NewsMax.com Wires
Friday, August 17, 2001

Stepping down from the $140,000-a-year job as head of the White House Office on Faith-based and Community Initiatives, makes DiIulio the first high-ranking official to leave the Bush White House.

DiIulio said in an interview that he had planned to stay about six months, and after his service passed the 180-day mark "I just felt the time is right to step down." He said he felt he had accomplished many of the things he had set out to do, including helping to launch faith-based offices in five major government agencies, developing the Corporation for National Service and the passage in the House earlier this summer of a "Faith-Based Initiatives" bill.

He said he wants to return to his native Philadelphia to be closer to his wife, Rosalee, and his three children.

"I have to take care of myself," he said, recalling that columnist Fred Barnes once described him as a "walking heart attack." DiIulio said he is planning to shed 60 pounds and halt a grueling regimen of 4 a.m rail trips between Washington and Philadelphia.

DiIulio declined to speculate on who his successor might be. He said he would stay on the job until an orderly transition could be made.

Opponents of Bush's faith-based initiative charged that DiIulio's resignation reflected the resistance the president has found to his ideas of making federal aid available to the social service programs of religion-based organizations.

Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said that DiIulio had a particularly tough time because of the shortcomings in the president's plan. "I think that he has found that it is impossible to deal with the hostility from all sides. This was a program with no constituency except for the one that the White House ginned up."

Lynn also said a hard-core, right-wing replacement would only complicate matters in the Senate. "It is a dangerous time to put a more hard-right person in the job because you have to deal with Democrats and moderate Republicans in the Senate."

DiIulio rejected the attacks. He said he is confident the plans will move forward without him.

"I'm just one guy. There are all kinds of talented and dedicated people in the White House and on the Hill who want this."

House Republicans passed a faith-based bill by narrow margin after a bruising fight over an amendment that would exempt religious organizations from state and local anti-discrimination laws. The laws often bar discrimination against homosexuals, and some religious organizations claim these laws would force them to hire people whose lifestyle is opposed by church teachings.

The Bush bill that the House passed faces tough opposition in a Senate controlled by Democrats. Former vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, the Democrat from Connecticut, favors more federal aid for religious social service groups, but opposes the House bill.

DiIulio said he sat in an Oval Office meeting on July 26th between the president and Senator Lieberman. "It was a great meeting, " he said, "these are two leaders who are for this issue in their hearts…there is nothing they can't do." He said he was confident that Bush and Lieberman could work out a compromise that would result in a faith based bill the president would sign. "They're going to come up with something at the end of the day."

On Thursday, DiIulio's office issued a report of a six-month study of the five government agencies with the largest social service programs. It concluded that religious and community groups don't get a fair share of the billions of dollars of federal spending on social services. Bush has ordered that the agencies try to eradicate bias against religious organizations in administering these funds.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration