Democratic California congresswoman, Lynn Woolsey, is calling for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to lose their tax-exempt status. The reason for Woolsey’s push for an IRS investigation into the USCCB is their recent support of keeping government-funded abortion out of the House’s Obamacare bill.

Here are Rep. Woolsey’s comments about the USCCB:

“I expect political hardball on any legislation as important as the health care bill.

I just didn?t expect it from the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). [Conference, not Council]

Who elected them to Congress?

The role the bishops played in the pushing the Stupak amendment, which unfairly restricts access for low-income women to insurance coverage for abortions, was more than mere advocacy.

They seemed to dictate the finer points of the amendment, and managed to bully members of Congress to vote for added restrictions on a perfectly legal surgical procedure. [And I’m sure Planned Parenthood didn’t contact you or one of your fellow congressmen…]

And this political effort was subsidized by taxpayers, since the Council enjoys tax-exempt status.

When I visit churches in my district, we are very careful to keep everything ?non-political? to protect their tax-exempt status.

The IRS is less restrictive about church involvement in efforts to influence legislation than it is about involvement in campaigns and elections.

Given the political behavior of USCCB in this case, maybe it shouldn?t be.”

If the USCCB supported Obamacare, abortion and all, I get the feeling that this congresswoman would not have brought this up. Then again, she might just be an anti-Catholic waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. Who really knows.

If one feels the need to contact Ms. Woolsey about her retaliation against the Catholic Church for the House of Representatives passing the Stupak amendment (which took out government-funded abortion from the House version of Obamacare), you may fill out an electronic form at her homepage: http://woolsey.house.gov/contactemailform.asp

Should the form reject letters from zip codes that are not located in California, just use “94903”, and “San Rafael” for the city.

Tags: Democrats, USCCB

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 5:44 PM . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.