Let's work to overturn two vetoes

President Clinton, who could use all the friends he can get, didn't endear himself to millions of people, including Catholics, with vetoes of two bills that would have protected the lives of babies and helped to educate children.

One of those vetoes has already been overridden by half of Congress with a companion vote coming soon in the Senate. The other veto should get the same treatment from our elected representatives.

Last week, the House of Representatives voted 296-132 to override Mr. Clinton's veto of a bill that would have banned partial-birth abortions. In refusing to sign the ban for the second time, the President has set himself against the overwhelming majority of Americans who want such abortions stopped. Compared to infanticide by Senator Daniel Moynihan (D-New York), partial-birth abortions are performed on children who are near birth. Instead of being born, however, they are partially delivered, only to have their brains sucked out and their skulls crushed.

Reacting to the override vote, Cardinal Bernard F. Law of Boston said, ``No nation and no legislator can, in good conscience, permit the killing of partly-born infants. We pray that the Senate will make the right choice' by imitating the House override. The ban originally passed the Senate by a vote of 64-36, three votes short of the majority needed for an override.

Interfaith support for the Cardinal's view came from Rabbi Joseph H. Ehrenkranz, executive director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., who said he was pleased ``to join with more than 100 rabbis across the United States -- Orthodox, Conservative and Reform -- who recognize partial-birth abortion as a vulgar, cruel act.'

As if that veto weren't enough to cost him Catholic supporters, President Clinton also found time last week to veto a bill that would have improved education by expanding tax-free education savings accounts to allow parents to cover public, private or home school expenses from kindergarten to college. Other provisions would have allowed grandparents, employers and corporations to set money aside for any child's educational use without paying taxes on the interest.

Mr. Clinton said the bill's tax benefits would go to richer families while doing ``virtually nothing for average families.' But Father William Davis, from the U.S. bishops' education secretariat, told Catholic News Service that any suggestion that the bill ignored poorer families is ``a bogus opposition. I don't think there is a rational basis [for the veto] outside of...pitting public school parents against private school parents.'

Leonard DeFiore, president of the National Catholic Educational Association, said the veto ``maintains a Berlin Wall surrounding American families who live in poverty and yearn to escape to a better future that only a good education can provide.'

You can help make sure Mr. Clinton's actions are canceled by urging New York's two U.S. Senators (Mr. Moynihan and Alfonse D'Amato) to override both vetoes and by encouraging your congressional representative to override the education savings bill. The result will be protection of the unborn and better education options for children.

(07-30-98) [[In-content Ad]]