Bush to Delay Faith-Based Initiative

Bush to Delay Faith-Based Initiative

NewsMax.com Wires
Monday, March 12, 2001

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration will delay action on parts of its plan to channel more government money to religious charities, until it can quiet some of the surprisingly vehement opposition to the program, the Washington Post reported Monday.

"We're postponing," Don Eberly, deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, told the Post. "We're not ready to send our own bill up."

Eberly acknowledged that the proposal "may need to be corrected in some areas," particularly the interplay between religious programs and government funding.

The White House expected church-state separation groups to object to the program. But it didn't expect a chorus of doubts from religious conservatives such as Pat Robertson and even Marvin Olasky, one of the program's early architects.

They worry that churches would be corrupted by government regulations or that objectionable sects would be rewarded.

The Post said Bush's faith-based initiative is a much broader program that includes noncontroversial provisions that will likely be implemented quickly and quietly.

A proposal to expand the charitable tax deduction to those who don't itemize has almost no opposition; Independent Sector, an association of nonprofits, said that could mean a $14 billion, or 11 percent, annual increase in charitable giving.

The administration's budget blueprint also contains a provision to let states use surplus welfare funds to promote a new tax credit for charitable donations – also without controversy.

The major argument is about a law passed in 1996 as part of welfare reform and signed by former president Bill Clinton. Bush isn't proposing changing what is known as the charitable choice provision – which lets religious charities compete for government welfare dollars – but merely wants to expand its reach to other programs.

Instead of limiting charitable choice to a few programs in the Department of Health and Human Services, Bush would expand the provision to allow religious charities to compete for more than 100 programs in the departments of labor (job training, for example), justice (community policing), education (after-school programs) and housing and urban development, the Post said.

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