“It is deeply disturbing that one in five veterans under the age of 25 is unemployed. The men and women who fought for our nation in Iraq and Afghanistan have to fight for a job when they return home — and the odds are stacked against them” Harkin said Thursday during a conference call with reporters.

“We have a solemn obligation to do right by the men and women in uniform who put their lives at risk for our nation.”

Government officials estimate that roughly 240,000 veterans who served in the Middle East are currently unemployed. The bill approved by the Senate provides tax breaks of up to $9,600 to businesses that put them to work.

The tax breaks were included in the Obama administration’s American Jobs Act, a $447 billion package that was wholly refused by Republican lawmakers last month. U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley says the initiative dates back to May 2010 and this past January, when he and U.S. Sen. Max Baucus introduced and reintroduced the Veterans Employment Transition Act, or the VETs Jobs bill.

“These men and women are extremely capable,” Grassley said. “They have a lot of skills to offer in the workplace. The legislation that Senator Baucus and I put together clears some bureaucratic hurdles and adds a financial incentive to encourage employers to seek out veterans.”

The legislation reinstates a tax credit that expired at the end of 2010, and makes it easier for veterans and small businesses to use. The credits will range from $2,400 to $9,600 in 2012, depending on the veteran hired. Tax exempt organizations are eligible for the credit.

• $9,600 for veterans with service-connected disabilities unemployed for 6 months or longer in the past year
• $5,600 for veterans unemployed for 6 months or longer in the past year
• $4,800 for service-disabled veterans hired within 1 year of being discharged
• $2,400 for veterans who do not fit any of the above categories and are unemployed for between 4 weeks and 6 months in the past year

Any veteran who has left active duty in the past five years who has discharge paperwork showing 180 days of qualified active duty would be eligible for the credit. This would include those men and women who were activated by their states as members of the National Guard. The bill also helps service members market themselves to prospective employers by requiring the military to educate service members about how the credit works.

The only senator to vote against the Vow to Hire Heroes Act of 2011 was South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint, who indicated the measure gave veterans an unfair advantage.

“I cannot support this tax credit because I do not believe the government should privilege one American over another when it comes to work,” DeMint said on the floor Thursday.

The U.S. House is expected to take up the measure next week, and U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack is optimistic that the bill will be quickly passed.

“Tomorrow, we set aside time to honor the men and women who have served our great country in uniform. As we pause to pay tribute to them, we must also remember that we have a moral obligation to serve our troops and veterans with the same dedication and honor with which they serve us. Yet our troops are returning home from the battlefield to face the same economic reality that families across our country are facing,” Loebsack said in a Thursday statement.

“The World War II generation returned home and became part of our nation’s economic recovery. Today, as we work to recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, it is up to all of us as a grateful nation to ensure that those who have fought for us overseas do not have to fight for a job here at home. This generation of veterans can and will be part of our economic recovery, but we must give them the opportunity to do so. This bipartisan legislation demonstrates the progress we can make when both sides of the aisle work together.”

Two members of Iowa’s federal delegation are veterans. Harkin served as an active-duty jet pilot in the U.S. Navy from 1962 to 1967. U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell served 20 years in the U.S. Army, including two one-year tours of duty as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam.

According to a January 2011 report by Jennifer Rizzo of CNN, only 20 percent of the members of Congress have served in the military — 25 from the Senate and 90 from the House. It is the lowest level since World War II.

Abortion via telemedicine in general refers to doctors who authorize the distribution of abortion-inducing drugs to women in rural areas with no access to abortion clinics. These abortions generally involve mifepristone, commonly referred to as RU-486, which is generally used in conjunction with a secondary drug misoprostol to end an early pregnancy. Both drugs have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

In a statement released Tuesday, NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan expressed concern that banning discussion of or reference to abortion could have negative health impacts on women who live in rural areas who then experience “high-risk” pregnancies.

“Under Sen. DeMint’s extreme plan, if abortion came up in that doctor-patient conversation, the woman and her physician would have to go to a separate communications system,” Keenan said. “He’s calling for an abortion-only version of Skype. It is impractical, ridiculous, and, most importantly, bad for women in rural or remote areas who would not be able to discuss the full set of options with their doctor.”

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 87 percent of all U.S. counties lacked an abortion provider in 2008.

DeMint’s amendment is similar to one Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) introduced to the related related House Resolution 2112, or the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2012, which passed through the House in June.

During the House floor debate, King said one his intentions was to prevent Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers from accessing a $15 million line-item in the bill reserved for the development of telemedicine services.

As The American Independent’s sister site The Iowa Independent previously reported, the language of King’s amendment — “none of the funds made available by this Act may be used for mifepristone, commonly known as RU-486, for any purpose” — does not specifically target the telemedicine line-item but applies to any and all appropriations within the bill.

“We have had 14 deaths of moms that have come from this; 2,207 adverse events, 339 blood transfusions [and] 612 hospitalizations,” said King on the House floor in June, but, as The Iowa Independent noted, he offered no source for his statistics. No deaths have been reported by women who have used the Iowa pilot telemedicine program — administered by Planned Parenthood of the Heartland — to which King was referring.

On Monday, LifeNews.com, which focuses on abortion-related issues, reported the same statistics King relayed to his colleagues, citing an FDA report (PDF). The report, which was uploaded by the Family Research Council, reveals information from U.S. post-marketing reports received by the FDA and documents “adverse events” that occurred among patients who had taken mifepristone for abortions.

“Because FDA has eliminated duplicate reports, and in some cases, reclassified the adverse event terms for individual cases after reviewing the narrative details,” the report notes, “the numbers provided here may differ from the numbers of the reports that may be obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.  These events cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone because of information gaps about patient health status, clinical management of the patient, concurrent drug use and other possible medical or surgical treatments.  The estimated number of women who have used mifepristone in the US through the end of April 2011 is approximately 1.52 million women.”

STEVE KING: Herman, there are 50 million people in line in foreign countries waiting to come into the United States legally. So how many would be too many?

CAIN: I don’t have an answer for that, congressman, because I would have to look at one, what type of qualifications do these 50 million people have, secondly, what type of skills and education do they bring with them. If they’re bringing us more problems than opportunities, then 50 million might be too many.

STEVE KING: Would you though, be favorable towards establishing illegal immigration policy that rewarded merits of applicants –

CAIN: Yes.

STEVE KING: I very much appreciate that response.

King also asked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “Is there such a thing as too many legal immigrants? And how would you define that? And how would you — and would you support a merit system to identify their ability to contribute to this economy, rather than familial and any other means that we have?”

The questions suggest that King, who is a prominent member of the U.S. House Tea Party Caucus and has considerable influence among the social conservatives that dominate the GOP Iowa caucuses, wants the presidential candidates to endorse an end, or at least a significant reduction, to family-based immigration.

Sixty-five percent of green cards are granted for family connections: 46 percent of green cards go to immediate family members and 19 percent go to extended family of U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Fourteen percent of green cards are granted for reasons of  employment, 15 percent for refugees and 4 percent are selected through the “diversity visa” lottery. The U.S. employment visa system is structured around an employer-based system, wherein U.S. firms sponsor potential employees that meet the specific criteria needed to fill a certain job.

A merit-based immigration system, such as a Canadian-style “points system,” places greater emphasis on employment by ranking immigrant applicants on the basis of labor market-relevant skills such as language proficiency or graduate degrees. A points system was the centerpiece of the failed comprehensive reform efforts in 2007, spearheaded by the Bush White House and a Democratically-controlled Senate and ultimately foiled through determined efforts by DeMint and other Senate conservatives because of the provisions related to undocumented immigrants. Yet many Republicans maintain that they want a points-based system: Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has said in congressional hearings that he “would take Canada’s system in a heartbeat.”

Because points-based immigration systems require immigrants apply directly to government agencies for visas, the power of employers within the system decreases, which, according to a Migration Policy Institute report (PDF), has both pros and cons. Point systems have greater legitimacy because they, “enable the government to set clear and transparent standards for the human-capital level of incoming immigrants, while conveying to the public that they are in control of economic-stream immigration.” But the report also reveals that in recent years, nations with exclusively points-based employment visa systems have made steps towards hybridizing their systems so as to incorporate the needs of employers, for example, by requiring that immigrants already have a job offer within the receiving country when they apply for a visa. It’s certainly true, however, that the United States is an outlier when it comes to the prevalence of family as a basis for permanent residence.

King has become a fierce and public opponent of many of the family-based components of the U.S. immigration system, which has led to some controversy and was most likely why he was ultimately skipped over for the job of immigration subcommittee chair when Republicans took over the House this year. He has referred to children born of undocumented parents as “anchor babies” because they qualify for citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment and can technically sponsor their parents for visas when they turn 18. And although such remarks are considered controversial they nevertheless coincide with an overall shift towards making an end to birthright citizenship a part of the conservative orthodoxy. Of the leading presidential contenders, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) was a cosponsor, along with King, of a bill that would end birthright citizenship that garnered significant support from House Republicans, and candidate Mitt Romney suggested ending birthright citizenship during his 2008 campaign (although he hasn’t commented on the issue since then).

Attempts to shrink family-based immigration would certainly draw opposition from the Hispanic Caucus and other lawmakers representing recent immigrants and their families. Indeed, many are frustrated with the already extremely long waiting lists for family sponsorship of green card applicants: Because no single country can surpass 7 percent as a country of origin for legal immigrants, immediate relatives of U.S. citizens from Mexico or the Philippines can expect to wait 15 years or more before their petition for family sponsorship is granted.

Nevertheless, King, Sessions, DeMint and other conservative would-be immigration reformers have significant sway in the current primary season, so it’s quite possible that candidates other than Herman Cain will be forced to make public their views on whether the family-based system needs changing.

Robert George — founder of the American Principles Project, which sponsored the forum, as well as NOM’s chair emeritus — co-hosted the event alongside Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). The final candidate roster was Bachmann, Georgia businessman Herman Cain, former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. (Texas Gov. Rick Perry was originally slated to attend but dropped out at the last minute to take care of wildfires affecting his state.)

In an blog post, NOM gave Bachmann a “solid A” for asserting that Congress should outlaw abortion by authoring a federal constitutional amendment, following a question from George. In the post, NOM noted that Bachmann’s answer “breaks new ground” and praised the candidate for agreeing to choose a vice president who opposes abortion rights and marriage for gay and lesbian couples and for criticizing President Obama for not defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

From the debate, as reproduced in an initial transcript by CNN:

George: Would you as president propose to Congress appropriate legislation pursuant to the 14th Amendment to protect human life in all stages and conditions?

Bachmann: Yes, I would. I would put forward a human life amendment. And, at the same time, I would do everything within my power to restrict the number of abortions that occurs in the United States. Perhaps no other federal law has done more good for prohibiting abortion than the Hyde amendment. And I would do everything I could to keep out the taxpayer funding of abortion.

[...]

George: Because, as I say, some people believe that a constitutional amendment would be needed to overturn Roe vs. Wade, and short of that, the best we can do is put some limitations around the edges and prohibit federal funding, as we have done in the Hyde amendment. But my question goes to a matter of constitutional principle concerning the respective rules of the government. President Lincoln famously said in his first inaugural address that if we permit the policy of the government on matters that are essential to the whole people to be determined simply by the Supreme Court, we will have abdicated our responsibility, handed over self-government to that eminent tribunal, as Lincoln said. So, given the clear mandate of the 14th Amendment, empowering Congress to enforce the guarantee of equal protection, shouldn’t Congress act on that now?

Bachmann: Yes, I believe that they should. And it is not only Abraham Lincoln that subscribed to that view. Thomas Jefferson did as well … because Thomas Jefferson understood that, of the three branches of government, the most important was the United States Congress, consisting of the House and the Senate. The second would be the executive, and the third, and a far distance third, was considered the Supreme Court of the United States. If the Supreme Court, by a plurality of the justices, may impose their own personal morality on the rest of the nation, then we are quite literally being ruled by those individuals, as opposed to giving our consent to the people’s representatives.
[...]

George: And if it meant a confrontation with the Supreme Court, are you prepared for that?

Bachmann: Most assuredly.

Romney, who originally had made headlines for refusing to attend the Freedom Forum but then changed his mind, disagreed with Bachmann, asserting that George’s suggestion would amount to a “constitutional crisis.”

Romney: I would like to see that Supreme Court return to the states the responsibility to determining laws related to abortion, as opposed to having the federal Supreme Court from the bench telling America and all the states how they have to do it. I think that’s the appropriate course. … Now, is there a constitutional path to have the Congress say we’re going to push aside the decision of the Supreme Court and we instead are going to step forward and return to the states this power or put in place our own views on abortion? That would create obviously a constitutional crisis. Could that happen in this country? Could there be circumstances where that might occur? I think it’s reasonable that something of that nature might happen someday. That’s not something I would precipitate.

What I would look to do would be appoint people to the Supreme Court that will follow strictly the constitution as opposed to legislating from the bench. I believe that we must be a nation of laws.

Cain and Gingrich, like Bachmann, said they would support congressional legislation to ban abortion, while Paul sided with Romney, saying: “Violence and murder should be dealt with by the states.”

Watch Bachmann and Romney diverge on abortion and Congress’ power in a video mash-up produced by the Huffington Post:

Romney will join fellow Republican presidential candidates Gov. Rick Perry (Texas), Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), Rep. Ron Paul (Texas), former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain in attending the forum.

DeMint will join Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a prominent member of the Tea Party Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as National Organization for Marriage (NOM) chair emeritus Robert George on the moderators’ panel. The panel’s makeup suggests that attending the forum is necessary for any presidential candidate who wants to win over South Carolina’s social conservatives.

By initially rejecting the invitation and saying that he would focus on campaigning in New Hampshire, Romney may have been attempting to cultivate a moderate image demonstrating his viability in a general election campaign against President Barack Obama, in contrast to Perry and Bachmann, who are both seen as more appealing to movement conservatives. But Perry’s rapid rise to the top of the national polls has made it clear that courting social conservatives in the GOP primary is necessary, even for Romney.

DeMint holds tremendous influence over South Carolina Republicans, more so than either Gov. Nikki Haley or Sen. Lindsey Graham, as well as considerable national influence. He has also asked GOP leaders in South Carolina to hold off on endorsing candidates before Labor Day so as to maximize their impact on the race. This “Keep the Powder Dry” caucus reflects DeMint’s discontent with his early endorsement of Romney in the 2008 cycle.

DeMint also recently announced that he would not run for reelection, a move that could cement his status as a conservative party boss who is above the fray in the struggle for the 2012 nomination.

Candidates slated to attend the The American Principles Project’s “Palmetto Freedom Forum” include Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain. The three panelists doling out questions to the candidates will be DeMint, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Robert George, who is chair emeritus of NOM. George is also the founder of APP.

NOM has already attempted to influence the 2012 presidential election by asking GOP candidates to sign a pledge promising to oppose marriage for gay and lesbian couples on a federal level. Perry is the most recent candidate to sign NOM’s marriage pledge, joining Bachmann, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has recently made headlines for opting out of the forum.

Cain, meanwhile, has been attacked by NOM for not signing the five-point pledge, which makes candidates promise to

• Support a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage,

• Nominate federal judges that “reject the idea our Founding Fathers inserted a right to gay marriage into our Constitution,”

• Defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) “vigorously in court,”

• Establish a presidential commission to investigate reports of Americans who have been “harassed or threatened” for supporting ant-gay-marriage initiatives, and

• Try to ban same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia, which is currently legal.

Though a lot of the publicity is being associated with DeMint, George and King will also shape the debate. The stated intention of the forum is “to engage candidates in a fair and meaningful way instead of forcing sound-bite answers to complex issues.”

In rejecting the invitation, Romney is almost certainly giving up any chance of an endorsement from DeMint, who is considered the most influential Republican in the state. Moreover, he is also imperiling any potential support from many of the South Carolina Republican leaders who have joined DeMint in a “Keep the Powder Dry” caucus, a group that has committed to withholding their endorsements until the presidential forum, which will be held September 5.

DeMint, who endorsed Romney early in the 2008 cycle, has voiced regret about preemptively lending the weight of his support before the primary campaign had played out. His influence has only grown since then as he has taken a leading role in the tea party rump faction in the Senate, and has become one of the main proponents of the “Cut, Cap and Balance” legislation.

Whether or not Romney has a chance among the Southern, tea party Republicans that DeMint has influence over is uncertain. Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which mirrored at the federal level the health care plan that Romney signed into law at the state level in Massachusetts, conservatives have consistently expressed skepticism at Romney’s candidacy. The flagship conservative magazine National Review, which endorsed Romney in 2008, expressed these sentiments best when they condemned Romney months ago for his health care record (despite the fact that this record hadn’t changed in the four years since the magazine endorsed him).

Now Rick Perry, who has a much more conservative record than Romney but is also considered more electable than Michele Bachmann or Ron Paul, had gotten into the race. He is the frontrunner in national polls, and as a Southern governor, the South Carolina primary is seen as Perry’s best route to the nomination.

Nevertheless, it remains to be seen how viable Perry will remain as national media scrutiny of  him intensifies on the campaign trail. Barry Wynn, a former GOP state party chair and treasurer of DeMint’s political action committee, told TAI last month that the South Carolina GOP primary has consistently chosen viability over a perfect conservative record, despite repeated assurances by political pundits that “this time is different.” He predicted that the trend would continue in 2012, the influence of the tea party notwithstanding.

South Carolina has picked the winner of the GOP nomination every election cycle since 1980. Romney’s decision to prioritize New Hampshire over South Carolina, however, shows that perhaps that trend might not continue in 2012, particularly if Perry turns out to be a weaker candidate than his poll numbers currently indicate.

Erick Erickson, Red State editor, says conservatives from across the nation “will tell us how we are going to take back America and fight for freedom.” According to the agenda, more than 370 people from across the U.S. will attend the event. #

RedState calls itself “the most widely read right of center blog on Capitol Hill” and says it “is the most often cited right of center blog in the media, and is widely considered one of the most influential voices of the grassroots on the right.” #

This is the third version of RedState Gathering that features, and several conservative politicians: Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. #

This event is sponsored by Heritage Action for America, FreedomWorks, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Let Freedom Ring and South Carolina Fair Tax, organizations that actively promote among other conservative policies a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, strong support for school choice and anti-abortion policies. #

Heritage Action — founded by The Heritage Foundation — says it focuses on policy politics, not electoral politics, while the Faith and Freedom Coalition, led by Ralph Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition, works to enact legislation to support traditional values and lower taxes. #

South Carolina Fair Tax supports a plan to replace national income taxes and to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service and the 16th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which authorizes Congress to collect taxes. #

FreedomWorks also calls for less taxes and government, and recently endorsed Adam Hasner, who is running for the GOP nomination to challenge Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. #

Hasner, a former state representative, is described on the RedState Gathering web page as “Florida’s next conservative rising star.” He has spoken repeatedly during his campaign about the dangers of Sharia in the Sunshine State, saying there is a “civilizational jihad” underway. He will speak on Saturday, while Gov. Scott is scheduled to speak Friday evening along with Sen. DeMint. #

The RedState Gathering 2011 will close with a presentation of Stephen K. Bannon’s The Undefeated, a movie that depicts Sarah Palin’s rise from “from obscurity to national prominence.” #

In order to leverage as much power in the primary as he possibly can, DeMint has asked South Carolina politicians and political operatives to “keep the powder dry,” hold off on endorsing a presidential candidate and let the competition between the hopefuls play out. In an interview with the National Journal, DeMint said, “What we’re doing is encouraging people to wait. Not jump in early based on friendships or whatever.”

DeMint and other conservative leaders — including Iowa Rep. Steve King, one of the leading immigration enforcement hawks in Congress — will be hosting a presidential forum in Columbia, S.C., on September 5. DeMint says the purpose of the forum is to “create a unified front,” with GOP leaders taking the time to carefully scrutinize and then hopefully unite around a single candidate.

Although the question of which issues these leaders will choose to care most about when the nominee is finally chosen isn’t answered yet, both the location of the event (in South Carolina, a state with a new “papers, please” immigration law) and its hosts suggest that immigration might be a crucial topic.

King and DeMint both initially achieved a national profile in the conservative movement through the immigration issue. In the House, King championed the effort to repeal the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship out of fear of the so-called “anchor babies,” children born of undocumented parents, and has compared undocumented immigrants to cattle in defense of building an electric border fence.

DeMint had a similarly immigration-related launch for his national profile when he led conservative Republicans in opposition to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s 2007 immigration reform bill, ultimately resulting in its demise. He also endorsed Mitt Romney over John McCain in the 2008 election in part because of the latter’s moderation on immigration.

Yet GOP operatives say that the primary will be as much about the ability to defeat President Obama as it will be about rigid conservative policy ideas.

“In the past the South Carolina primary has been based around finding the most conservative candidate who can win,” says Barry Wynn, a former chair of the South Carolina Republican Party. He points out that George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and McCain, all considered establishment candidates with moderate records on several issues including immigration, were all chosen by South Carolina to be the nominee.

“I think one of the things that people misunderstand about South Carolina is that it’s not aligning candidates with the primary voters,” Wynn says. He says Dole and McCain in particular are good examples of candidates that deviated from an absolutist stance on certain issues and were accepted by South Carolina voters because of electoral pragmatism.

Wynn also rejects claims that the tea party will seriously change this formula: “I think history is a better guide than trying to extrapolate about the future. Every primary that we’ve been involved with down here people have said this time it’s different, and it never is.”

Moreover, Wynn adds, the forum itself is not likely to dwell on immigration, because DeMint himself is currently focused almost exclusively on economic issues and the national debt. DeMint has made supporting “Cut, Cap, and Balance,” the pledge that any increase in the federal debt ceiling must pass Congress with a budget balanced amendment (which requires a two-thirds majority to approve it), necessary for any presidential candidate who wants his support.

Lin Bennett, the chair of the Charleston County, S.C., Republican Party, says she agrees that the economy will dominate other issues like immigration. “[Immigration] was a very popular issue with the voters in South Carolina,” she says. “I think it will play a part, but based on what I’m hearing, voters are more concerned with spending issues and debt issues.”

But she adds that an outright dismissal of the immigration issue from a presidential candidate won’t be tolerated by primary voters. “I don’t think they will forget that, I think they will use it as a criteria.”

Last week FRC President Tony Perkins (representing lobbying arm FRC Action, of which he is also the president) and public policy group Let Freedom Ring President Colin Hanna co-hosted a webcast on the U.S. debt crisis. Invited to participate were Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), along with other conservative policy leaders.

“Congress has been using the country’s credit cards like an irresponsible teenager for decades,” read a press release previewing the June 23 Web conference. “But now a band of House and Senate conservatives are fighting to turn back the clock on America’s debt.”

During the 65-minute webcast, DeMint drew the morality analogy even closer.

“We’ve got to stop this spending addiction in Washington,” DeMint said. “And it really is like working with an alcoholic. First of all, they won’t admit they have a problem. And then when they do, they say, ‘We’ll quit tomorrow, but let’s have one more drink today.’”

To which Perkins, a former police officer for the Baton Rouge Police Department in Louisiana (from which he was suspended and then resigned in 1992, according to The Nation), responded, “When I was a police officer, I found one thing that really worked on those drunks that came home at night was a frying pan.”

But 20 days earlier, Perkins sent supporters an e-mail alert, asking for help closing its $1 million budget gap by June 30. He excused the organization’s financial struggle for all the work it has done during recent legislative sessions. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Family Research Council Action’s (FRC’s lobbying arm) total lobbying expenditures in 2010 was $110,000; according to the Federal Election Commission, FRC Action Political Action Committee has spent $43,143 in individual contributions for the 2011-’12 election cycle through May 31.

In his alert Perkins wrote:

Ever since last November’s watershed election, which swept a record number of pro-family conservatives into office, FRC has more friends in Congress than ever before. And the more friends we have on Capitol Hill, the greater our ability to advance your pro-family views. This demand for our expertise is a blessing, but it has outstretched our revenue. As we enter the summer months when giving historically declines, FRC faces a $1 million gap between what we’ve budgeted for our work here in Washington, DC and what we’ve received in donations. I have already made cuts to reduce our costs, and our staff is working tirelessly.

Unless supporters donate, Perkins said, FRC “will be forced to do less for the conservative cause.” Every donation up to $250,000 will be matched by a “generous family,” Perkins said. The family was not named.

FRC did not immediately return requests for comment.

The priorities mentioned during last week’s webcast: Cut the deficit, cap the spending and balance the budget. A coalition of more than 80 organizations recently formed acampaign to convince U.S. Senate and House members and future candidates to pledge to oppose any debt limit increase unless the budget has been cut, capped and balanced. Thus far, the pledge has been signed by 12 senators, 20 representatives and 28 candidates.

Throughout the hour, the United States’ fiscal situation was repeatedly compared to Greece’s, but Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) took the analogy further to draw comparisons to slavery.

“Turn your TV on, and look at what’s been happening in Greece,” Walsh said. “We are at the cusp of that. This is a huge moral issue. How dare we enslave future generations? How dare we do that?”

And later on: “I could give a darn about my reelection. I’m on a mission here to stop my kids, your kids, our grand-kids from becoming indentured servants.”

During the web conference, there was no mention of FRC’s own fiscal situation. And in the June 3 e-mail, in which Perkins was soliciting donations, nothing was mentioned of America’s fiscal situation.

“This is no time to be trimming our sails,” wrote Perkins in the alert. “We have more pro-family conservatives in Congress than ever before. Daily, they look to FRC for the facts they need to stand up for families. I have fresh hope that if we keep working and keep praying, we can change the course of this nation.”

The “key areas” FRC is working on include “shaping historic court cases regarding ObamaCare and religious liberty” and “building a powerful network of informed and motivated pastors across the nation.” But “liberals are fighting back-hard,” Perkins said.

If they sense any weakness, they’ll move in and take back the gains we’ve made. And they’ll thwart our efforts at every turn, pushing their pet causes from taxpayer funding of abortion to normalization of homosexuality to intimidating and punishing Christians who voice their objections. Frankly, some donors are on the sidelines because Republicans control the U.S. House of Representatives. Yet the Obama administration simply bypasses the legislative branch and abuses executive power to reshape major policies affecting every family and business.