House, Senate Offer Differing Plans on Bush’s Faith-Based Safety Net

WASHINGTON —  Responding to President Bush’s call, House members unveiled a plan Wednesday to give faith-based groups a much larger role in the government’s safety net of services for the needy.

The Senate also entered the growing fray, though with a more narrowly tailored bill that would provide an array of new tax incentives to strengthen charitable groups and stimulate donations to them.

“In our effort to wipe out poverty and hopelessness, we need all the soldiers we can muster,” said Rep. J.C. Watts Jr. (R-Okla.), who, along with Rep. Tony P. Hall (D-Ohio), unveiled details of a bill that seeks to turn most of Bush’s faith-based agenda into law.

The House and Senate bills have several elements in common. They would allow Americans who do not itemize their tax returns to claim deductions for charitable donations, broaden a type of savings account for the working poor known as individual development accounts, allow people to donate money from their individual retirement accounts to charity without paying taxes on qualified withdrawals and seek to increase food donations through other tax incentives.

In a statement, Bush said he welcomed the bills as “important first steps to advance this agenda to aid churches, synagogues, mosques and communities in helping neighbors in need.”

The agenda has sparked criticism on Capitol Hill and within the U.S. religious community. Critics are worried that the initiative will erode the constitutional wall between church and state by giving government bureaucrats new control over faith-based programs. Some also worry that the government will favor only mainstream religions with taxpayer funds, while others fear that it will work with any and all religious groups.

In light of the dispute, the Senate backers--Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.)--decided to take a cautious approach, withholding sponsorship of the plan’s more controversial aspects.

“It’s better to wait a few months and see if we can resolve the questions raised,” Lieberman said. “I remain optimistic.”

But the House legislation, which will be formally introduced next week, is an unabashed effort to enact the Bush program and would promote a much broader role for faith-based groups in qualifying for federal funding, a policy known as charitable choice.

Under current law, faith-based groups are specifically entitled to compete for federal funding in areas related to welfare reform and combating substance abuse. The House bill, however, would go much further, knocking down red-tape barriers that have limited the role of religious service providers in other areas, including juvenile delinquency, housing, job training, helping the elderly, child care, hunger relief and domestic violence.

On Wednesday, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) gave his support to the quest, declaring of religious-oriented service providers: “It is precisely these groups that are making a positive difference in our most vulnerable communities--working tirelessly on shoestring budgets to help the less fortunate. . . . If we care about America’s needy, we can’t discriminate against faith-based groups.”

Although the House and Senate differ on charitable choice, the two bills share the goal of improving the financial standing of the working poor. Under one proposal, the government would offer tax credits to financial institutions that match the funds that a low-income person deposits in an individual development account (up to $500 a year).

“The reason this bill is needed can be found in soup kitchens, drug treatment centers, homeless shelters and mean streets all over our country,” Hall said in a statement. “By proposing the practical changes to the law needed to put President Bush’s initiative into action, I hope we can shift the debate away from some of the hysteria of recent weeks.”

But critics were not comforted by the lawmakers’ claim that their bill would preserve church-state separation and would not provide funds for religious proselytizing.

“It undercuts the integrity of churches, subsidizes religious discrimination and subjects people in need to religious coercion,” complained the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “As long as President Bush and his allies insist on government funding of religion, the plan is dead on arrival.”