Uncharitable Choice: The president's way is the wrong way - Bush should focus on tax credits to help charities rather than proposed faith-based initiatives

National Review, July 9, 2001 by Kate O'Beirne

President Bush's point man on faith-based initiatives, John J. DiIulio, has been extremely vocal about the need for conservatives to support the administration's charitable-choice proposal-but some conservatives are wary, and rightly so. The bill, now before Congress, risks two things: compromising the independence of religious groups, and tilting the ground between neighboring churches by turning some of them into federal grantees. For these and other reasons, Bush's allies on Capitol Hill are increasingly pessimistic about the bill's prospects.

The administration hoped for House passage of the charitable-choice proposal by early July, but Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, recently alerted the White House that the measure is in serious trouble. Another GOP member-who, like Sensenbrenner, supports the initiative-says it will be watered down dramatically if the administration doesn't do a better job of addressing the complicated constitutional issues involved in providing direct government aid to religious organizations.

In addition to permitting religious groups to compete for grants in the areas of housing, child care, domestic violence, and services to at- risk youth, the House bill also contains less controversial tax provisions: for example, a tax deduction for non-itemizers who donate to a qualified charity that serves the poor, and "individual development accounts" to help low-income households build assets. (According to a Republican member of the House Ways and Means Committee, however, even the fate of the charity tax deduction is uncertain; it is likely to be pared down when it competes with business and energy tax cuts in the "jump ball" over the next round of tax relief.)

But it's on the expansion of charitable choice that the partisan lines have been drawn. Hill Republicans share the administration's determination that the religious groups accepting social-welfare grants be permitted to remain faithful to their spiritual mission. Democrats want to see more restrictions on religious grantees-even though the legislation already prohibits them from using federal funds for "sectarian worship, instruction, or proselytization" and insists that the clients of any religious charity be allowed to opt out of (privately funded) religious components of the program. Democrats also object to the proposed exemption from federal civil-rights laws that would permit religious providers to discriminate in favor of members of their own faith when hiring under the federal grant.

Complicating the picture, conservative critics agree with the Democrats that the proposal's entanglement of church and state poses a danger; they think it's inevitable that an organization's religious mission will be diluted once it is answerable to government bureaucrats. Father Robert A. Sirico, president of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, agrees that the private religious sector should play a much greater role in social welfare, but argues that increasing the tax incentives for donations to private charities would avoid the danger involved in direct government funding of religious groups. "By its nature, political funding alters the nature of traditional Christian charity," he explains.

In his commencement speech at Notre Dame, President Bush responded to such criticisms: "Public money already goes to groups like the Center for the Homeless and, on a larger scale, to Catholic Charities. Do the critics really want to cut them off?" He cited Medicare and Medicaid payments to Catholic hospitals, and government loans to students at religious colleges, and asked, "Should this be banned?" It's a rhetorically effective argument, but it papers over a very important fact: The direct government grants that make up over 60 percent of Catholic Charities' budget have bleached out the religious character of its programs-making them hardly a model for conservative reforms. Four years ago, in an article about Catholic Charities ("But Are They Catholic?" NR, June 2, 1997), Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania expressed his concern that "dependence on government funding has rendered non-profit organizations increasingly vulnerable to pressures to restrict their religious mission."

Santorum is now the lead GOP Senate sponsor of the president's plan; he believes the plan provides sufficient safeguards to prevent the kind of secularization encouraged under current law. Is his optimism justified? We'll soon find out. If Congress manages to pass the bill, the current Capitol Hill controversy will move very quickly to local communities, where it will make a difference in the lives of ordinary congregations. Many of the religious groups involved in welfare work-such as Catholic Charities, prison ministries, and drug-treatment programs-are independent entities created to fulfill a social-welfare mission; but that is not true of the traditional church-based congregations now expressing an interest in receiving federal funds to provide services. One Catholic pastor, who doesn't intend to participate in the federal program, predicts that the government's largesse will end up disadvantaging the congregations that don't choose to participate. He worries that the provision of federal funds for church programs could result in a phenomenon like that of the "rice Christians" in missionary China, who chose churches based on their ability to provide food.