The problem with Bush's 'faith-based' initiative
By Phil Wilayto
Just nine days after being sworn in as president, George
W. Bush announced the establishment of a new White House
Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The stated
goal of the office is to help religious groups receive
government funds and contracts to deliver social services,
especially to the very poor.
"Real change happens street by street, heart by heart, one
soul, one conscience at a time," Bush piously explained
the
following day, speaking outside a religious-based community
program in Washington.
Joining Bush at the photo-op was Sen. Joe Lieberman, the
recent Democratic vice -presidential candidate. Lieberman
said that he and Bush were of "like minds" concerning the
goals of the new initiative. Democratic presidential
candidate Al Gore had also called for a more active role for
religious groups in delivering federally funded social
services.
While most criticism of Bush's initiative has focused on
threats to the constitutional separation of church and state,
the problems with this program go far beyond that.
They also include the increasing privatization of
government services, deregulation of the delivery of social
services, weakening of public-sector unions and the
development of a layer of hand-picked "leaders" answerable
not to the communities they serve, but to the government and
right-wing foundations that provide their funding.
Ashcroft opened the door
For many years, churches and church organizations have
received government contracts to provide services like food,
foster care and drug programs. Most of these contracts were
channeled through separate non-profit agencies like Catholic
Charities and Lutheran Social Services, which were supposed
to refrain from trying to convert their "clients" to their
religious views.
The door to direct funding of religious groups was opened
wide with the passage of the 1996 welfare reform act signed
by President Bill Clinton. That bill contained a section
called "Charitable Choice," which gave religious groups
contracting with the government the right to present their
religious beliefs along with their services.
The Charitable Choice provision was drafted by former
Missouri Sen. John Ashcroft--the anti-woman, anti-civil
rights, pro-Confederacy religious zealot who is now the top
law enforcement officer in the country.
To head up his new Office of Faith-Based and Community
Initiatives, Bush chose University of Pennsylvania Political
Science Prof. John J. DiIulio Jr., who describes himself as a
"New Democrat" and made his mark in the mid-1990s with his
prediction of a new and horribly brutal crime wave to be
carried out by children and teenagers.
His dire warning of a new class of "super predators" never
materialized, but both Democrats and Republicans seized
on
DiIulio's predictions to justify their own wave of brutal
legislation, including the trying of children as adults,
harsh new sentences for juvenile offenders and the massive
expansion of juvenile prisons. All of this contributed to the
doubling of the prison population under the watch of "New
Democrat" Clinton.
Bush has also created a national advisory board for his
faith-based initiative, to be headed by former Indianapolis
Mayor Stephan Goldsmith. Goldsmith has been closely
associated with the Indianapolis-based Hudson Institute, a
right-wing think tank that heavily promotes the privatization
of government services.
Government funding of "faith-based" social services has
long been a goal of neo-conservative strategists, who see
privatization and deregulation as the way to restore a
pre-1929 style of capitalism free of any restraints on profit
making.
A further step backward
Here's some of what's wrong with Bush's initiative:
First of all, massive social issues like health care,
education and poverty can't be properly addressed on a
small-scale, piecemeal basis. By promoting the idea that
social services are best carried out by private groups,
"faith-based" funding undermines the principle that the
government has any obligation to "promote the general
welfare."
It replaces the concept of entitlement--of the right to
government services--with the old notion of religious
charity. This leaves the government free to concentrate on
what the capitalist class believes to be its "proper"
functions of protecting corporate interests at home and
abroad--in other words, the repressive functions of the
police and the military.
What this really amounts to is a further step in taking
back the gains won by poor and working people through the
tremendous struggles of the 1930s, such as welfare,
unemployment insurance, public housing, Social Security,
etc.
The mere fact that a group is religious is no guarantee
that it has the interests of poor people at heart. In recent
years, many of these organizations have been accused of
fraud, mistreatment of clients and misusing tax dollars for
religious advocacy.
Transferring the delivery of social services from
government agencies to religious groups weakens public sector
unions like the State, County and Municipal Employees and the
Service Employees. It also results in the large-scale
destruction of good-paying jobs, since the largely non-union
religious groups are notorious for the low wages and few
benefits they offer their workers.
Many of the workers who stand to lose in this transition
are women and people of color.
Furthermore, under "Charitable Choice," religious groups
claim exemption from gov ernment licensing and performance
standards. They also claim the right to refuse to hire
lesbian, gay, bi and trans people.
Finally, it will be the right-wing Bush administration
that decides which "faith-based" groups receive
contracts--thus building up a layer of "leaders" beholden to
Bush for their livelihood and promoting the spread of the
social conservative agenda in poor communities.
It's clear that the Democrats can't be relied on to stop
this dangerous new initiative. They couldn't or wouldn't even
stop the outright theft of the presidential election.
But the objective basis is being laid for progressive
religious groups, labor unions, civil rights organizations
and the progressive movement to unite around opposition to
the illegitimate Bush administration and the whole rotten
system that it represents.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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