them than whatever plan might be passed in its place. This is entirely about offering a pool of funding for tax cuts for the wealthy. It is a budget "neutrality" issues - cut funding enough to equal the cost of the tax cuts for the rich. Do you and I matter in this equation? No.

For those who like "wonky" insights, we offer a long and fairly complex article on the ins and outs of conservative pro-cut, anti-ACA policy people. We urge at least one person in your congregation or group become familiar with the issues - make a pot of strong coffee and give the article a shot - so that we can be aware of what may come.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443932/republican-health-care-debate-guide-perplexed-americans

In the meantime, please raise your voices by calling your Senators, even the ones you think are already committed to opposing this nominee.

To get your Senators' contact information, please use our link here

To call your Senator via the US Capitol switchboard, please call 202-224-3121 and ask to be connected.

If your Senator(s) is on board with opposing this nomination, please thank them. I

f they are not, please state that as a person of faith, you oppose Tom Price's nomination as a man who has publicly said he will not uphold the integrity of health care for Americans and that he should not be in charge of the Department that is responsible for our care.

Then please share this alert with others, encourage them to join churchimpact.org so that we have even more faith voices coming forward to both uphold the work we have accomplished that is doing so much good and oppose ratifying a man who would destroy it.

Thank you!

Senate to finish voting on ACA repeal; House to begin. NO replacement plan exists. CALL NOW!

1/12/2017

Dear Friends:

With the midnight action to begin repeal of the Affordable Care Act last night, the budget reconciliation process, the push to gut the entire plan moves forward. Two GOP Senators - Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul from Kentucky - are possible bulwarks against "repeal but don't replace". We need to contact them.

However, now the House intends to use budget reconciliation, possibly tomorrow, Friday the 13th, to do the same.

This will gut funding for ACA and by extension, Medicaid. In California this is Medi-Cal and carries different names in different states.

From analysts Maura Calsyn and Thomas Huelskoetter of the Center for American Progress comes this assessment:

First, they plan to repeal key parts of the Affordable Care Act—including the law’s Medicaid expansion—through the budget reconciliation process without yet offering any replacement plan. Second, congressional plans to drastically restructure the Medicaid program will make coverage less secure for those who remain enrolled in the program.

President-elect Trump will enter office armed with a variety of tools to undermine Medicaid’s safety-net guarantee, as well as with a Republican Congress eager to pass legislation to roll back the ACA’s Medicaid expansion and leave the remaining Medicaid program underfunded. It will be extraordinarily difficult to push back against these actions. But the first critical step is recognizing that the rhetoric of state flexibility and state innovation is really just a cover for an end goal—to gut the Medicaid program.

In California Medicaid expansion has been an enormous boon to public hospitals, greatly reducing the unfunded "charity care" for the desperately poor and homeless. It has been a huge benefit to lower income working families that long went without medical care at all but now have reliable treatment including massive prevention of things such as childhood diseases, pneumonia, diabetes and a host of other illnesses and conditions. The cost of care will skyrocket as once again people take to the Emergency Rooms for treatment of conditions that have finally worsened to a desperate level. This is NOT a saving for society - it is an increase in costs via tax demands for ER support. We know anecdotally that those without any insurance get less care since the charge to ERs is to stabilize, not make people well. They cannot handle that kind of caseload and, as pre-ACA, may well have to close leaving all of us without recourse to health emergency care.

Raise your voice against this vicious false economy! It is antithetical to every single principle we hold dear in America and certainly in our faith.

Contact our Senators to resist "repeal without replacement" and the the House to stop their budget reconciliation cuts as well.

Go to: http://www.churchimpact.org/take-action.html to contact both your Senators and your Representative.

To contact Senators Collins and Paul or Senate and House leadership if you wish to be heard, please call the US Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected. Contacting legislators outside your district is not effective but DOES make popular will clear. Numbers matter here in terms of the public record of support and opposition for ACA.

As a note to CA residents: last night Senator Dianne Feinstein did not vote. She was in the hospital getting a pacemaker. She is fine, and she is back at work today, but her absence was essential and not indifferent.

We will do our best to keep you up to date, but things are obviously moving very fast, and your "Faithful Five Minutes" can keep ahead of us on any and all issues.

Thank you! You are doing the work of justice! Pass the word! And please sign up others to get our alerts - we are trying to keep up with changes and updates, but your help in doing so would greatly improve our outreach.

Secret Senate meeting takes first steps to end Affordable Care Ace. CALL THURSDAY!

1/12/2017

Dear Friends:

It is almost midnight California time. We just learned that the Senate has taken the first steps to END the Affordable Care Act. No "replacement" is remotely ready to be deliberated.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/11/senate-begins-obamacare-repeal-process-all-night-voting-marathon/96447956/

It is imperative that you call not just YOUR senators but Mitch McConnell, majority leader in the Senate, to express your outrage at this devious move and your support for preservation of the Affordable Care Act.

To access your own Senators, please go here Then call the Capitol Switchboard (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to Senator McConnell.

Clearly the Senate is willing to remove health care coverage without a single plan to assure your well being. This is a travesty of democratic process and a violation of the sworn duty to uphold "The General Welfare". Make your voice heard TODAY.

Thank you!

National Day of Action to Save Our Health Care! Call Congress Today!

1/10/2017

Dear Friends,

We are joining with United Methodist Board of Church and Society, Families USA, and many other groups to raise our voices together on behalf of saving the Affordable Care Act.

Please call your representatives today to remind them that tens of millions of people will lose their care even if only minor changes are made. There are no benefits if guarantees for covering pre-existing conditions are not accompanied by cost control and subsidies. Simply stating that pre-existing conditions must be covered does not make it affordable.

There is too little benefit for preserving the right of young people remaining on their parents' plans to age 26. The parents may not have plans they can afford with or without their children.

What if deductibles are allowed to soar and there is no help financially? Preventive measures, no provided at no extra charge and without tapping the deductible, could go away, making us sicker, unable to catch problems in their early stages.

Please call your representative today. You may access their phone numbers here You may also call the US Capitol Switchboard at:
(202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected.

Please ask your representatives to preserve ACA in its entirety.

Say: "Hello, my name is_____________ and I am part of the (denomination, church, organization). Today is the National Day of Action on Health Care. Our faith principles call us to put the health of our nation's people as a major responsibility we have to serving the Common Good and the General Welfare. We want you to protect the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. It is the right and moral thing to do. We expect you to do this and will be watching how you vote."

Then please remember "Faithful Five Minutes" and call every day on health care or any other topic that concerns you. Five minutes to have your voice heard and to count. It's important.

Thank you!