James Talarico, the seminary-trained Austin Democrat running for a Texas Senate seat, stood in a DeSoto church on July 20 and told the congregation that Jesus Christ's primary earthly mission was lobbying for a Medicare public option.
The same party that sues to remove nativity scenes from courthouse lawns would now like to use Scripture as a policy whitepaper.
Talarico, who has pledged $25 million for black voter outreach in his Senate campaign, laid out his theological case for government-run health care during the town hall. "If you read our scriptures, if you read the New Testament, what does Jesus spend most of his time doing?" Talarico asked the crowd. "It's not preaching, it's not teaching, it is healing. Healing the sick."
He then went full chapter-and-verse. "And in Matthew 25, scripture says that's how we will be judged and how we will be saved. By healing the sick, by feeding the hungry, by welcoming the stranger, by visiting the prisoner."
Now, Matthew 25 is about individual acts of mercy and compassion. Personal charity. One human being helping another. It is not — and never has been — a legislative blueprint for routing your tax dollars through a federal bureaucracy that can't process a passport in under eight weeks.
But Talarico's reading of Scripture led him to a very specific earthly conclusion: we need to "finish the work of President Obama" by passing a public option. He also pushed drug price negotiation, out-of-pocket cost caps, and a $25 per prescription insulin copay cap. "Because health care is a human right," Talarico declared. "It is not a privilege."
It's a fascinating theological framework from a member of the party that has spent the better part of two decades telling us religion has no place in public policy. When a conservative cites faith as a reason to protect life in the womb, we're told about the separation of church and state. When a Republican references biblical principles on marriage, the ACLU files a brief before the press conference ends. But when a Democrat stands in a church and says Jesus commands us to pass a public option — suddenly the wall between church and state has a door, and it swings one direction.
The "healing the sick" line is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Jesus healed people directly, personally, immediately — no pre-authorization required, no 90-day formulary review, no hold music. The leap from "Jesus healed the sick" to "therefore Congress should administer a public insurance option" skips approximately forty steps of logic and two thousand years of church teaching on subsidiarity.
Talarico also conspicuously avoided mentioning the parts of his party's platform that don't poll as well in a DeSoto church — like taxpayer-funded gender-affirming procedures for minors, which Texas has restricted, or the party's general allergy to religious liberty protections when they conflict with progressive priorities.
When conservatives quote Scripture, it's theocracy. When Democrats quote Scripture, it's compassion. The Bible apparently commands a public option but has nothing to say about anything else the left finds inconvenient. Funny how that works.
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