An Obama Encore Of Dubya’s “Faith-Based Fraud”?

(And I also posted here.)

The New York Times offered a review yesterday of the legacy of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, a project (of course) brought to us by Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History, telling us the following…

Despite the legislative stalemate, the Bush administration mounted an extraordinary array of executive orders, rule changes and organizational innovations to push its program. The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives spawned satellite offices in all cabinet-level departments, plus several quasi-governmental agencies, to increase the opportunities for religious groups to win a role in providing a range of social services.

(“Taking Stock: The Bush Faith-Based Initiative and What Lies Ahead,” a project of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York) claims that the effort was remarkably successful in overcoming “the ‘culture of resistance’ that had existed in the federal government toward faith-based organizations’ participation in social service contracts.” The effort spilled over to 36 states, most with Democratic governors, and more than 100 cities that eventually created religion-based offices or liaisons to religious communities.

Beyond that change in culture, what did the Bush initiative accomplish? Because financing flowed through so many different programs, “Taking Stock” concludes, “the full extent of public funding for faith-based social services is largely unknown.” The report suggests that administration officials were highly imaginative in attributing expenditures to the initiative, and in any case those expenditures fell far below the sums promised by the president.

Sadly, there is also little resolution of a central question behind the whole effort: Are religious organizations really more effective in providing social services than government or secular agencies? Or, more precisely, when are they better, when not, and why?

I’m not sure that question can ever be answered completely, and I’m really not going to try doing that here, but I just want to provide some more details.

First of all (as noted here), any sentient being should have realized that this administration was in trouble from the get-go given that, as noted here, Bush 43 didn’t really have much of an understanding of what the “have nots” have dealt with in this country, and in his state in particular…

There was a telling episode in 1999 when the Department of Agriculture came out with its annual statistics on hunger, showing that once again Texas was near the top. Texas is a perennial leader in hunger because we have 43 counties in South Texas (and some in East Texas) that are like Third World countries. If our border region were a state, it would be first in poverty, first in the percentage of schoolchildren living in poverty, first in the percentage of adults without a high school diploma, 51st in income per capita, and so on.

When the 1999 hunger stats were announced, Bush (then governor, of course) threw a tantrum. He thought it was some malign Clinton plot to make his state look bad because he was running for president. "I saw the report that children in Texas are going hungry. Where?" he demanded. "No children are going to go hungry in this state. You'd think the governor would have heard if there are pockets of hunger in Texas." You would, wouldn't you? That is the point at which ignorance becomes inexcusable. In five years, Bush had never spent time with people in the colonias, South Texas' shantytowns; he had never been to a session with Valley Interfaith, a consortium of border churches and schools and the best community organization in the state. There is no excuse for a governor to be unaware of this huge reality of Texas.

But if Dubya’s faith-based efforts ended up largely going splat (I mean, in terms of doing practical good as opposed to achieving largely political ends), it wasn’t for lack of trying; as noted here, “Holy Joe” Lieberman and Former Senator Man-On-Dog tried to put the matter “Front and center” just in time for the 2002 congressional elections…

The issue of funding religious charities appeals to conservatives who have long sought to lower the church-state wall and overturn the U.S. Supreme Court's 1962 ban on prayer in public schools. Social-service agencies that invoke religion as a way of getting inside the minds of troubled individuals are more effective than those that don't, they argue.

But several prominent religious conservatives, including Christian Coalition founder and former president Pat Robertson, opposed the House legislation because they believed it would open federal coffers to non-traditional religions such as the Nation of Islam and the Church of Scientology.

Opposing the measure are most Democrats, who view a high wall of church-state separation as an essential feature of American democracy. But it has won favor within a key Democratic constituency: racial minorities -- particularly African Americans. Many among them see religiously oriented social-service agencies as a positive force in leading troubled individuals away from crime, drugs, alcohol, teen pregnancy and a host of other social ills.

And if these programs have been successful in that regard, fine. My chief issue with the “faith-based” activities of the prior administration has been the emphasis on proselytizing and activities for political as opposed to spiritual gain (though this often resulted in underfunding agencies of government that, I would argue, were better equipped to do the job to begin with).

And Bill Berkowitz told us the following from 2005 (here)…

Despite Congress' failure to pass substantive faith-based legislation, the Bush Administration has been steadily advancing the ball. It established the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and Centers and Taskforces for Faith-based and Community Initiatives in 10 federal agencies and the Corporation for National and Community Service. It has handed out more than $ 3 billion in grants to a passel of faith-based organizations. It has issued executive orders making it easier for religious organizations to compete for grants, has held numerous training sessions to help religious groups get government grants, and the president has regularly taken to the "bully pulpit" to push the initiative forward.

Now, Bush and his Congressional allies are attempting to institutionalize his faith-based initiative through broad-ranging legislation.

Because Bush's Faith-Based Initiative was established through Executive Orders, the White House Office could be eliminated should a future administration decide to rescind those orders. To obviate this possibility, on March 2, Representative Mark Green (R-WI), introduced H.R. 1054, The Tools for Community Initiatives Act. Green's bill "would make the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives... and ten similar federal agency offices a permanent part of the federal government," according to the Web site of OMB Watch.

The bill would "establish the offices and outlines their responsibilities. It does not include portions of current regulations that address how religious groups handle federal grants. Instead, these issues are included in a non-binding 'Sense of Congress' section, which does not address the issue of hiring on the basis of religion for federally funded jobs."

The provisions of H.R. 1054 would exist "until Congress acted to eliminate them."

As noted here, though, the bill was referred to a House subcommittee that year, but no further action transpired.

And in 2007, the Freedom from Religion Foundation brought suit over the faith-based funding from Dubya’s White House, though the Supremes ultimately ruled here that “taxpayers do not have the right to challenge the constitutionality of expenditures by the executive branch of the government” (another 5-4 decision courtesy of the High Court of Hangin’ Judge JR).

Finally, this tells us that President Obama has “rebranded” the “Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives” as the “Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and Neighborhood Partnerships.” Being the filthy, unkempt liberal blogger that I am, I’m naturally skeptical of government intervention in matters of personal belief. But for now, I’m willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to President Obama and see how he manages this function that his predecessor bungled so badly.

As long as Congress oversees every stinking dime that this “new” office gets.