President puts faith in religion-based social services
Date: Tuesday, February 08 @ 10:01:16 EST
Topic: Economic Policy
Bush favors private aid with a moral dimension at the expense of more traditional programs.
By Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger, Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON � In the latest sign of a philosophical change in how the government should deliver social services, President Bush's new budget would cut some traditional aid for the poor in such areas as housing and health coverage.
At the same time, some religion-based programs that promote such goals as sexual abstinence and marriage and provide mentors for at-risk children would enjoy increased federal aid.
Both the shift away from long-standing social welfare policies and the willingness to step up spending on programs tied to religious organizations reflect the fact, analysts said, that the administration is more comfortable than many of its predecessors in advocating social service strategies with a moral dimension.
Administration officials said Monday that the increases � although generally smaller than the cutbacks � would be made in part through payments to faith-based organizations, a hallmark of Bush's self-described "compassion agenda."
An additional $150 million, for example, is proposed next year for programs aimed at treating drug addicts, keeping at-risk boys from joining gangs, and the mentoring of prisoners' children and newly released prisoners, among other items. Much of this money would be directed toward faith-based groups.
Programs for marriage preservation, "responsible fatherhood" and sexual abstinence would get about $280 million more.
Additional tax breaks would encourage personal contributions to charities.
The size of such increases appear minor, however, compared to the estimated $45 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next 10 years and other reductions to food stamps, community development grants and housing for the disabled � cuts that social service advocates said Monday could bring major changes to the lives of many aid recipients.
But administration officials said the increases in faith-based funding reflected the philosophy of an administration eager to find what they viewed as better ways to deliver services.
"The president has chosen to go with the programs he thinks are the most effective and, of course, he has continued to maintain a strong belief that partnerships between government and America's armies of compassion mean a lot in the lives of our poor," said Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
Towey called the Bush plan a "compassionate budget in a tight budgetary time," and officials noted that many of the traditional social service programs such as public housing vouchers remained mostly intact.
But advocates for the poor challenged the administration's reasoning.
"The administration wants to abandon commitments that the federal government has made to serve low-income families, and to replace those practical commitments with very small pots of money and lip service about the faith community," said Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, an alliance of social welfare agencies and labor unions.
The debate over the role of faith programs comes after Bush won reelection campaigning to increase government funding for religious charities that he maintained were often better at serving the needs of the poor than entrenched government bureaucracies.
Bush enjoyed broad support from conservative evangelicals drawn to his faith-driven views on moral issues.
The full scope of the proposed budget cuts was not clear Monday, and some advocacy groups cautioned that some faith-based organizations might suffer a net loss of federal dollars.
Still, in pronouncements by the administration Monday, faith-based programs were among the well-publicized winners.
The same division in the Department of Health and Human Services where the marriage and abstinence programs would be increased faces a $719-million cut overall.
"This budget signals a substantial increase in the redistribution of federal dollars to faith-based organizations dealing with topics like marriage and abstinence and away from secular organizations," said Paul C. Light, professor of public service at New York University.
Light sees the Bush budget as part of a slow but steady trend to fund conservative churches and organizations that have a clear social agenda, often at the expense of secular nonprofit organizations and traditional federal aid programs.
At HHS, the head of the Administration for Children and Families, Wade F. Horn, said that this year's budget showed a real commitment to topics such as marriage, child support, fatherhood and sexual abstinence for the unmarried.
"At the end of the day, those initiatives will be there for the benefit of kids," Horn said in an interview.
Horn said his agency had long provided funding to church-related organizations such as Catholic Charities that offered a range of social services.
"I think what's different now is that we try to remove as many barriers as possible" for smaller, independent faith-based organizations that have never participated in federal programs before, he said.
"Now what the president has done is put out the welcome mat for faith-based organizations," Horn said.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
Reprinted from The Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-services8feb08,1,7817542.story
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