This story is a repost from progressivenation.us.

When inviting participants to the White House health care summit, President Obama urged Republicans to “put forward their own comprehensive bill … and make it available online,” just as Democrats have done.

We’ve known for a while that GOP leaders would ignore the request and not offer a comprehensive bill. The big hint came last week when a spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said, “We will not be offering a comprehensive bill.” Another senior GOP aide added today that Republicans “fundamentally disagree” with the very idea of putting together a comprehensive bill.

But this only encourages the White House to keep talking about it. Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer wrote an item today emphasizing the importance of giving the public an opportunity to evaluate competing approaches to the problem.

That’s why yesterday the White House posted online the President’s proposal for bridging the differences between the Senate- and House-passed health insurance reform bills. The proposal puts American families and small business owners in control of their own health care. It makes insurance more affordable by providing the largest middle-class tax cuts for health care in history, it ends discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, holds insurance companies accountable, and reduces our deficit by $100 billion over the next 10 years.

But you don’t have to take our word for it: the proposal is posted right here at WhiteHouse.gov for everyone to examine. You can read through the plan’s bipartisan ideas section by section, or you can select your health care status and find out what the proposal would mean for you. You can even submit a question for our policy staff to answer.

What you can’t do just yet is read about the Republicans’ consensus plan — because so far they haven’t announced what proposal they’ll be bringing to the table.

In an interesting little twist, the administration has even offered to publish a Republican alternative proposal on the White House website, posting them side by side for Americans to review and evaluate.

The Republicans offered a response yesterday. It wasn’t very good.

House Republican Leader John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) office urged Gibbs instead to “talk with his boss,” who only last month discussed healthcare reform with the chamber’s GOP members at their annual retreat.

“Our health care alternative — the full text of the legislation — has been available at healthcare.gop.gov for months, which President Obama knows, since he discussed it with us in Baltimore a few weeks ago,” spokesman Michael Steel said.

There are three problems with this. First, the GOP alternative is made up of four key areas — all of which have already been incorporated into the Democratic proposals.

Second, this is the House GOP bill. The goal is to see a Republican proposal embraced by both chambers’ caucuses — an official GOP proposal for the party.

And third, House Republicans posted this months ago. Is it still their plan? Has it evolved or adapted at all? Democrats don’t know unless the GOP says so. If this is the Republican plan on health care policy, GOP leaders can present it as such. They haven’t.

This is a real area of vulnerability for Republicans, and they know it. Democrats have presented (and passed) a solid piece of legislation that addresses a serious national crisis. It’s paid for and it’ll work. Republicans have presented … not a whole lot.

There’s a leadership gap between the parties and it’s showing.

This Story is a repost from examiner.com.

As the nation, states, and communities struggle during trying economic times, revoking the tax-exempt status for religious organizations must be considered and is long overdue. This is especially true when groups like Mormons, Catholics, and evangelical Christians contribute to political campaigns that promote their hateful religious agendas, or worse yet, when they preach political issues from the pulpit.

There is separation of Church and State in the United States, and that means religious organizations do not involve themselves in politics to set policy or influence politicians. However, there are instances where the Catholic Church pours money into campaigns against healthcare reform, and the LDS (Mormons) church poured huge amounts of money to defeat gay marriage in California. The campaign in California is most interesting because most of the funds came from Utah.

Around the country, and in the Modesto area, churches put up signs in front of their magnificent buildings urging defeat of gay marriage initiatives, and mobilized their congregations to campaign for discrimination. There were sermons devoted to the evils of gay marriage, and the theme of the sermons was saving traditional marriage and children from the horrors of homosexuality. The twisted reasoning is that allowing gays to marry would destroy conventional marriage, and is an abomination according to the Biblical edict from God.

But God’s laws and injunctions have no place in politics or policy decisions, and candidates have no morals if they take money, endorsements, or support from religious organizations that push for laws that are over 2,000 years old and come from a fairy tale. As with all lobbying groups, there is a price to pay for their support during election time.

Groups like the Tea Party Palinites, and Fox News’ Glenn Beck (Mormon) use God to influence and frighten religious people about the dangers of Obama, Socialism, and the evil gay agenda. Because they use God and money to influence political decisions, all religious organizations have to lose the tax-exempt status.

If the Mormon, Catholic, or evangelical Churches want to run the government, or at least influence decisions made by our representatives, they must lose their tax-exempt status at every level, including the property tax exemption and become lobbyists or a separate political party.

The property tax alone on mega-churches would help communities that struggle for funds. It is especially egregious that most of these buildings sit on prime commercial real estate, and their expansion takes up valuable farmland and public safety resources at a time when cities like Modesto lays off police officers, firemen, and teachers. The property tax alone would fund many positions that the church uses such as police and fire protection.

The scare tactics and fear of damnation for contradicting God usually works on the faithful regardless of the Constitution or their own rule book’s (Bible) exhortation to separate themselves from the government.

Using fear to control the congregation is wrong, but it is their club and they have the freedom to use any obscene tactic to control their adherents. However, when they use their tax-free money and the pulpit to influence policy, they are no better than a lobbyist. Even if they do not try to influence policy, they are no better than a charitable, tax-paying citizen, and must pay their fair share, like Jesus told them to.