Obama vs. Romney — The choice is clear

UPDATE: Download this Candidate Comparison as a printable flyer: Black & White or Color

The CatholicVote.org Research team has pored through the public statements and positions of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on issues which matter to Catholics.

We believe the choice is clear: Catholics should vote for Mitt Romney for President.

We have life, marriage and religious liberty at the top of the list, because these issues are foundational. And on life, marriage and religious liberty, Mitt Romney is immeasurably better than Barack Obama.

We have also included other areas of concern to Catholic voters, including fiscal responsibility, education and health care. On these issues, we also think Mitt Romney comes out on top. Unlike abortion which involves an intrinsic evil which can never be justified, Catholics are free to disagree on which approach is best on education, health care and education.

Obama on life:

• Supports Roe v. Wade and affirms, “I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose.” (Source: White House Press Statement)
• As part of his healthcare legislation, almost every health insurance plan will be required to cover sterilizations and contraception–including birth control pills that can cause abortions–with no co-pay. (Source: US Department Health & Human Services)
• Overturned a law that prevented the government from giving aid to international family planning groups.  Now our government can pay for people’s contraception (including abortifacients) overseas as well. (Source: White House Executive Order)
• His campaign boasts that he “stood up to Republicans trying to roll back a woman’s right to choose and defund Planned Parenthood.”  He praises Planned Parenthood and refuses to cut government funding ($487 million in 2012) for the organization.  Planned Parenthood performs on average 900 abortions per day. (Source: Huffington Post)
• In the Senate, he opposed a pro-life bill designed to prevent partial-birth abortions. (Source: IL General Assembly)
• Ended a ban on using taxpayer money to fund embryonic stem cell research, which kills human embryos. (Source: White House Executive Order)
• Eliminated conscience protections for medical workers who morally object to dispensing the morning-after pill (which is designed to destroy embryos).  Recipients of federal money can now discriminate against these workers.(Source: Catholic News Agency)
• Promises to veto legislation that would prevent taxpayer funding of abortion.(Source: LifeNews.com)
• Obama is endorsed by pro-choice groups NARAL and Planned Parenthood.  Planned Parenthood spent $1.4 million on an ad campaign for Obama. (Source: Planned Parenthood)

Romney on life:

• Believes abortions should be limited to only cases of rape or incest or to save the mother’s life. (Source: CBS News)
• Supports overturning Roe v. Wade and promises to appoint Supreme Court Justices who are committed to fair interpretation of the Constitution (Source: Life News)
• Supports the Hyde Amendment, which bars using federal tax revenue to pay for abortions (Source: Mitt Romney)
• Promises to support efforts to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood (Source: Huffington Post)
• Promises to support the Mexico City Policy, which will bar NGOs that receive federal funding from promoting or performing abortions as a method of family planning in other countries. (Source: Mitt Romney)
• Promises to advocate for and support legislation that will make it illegal to destroy unborn children who are developmentally capable of feeling pain (Source: Life News)
• He says, “If I have the opportunity to serve as our nation’s next president, I commit to doing everything in my power to cultivate, promote, and support a culture of life in America.” (Source: Mitt Romney)
• As governor of Massachusetts, he vetoed a bill that would have allowed girls of any age to obtain emergency contraceptive pills (which are designed to destroy embryos) without parental consent (Source: Mitt Romney)
• As governor of Massachusetts, he opposed legislation that would allow the creation of human embryos for the purpose of stem cell research, which would result directly in the destruction of those embryos (Source: Romney at NRLC)

Obama on marriage:

• Supports homosexual “marriage” (Source: CNN Politics)
• Believes the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) should be repealed (Source: The Atlantic – Wire)
• Decided with the Justice Department that they would not defend DOMA in new cases (Source: Dept. of Justice – Press Release 2/23/11)
• Extended to same-sex partners of federal employees many of the benefits that spouses of federal employees enjoy and supports legislation that would grant same-sex partners of federal employees exactly the same benefits as spouses (Source: Politico & OPM Rule)
• Required any hospital receiving federal funds to allow visitation rights for same-sex partners (Source: Washington Post)
• Supports the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires all states to recognize same-sex “marriages” performed in other states, which would effectively make homosexual “marriage” legal–even as he emphasizes his belief that the question of same-sex “marriage” should be decided by individual states. (Source: Whitehouse.gov – Blog & “Respect Marriage Act”)

Romney on marriage:

• Romney’s campaign page says, “Marriage is more than a personally rewarding social custom. It is also critical for the well-being of a civilization. That is why it is so important to preserve traditional marriage – the joining together of one man and one woman.” (Source: MittRomney.com)
• Opposes civil unions that resemble marriage (Source: USA Today)
• Favors some domestic partnership benefits but believes that states should decide which of these benefits are appropriate. (Source: Real Clear Politics – with Video)
• Promises to appoint an Attorney General who will defend DOMA (Source: MittRomney.com)
• Promises to champion a new amendment to the Constitution that will define marriage as a union of one man and one woman. (Source: National Review Online & MittRomney.com)

Obama on religious liberty:

• Obama’s Affordable Care Act will require most employers to purchase insurance that covers abortions, sterilizations, and contraception with no co-pay, even though many of those employers–including Catholic schools, hospitals, and dioceses as well as individual business owners and people of many different faiths–object to paying for such insurance plans on religious grounds. (Source: The Weekly Standard)
• Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claimed the power to compel a church to rehire a former employee to a teaching position.  The case (Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v. EEOC) went to the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously in favor of the church.  The decision reads, “authority to select and control who will minister to the faithful is the church’s alone.” (Source: Wall Street Journal Online)
• Obama’s HHS would not renew funding to the Migration and Refugee Services (MRS), which provides services to refugees, migrating children, and human trafficking victims, because MRS, a Catholic organization, refused to provide or refer for abortions or contraception. (Source: National Catholic Register)

Romney on religious liberty

• Romney writes, “If I am elected President, on day one of my administration I will issue an executive order directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to issue a waiver from its requirements to all 50 states.”  This would allow states to not force employers to purchase insurance that fully covers abortions, contraception, and sterilization, limiting the effects of Obama’s healthcare legislation while he works to repeal it entirely. (Source: Washington Examiner – OpEd)
• Supported the Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC decision that affirmed the right of churches to make their own hiring decisions. (Source: ABC News)
• Defended the right of Catholic Charities of Boston to decide on its own whether it would allow same-sex couples to adopt children in its care. (Source: Fox News)

Obama on fiscal responsibility:

• Added more to the national debt than the previous 43 presidents combined (Source: CNS News)
• Almost doubled the national debt over his term as President (Source: CBS News)
• Added $1 trillion to the deficit each year as President (Source: Real Clear Politics)
• Spent 25% of GDP, the highest spending-to-GDP ratio since World War II (Source: Forbes)

Romney on fiscal responsibility:

• Romney’s goal is to reduce federal spending to 20% of GDP by the end of his first term (Source: Mitt Romney)
• Promises to send a bill to Congress that will cut non-security discretionary spending by 5% (Source: Mitt Romney)
• Promises to repeal the Affordable Care Act, privatize Amtrak, reduce subsidies to organizations that have access to other funding sources or that offer duplicate services, eliminate federal funding of groups that perform abortions, and reduce foreign aid for a total projected savings of $97.6 billion. (Source: Townhall)
• Wants to cap Medicaid spending and allow it to grow at the inflation rate + 1% per year (Source: Economist)
• Plans to reliquish more power to the states, resulting in federal savings (Source: Mitt Romney)
• Plans to work to repeal the the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires the government to pay its employees above-market wages (Source: Mitt Romney)
• As governor of Massachusetts, Romney closed a $3 billion budget gap without raising taxes and left $2 billion in a rainy-day fund (Source: Mitt Romney)

Obama on education:

• Increased federal funding for scholarships and financial aid (Source: Whitehouse.gov)
• Spent $100 billion of the $831 billion stimulus on education-related issues, including teacher salaries (Source: Eductopia.org)
• Issued waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act to 26 states after Congress would not repeal the law, freeing the states from the obligation to ensure that students are proficient in math and reading by 2014 (Source: NY Times)
• Implemented Race to the Top, a program that rewards schools with money for conforming to a set of federal standards (Source: Wall Street Journal Online)
• Refused to continue funding the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, which grants public-school students in DC vouchers for private-school tuition (Source: National Review)

Romney on education:

• In the third year of his term as governor, Massachusetts 4th graders and 8th graders ranked first in the nation in math and reading (Source: Taunton Daily Gazette)
• As governor, he vetoed a bill that would have put a moratorium on adding charter schools in the state. (Source: MittRomney.com)
• Created the “John and Abigail Adams Scholarship” to reward high-performing high school students with college scholarships to any state institution.  (Source: MittRomney.com)
• Supports empowering states to determine education policy, rewarding teachers based on student achievement, and school choice for students (Source: NY Times)

Obama on health care:

• Raised taxes by $500 billion to pay for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which the CBO estimates will cost $1.5 trillion over the next decade. (Source: Congressional Budget Office)
• The ACA compels insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions. (Source: New York Times)
• The ACA, along with the HHS mandate, requires most employers to purchase insurance that covers abortions, sterilizations, and contraception with no co-pay, even though many of those employers–including Catholic schools, hospitals, and dioceses as well as individual business owners and people of many different faiths–object to paying for such insurance plans on moral grounds. (Source: USCCB)
• The ACA requires every individual to purchase health insurance, whether or not they need or want it. (Source: The Huffington Post)
• The ACA makes it illegal for a health insurance company to spend more than an arbitrary amount on employee salaries, administrative costs, and marketing. (Source: PennLive.com)

Romney on health care:

• Promises to repeal the Affordable Care Act as soon as possible, beginning with the stopgap of offering waivers to all 50 states while he works on reversing the law entirely. (Source: Mitt Romney)
• Envisions the federal government’s primary role in health care as creating a level playing field for competition with the goal of driving down premiums. (Source: Mitt Romney)
• Plans to cap the amount that a person can win in court for suing a doctor. (Source: Christian Science Monitor)
• Promises to prevent discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions who maintain continuous coverage. (Source: Mitt Romney)
• Will end tax disincentives that make it relatively more expensive for individuals to purchase health insurance apart from their employers, increasing real consumer choice. (Source: New York Times)
• Will allow individuals to purchase health insurance across state lines, increasing competition. (Source: National Public Radio)

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