Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (Photo: Flickr/US Mission Geneva)

This week Congress will hold yet another hearing addressing a grievance from Catholic bishops, this time about a recent loss of federal funds.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearing on Thursday titled, “HHS and the Catholic Church: Examining the Politicization of Grants,” the committee’s schedule shows.

The hearing will discuss a decision made several weeks ago by a federal health agency to deny millions in federal funds for a charity run by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The funds were for the bishops’ relief program for victims of human trafficking. The group lost the money because it refused to refer victims for contraceptives or abortion services. Three other groups that provide a wider range of services to victims were awarded the grants instead.

The bishops have exercised their immense political power to garner congressional hearings on topics they take particular issue before. Earlier this month, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health met to discuss the federal government’s decision to require health insurers to cover birth control services without co-payments.

The debate that day centered on a provision that allows religious employers to opt out of the mandate, derided mostly by Catholic groups because they claim it is not broad enough. The bishops have led the charge in denouncing the decision.

The Washington Post reported that letters were sent to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius by “more than 30 Republican lawmakers,” arguing that the decision to defund the Catholic human trafficking relief program “was unfair to the Catholic group and might violate federal laws banning discrimination based on religion”:

Two of the letters are seeking internal HHS documents relating to the decision and one, sent Monday by Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), said his investigative committee may issue subpoenas if HHS doesn’t comply.

…

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the bishops conference, said Friday that she welcomed the letters from Congress. “The more we look at this, the more concerned we are about it,” she said. “It appears the grant process was manipulated.”

One letter to Sebelius, by Republican Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Roy Blunt (Mo.) and Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) and signed by 24 other senators, made a similar point. “The integrity and lawful administration of our federal grant process — particularly with respect to equal treatment of religious institutions — must not be compromised,” it said.

The Post previously reported that Health and Human Services officials have denied any anti-Catholic bias in their decision-making.

The bishops have become well known for using their political power to roll back important protections and legal rights, mostly in the realm of reproductive rights. The Huffington Post recently described the bishops as a “group of men with no real background in law or medicine, but blessed with a strong personal interest in women’s bodies, [that] have quietly influenced all of the major anti-abortion legislation over the past several years. “

Blunt’s “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act of 2011,” Senate Bill 1467, thus far has two co-sponsors, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), and it is an identical copy of a House bill that was introduced in March.

Five months before HHS ordered all Food and Drug Administration-approved forms of birth control to be offered to all insured women without a co-pay — a move that has become controversial, especially for anti-abortion rights advocates — Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb) introduced the “Respect for Rights of Conscience” bill, which anticipated HHS’s decision. One aspect in the Findings and Purposes section of both bills is:

PPACA [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] creates a new nationwide requirement for health plans to cover “essential health benefits” and “preventive services” (including a distinct set of “preventive services for women”), delegating to the Department of Health and Human Services the authority to provide a list of detailed services under each category, and imposes other new requirements with respect to the provision of health care services.

Fortenberry’s bill has 44 co-sponsors and hasn’t seen any congressional action since March 28, according to bill records documented by the Library of Congress.

This legislation is intended to amend the Affordable Care Act by adding a section titled “Respecting Rights of Conscience With Regard to Specific Items of Services,” which states that a health plan will not have failed to provide “the essential health benefits package” described in the health care law, if the reason to deny coverage of certain services is because one or more of the services “is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions” of either the sponsor, issuer or entity offering the health care plan. That also applies to individuals, in the case of individual coverage, whose “religious beliefs or moral convictions” are in conflict with any services covered under the health care law.

Under the proposed legislation, health care providers will not be required “to provide, participate in, or refer for a specific item or service contrary to the provider’s religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

The day before Blunt introduced the Senate version of this bill, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), put out a press release criticizing the “new HHS ‘preventive services’ mandate requiring private health plans to cover female surgical sterilization and all drugs and devices approved by the FDA as contraceptives, including drugs which can attack a developing unborn child before and after implantation in the mother’s womb.” Declaring that the new ruling violates “conscience rights,” the USCCB called on Congress to pass the “Respect for Rights of Conscience” bill.

Despite the Institute of Medicine disputing claims that the FDA-approved contraceptive methods offered to be covered fully under the health care law cause abortions, statements such as USCCB’s have been perpetuated by influential policy groups such asAmericans United for Life and the Family Research Council.

This week on the FRC’s Washington Watch Daily Radio Commentary, FRC President Tony Perkins said:

Starting next August, fertility might as well be a disease–because that’s how the government will be treating it. This month, HHS ordered all health insurers to offer free birth control–regardless of anyone’s objections. Drugs like Ella and Plan B are part of the mandate, even though they can destroy a developing baby. Once the regulations go into effect, this “emergency contraception” will be considered basic medical care–and taxpayers who don’t agree will still have to pick up the tab.

Blunt’s bill has been read twice and referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions for review.

Tommy Sowers is vying for a seat in a conservative district in Missouri. (Tommy Sowers for Congress)

Born and raised in Missouri’s conservative, rural eighth district, Tommy Sowers served in the Army as a Ranger and a Green Beret, and then as a professor at West Point. Now the unorthodox Democrat — a critic of the bank bailouts and President Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan — is running for Congress against a Republican incumbent.

[Congress1] This year looks likely to be the worst year for the Democratic Party since 1994, at least. But Sowers remains undeterred. Since he started running, he has shaken enough hands and raised enough money to get noticed by the brass in Washington. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) named him to their exclusive “Red to Blue” program, making him just one of 29 upstarts the party figured might have a shot at turning a red district blue this year.

Besides conferring a degree of legitimacy, however, the program is mainly symbolic. With limited resources to spend and seemingly more and more Democratic seats once considered safe now becoming competitive, the DCCC has decided to mainly play defense, indicating it will spend nearly all its money to shore up embattled incumbents this cycle. But the consensus on that logic is far from clear: If you’re convinced Democrats are doomed, it makes sense to put your money on the natural advantages — name recognition, institutional support, sheer inertia — that incumbents enjoy. But if you believe that the anti-Washington pitch is so great that it’s incumbents, not Dems, who are truly in trouble, then backing credible challengers like Sowers might not be so bad a bet.

So far, however, Sowers is anything but a sure thing. A recent poll — taken by a GOP polling agency in early September – shows him trailing his opponent, Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) by more than thirty points. But it’s better than his numbers from April, in which he barely registered in voters’ consciousness, and it’s enough, apparently, to make Emerson sound a worried appeal last month for more cash, cautioning supporters in D.C., “I have seen candidates who celebrated in September and wept in November.”

So what’s a lonely Dem fighting an uphill battle in Missouri to do? Sowers spoke with TWI the other week when he swung though D.C., and the interview is lightly edited for clarity and length:

TWI: Democrats have been putting what limited resources they have into defending incumbents because that’s the conventional wisdom. How do you respond to that logic and what makes you think your campaign might be any different?

Sowers: Two millennia of warfare teaches you that you get your ass kicked on defense. You only win on offense. It’s a principle of war. And so I recognize and understand why incumbents get first crack on this but this is an anti-incumbent year, it truly is. Our plan all along was to win the race and do it on our own. I didn’t want to be one of those candidates, and I’ve met plenty, that say, “Oh, if only the state or national or some outside group had come in or gotten involved, we’d have won the race.” For us we’re focused entirely on the climate and the resources need to fight and win in the eighth district.

TWI: Running in a conservative state in a conservative district, you’ve taken some, well, conservative positions, most notably your opposition to [the Troubled Asset Relief Program]. Does it feel strange to be advocating a position that I more often hear coming from tea party candidates?

Sowers: I’m seeking to represent the eighth congressional district and they don’t see the fairness in a bailout where they don’t feel they had a cause in it, so it’s a position that both reflects the values of the district and also something that I believe.

TWI: So you personally believe the country would have been better off without TARP?

Sowers: Well, I think it’s much more than TARP. It’s the twelve pieces of legislation that led up to it. We’re talking about the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, so basically that process of creating a system that leads to a bailout is one thing that I’m going to fix.

TWI: In attacking your competitor for supporting the bailout, your race mirrors the heated Senate battle in your state between Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (D-Mo.) and Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). Is that a fair comparison?

Sowers: We’ve got a different race and a different opponent. What I’ve really seen out there is an anti-incumbent and really anti-establishment mood, and you don’t get more “D.C. establishment” than Jo Ann Emerson. She’s the daughter of the RNC chairman, she’s lived [in D.C.] almost her entire life, and she’s one of the five former lobbyists — there’s lots of future lobbyists in Congress — but she’s one of the five former ones. And what we see in this campaign is just the arrogance of establishment. She spent over $6,000 of her campaign election funds at Tiffany’s jewelry store over the last few years while purporting to represent the eighth-poorest district in America.

She’s also spent money at Neiman Marcus and W Hotels and Ritz Carltons and expensive tie shops in Italy. This was not a one-off event that she can blame on some staffer. What you can blame this on is the arrogance of being an established power, but this is a year where being as established power is more of a liability than an asset.

TWI: You also voted for Missouri’s Proposition C, which attempts to invalidate the personal mandate to purchase health insurance, a central component of Obama’s health insurance reform bill.

Sowers: I was one of the few rural Democrats out there to come out and support health insurance reform, but that doesn’t mean I’m for every provision of it. Proposition C was tightly constructed and it dealt with the individual mandate — and when you look out across the party, there’s a lot of folks out there that don’t believe in the mandate.

TWI: But it’s not as if you can take one piece out of health care reform and expect it to work as well. Without a mandate, you can’t reasonably demand that health insurance companies stop denying coverage for people with preexisting conditions. So how would you take this one piece out without letting the whole structure crumble?

Sowers: I don’t think [the personal mandate] should have been in there in the first place. You’re talking about the federal government mandating the purchase of a private product. The parts of health reform that I do like are the parts about creating competition. That’s one of the ways that you drive down costs, by setting up state-based exchanges. I think its one of your most effective ways to do that. And the credits to small businesses – I’m from a district with a lot of companies with less than fifty employees and there’s a lot of businesses that are going to benefit from those.

TWI: But is the Prop C measure even constitutional? Do you believe it can it nullify a portion of federal law?

Sowers: I’m not a legal scholar on this, but when it comes to the federal government mandating the purchase of a private product, this is something that doesn’t sit well in the eigth congressional district and lots of parts of America. So I think it’s going to be debated in the courts but ultimately it needs to be fixed in Congress.

TWI: The subject you tend to talk about most, however, is Afghanistan. It doesn’t seem to be the main issue that the electorate, at least nationally, is citing in the current cycle so I’m wondering why you’re bringing it up so much and what your position is.

Sowers: I’m not bringing up the issue. The people I’m seeking to represent are. I did 28 town halls over 28 straight days in July and I got asked about Afghanistan in every single town hall, and there’s a reason behind it. Even though you’re only talking about one percent of the population – or really less than that – that’s currently serving, it’s a much higher percentage in my district. There’s 70,000 veterans in my district and when I enter a room and I ask people how many of you are veterans or related to people who are serving, almost the entire room raises their hand. So this is an issue that has personal salience for the people in my home because it matters. It’s personal.

But more than that, it is tied to issues in 2010. Folks at home, they ask me all the time, “Why are we spending money overseas when we should be spending it here or we shouldn’t be adding more to the debt?” When we talk about where can we cut in terms of discretionary spending, right now we’re spending $400 a gallon – the taxpayer is – for every gallon of gas in Kabul, so it’s an area where there can actually be cost savings. And any soldier that is deployed – they’ve seen the waste, fraud, and abuse that occurs on military operations. So the stance on Afghanistan is very simply, we need to end fighting a conventional war because we’re fighting an unconventional conflict. […]

TWI: If Obama wanted to come and campaign for you in Missouri, what would be your reaction to that?

Sowers: There’s been no offer, and for me, we’re really running a campaign that’s focused on local issues. People in my district aren’t getting swept up in this whole national debate. They just want somebody that can come in and fix it. People say it’s a bad year, or potentially a bad year, for Democrats. Well it’s a bad year for a lot of people out there and it’s because of the economy. It’s because our jobs have been shipped overseas and it’s because we’ve bailed out places like Wall Street, and they understand that causal link. So they’re looking far more for a guy that’s actually from there, working his tail off in a campaign, who will work his tail off in Congress.

TWI: The only poll I’ve seen recently is something from Missouri State University that had you down 64 to 17 percent. Is that the latest?

Sowers: No we’ve got updated numbers and it’s looking good. We’re closing the gap – our name ID, which is what we’re tracking very closely, is much higher than we expected it to be. So this is a race that will ultimately break later, and we know that, but right now we’re reaping the benefits of, just frankly, working our tail off. We have a great field program in place, I’m out on the ground quite a bit, and now voters are meeting me for the second and third time, so I like where we’re at.

TWI: You did something where you ran through part or all of the district earlier this year?

Sowers: I marched 100 miles over Memorial Day weekend through 100 miles of yard sales, and when you walk up to a voter and say, “I just walked 80 miles to meet you,” which was a true statement, they’ve never seen anything like that before. I’m not trying to run this campaign, frankly, as an old guy. I’m running it as I am, which is as a 34-year-old, tobacco-using Green Beret straight out of the military who’s not the most finely polished stone out there, but who is sincere in his desire to fight for his home.

The ad, which is set to air in the Kansas City media market, goes after Missouri GOP Senate candidate Rep. Roy Blunt for a provision he tried to insert into a homeland security bill that would have benefited Phillip Morris, the tobacco company. It also mentions the fact that both Blunt’s son and then-girlfriend (now wife) were lobbyists for Phillip Morris’ parent company at the time, labeling Blunt “what’s wrong with Washington.”

Aside from a few large labor unions like the American Federation Of State County & Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union, Democratic-leaning outside groups have struggled, relative to their conservative counterparts like American Crossroads and Club for Growth, to raise and spend cash. Commonsense Ten — whose three founding members are former Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee executive director Jim Jordan, Democratic operative Jeff Forbes, and former Al Gore aide Monica Dixon — only reported raising $500 in the second quarter that ended on June 31, for instance. The group’s six figure ad buy today indicates it must have done at least somewhat better than that in the summer months that followed.

Despite the close nature his race against Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Giannoulias’ choice still makes sense. He’s running for the Senate seat once held by Obama, and despite the president’s falling numbers, he still retains a slight majority of support from voters in his home state.

In states with less inherent affection for Obama, however, the approach has been quite different. Take Missouri, where Senate candidate Robin Carnahan (D-Mo.) isn’t just borrowing a Tea Party tactic in attacking Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) over his support for the bank bailout, she’s also actively distancing herself in her new ad from the president and the House speaker:

The tactic might seem extreme and maybe even counterproductive, but in a state in which a ballot proposition attempting to invalidate a key measure of Obama’s health care reform bill passed overwhelmingly last month, it may be Carnahan’s only hope.

The ad in question spends a lot of time criticizing Hagel but is rather short on Sestak’s particular shortcomings. An accompanying website mentions that Sestak once signed a letter asking President Obama to pressure Israel to relax its security measures on the Gaza border. It cites, oddly, a New York Times article that mentions the frustrating and overly burdensome restrictions that were then in place. It also mentions the fact that Sestak gave a keynote speech at an event for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and repeats the claim that CAIR is “a supporter of terrorism.” This claim is based largely on the fact that CAIR was once mentioned as an “unindicted coconspirator” in a terrorism-related trial, which, as the term suggests, means the group was never convicted, nor even indicted, for its any of its actions. It neglects to mention that Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Pa.) and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter (D-Pa.) have also attended the CAIR event in Philadelphia in previous years and neither stands accused of hating the state of Israel.

The ad campaign is backed by the Republican Jewish Coalition, whose PAC has thus far spent money this election cycle donating to Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.), Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), and a host of other Republicans. It has less to do with Sestak’s beliefs and more to do with an effort to sow doubts among Pennsylvania’s pro-Israel population by distorting them.

Thanks to the beauty of the internet, however, someone was able to dig it back up again:

This morning, the Carnahan campaign fired back:

“Congressman Blunt’s desperate attempt to avoid talking about his role in the $700 billion bailout by exploiting victims and families of the 9-11 tragedies is the very worst kind of Washington politics,” said Robin Carnahan. “Congressman Blunt should immediately own up to what he did, take responsibility for it, and apologize to the families of the 9-11 victims, whose tragedy he exploited for his own personal political benefit.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) recently launched a new ad linking his right-wing primary challenger, former Arizona Republican Rep. J.D. Hayworth, to Abramoff. And Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Robin Carnahan used McCain’s attacks as a renewed opportunity to hit her Republican opponent Roy Blunt for his ties to the lobbyist-turned-convicted-felon.

Hayworth and Blunt are not the only active politicians to have accepted donations from the tainted lobbyist. In all, 37 current congressional candidates and sitting members of Congress received money from Abramoff, according to a review of campaign finance data by the Center for Responsive Politics.

It’s the same strategy that Republicans are attempting to employ in the case of Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), tying every Democrat who’s received contributions from the embattled representative to his present alleged ethics violations. And with all the mileage that politicians have gotten out of the Abramoff scandal, it looks to be a pretty effective one.

For a full breakdown of all Abramoff’s beneficiaries, the Center for Responsive Politics has a spreadsheet you can download here.

Arkansas Senate: Gilbert Baker ($2,400)

Florida Senate: Marco Rubio ($1,000)

Missouri Senate: Roy Blunt ($1,000)

Pennsylvania Senate: Pat Toomey ($1,000)

Well, here’s the list:Politicians Who Received SarahPAC Donations in 2009*

• Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) $3,500
• Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) $3,500
• Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) $2,500
• Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) $2,500
• Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) $2,500
• Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) $2,500
• Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) $1,000
• Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) $2,500
• Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) $1,000
• Doug Hoffman, candidate for New York’s 23rd District (R) $5,000
• John Kasich, candidate for Ohio governor (R) $5,000
• Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) $5,000
• Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va.) $2,500
• Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) $5,000
• Rob Portman, candidate for Ohio Senate (R) $3,500
• Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) $1,000
• Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) $1,000
• Ohio State Auditor Mary Taylor (R-Ohio) $1,000
• Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) $2,500

Julissa Treviño contributed research to this post.