The Bush administration channelled $2.15 billion to faith-based charities last year, advancing its mission to increase the share of government aid money given to religious organisations.
The figure, contained in a White House report unveiled on Thursday, does not account for all of the grants awarded by an administration determined to increase the involvement of churches and religious organisations in social services provision.
The revelation deepened concerns among aid professionals and civil liberty groups about the quality of services offered by some of the religious groups – especially at a time when funds for social programmes are being cut. There are also charges that the Bush administration is underwriting proselytising campaigns by the Christian right.
In the five years that George Bush has been in the White House, 11 government agencies have set up religious offices, ostensibly to help coordinate the provision of social services by faith-based organisations. This week, the president established one in the department of homeland security.
Separation of Church and State means nothing to reactionaries who don’t see the difference.
It could just be that the president is a deeply religious person that believes in doing God’s work…. yea right
Dvorak,
You talk about the “separation of church and state” but have apparently not read the case law on it. The Supremes have held that there is a three part test for determining whether government giving money to religious organizations violates the separation of church and state doctrine. Bush’s funding does not, therefore it is constitutional until declared otherwise.
That said, I am not a Christian and I believe that most government spending goes to projects the government should not fund. I take the Libertarian view that the role of government is primarily to provide for the defense of the country. Most other programs are not a part of the government’s legitimate role.
The democrats give Bush hell about spending but it seems to me that they are just pissed off because he does not fund what they want. Both parties spend too much but each have different pet projects. I wish they would both actually cut spending.
Remember that, by taking your tax dollars, the government is essentially saying that either, they need it more than you do or that they will put it to better use. For those who want a recent example of unnecessary government spending go here: http://www.accessatlanta.com/hp/content/arts/stories/0226aso.html
Oh yeah, funding a Nascar museum is a great use of taxpayer money.
A few million here and a few billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money….
How much did Clinton give, adjusted for inflation? Bush the 1? Reagan? Carter? And on and on.
Without perspective and hard facts, this is just more BDS bullcrap.
I agree with Shane. If the Federal government has enough money lying around to give away in grants, that money should either go to paying the National debt, necessary government programs like the military or be given back to the states. It is the *States* that should providing such grants not the Federal government.
Post #2:
I believe he meant that in reference to “In the five years that George Bush has been in the White House, 11 government agencies have set up religious offices, ostensibly to help coordinate the provision of social services by faith-based organisations. This week, the president established one in the department of homeland security.”
I highly doubt that setting up a religious, Roman Catholic office in HOMELAND SECUTIRY is “seperatioin of church and state.”
Locke,
Though it may seem like it, that may not be unconstitutional. I am with you though. I get a little leery when government and religion start mixing.
Shane
Are you also going to complain about people getting federal tax money to attend Notre Dame and Georgetown?
when this program was first brought out, even some Democrats supported it. The major point is that many, many faith based groups already do drug rehab programs, teen preg. counseling, all the usual stuff but operated on a donation level only, no goverment money. The studies showed that these groups had many different approaches and far more success than many of the funds gobbling non-faith based groups the goverment was sponsoring. Hence, the idea….to fund these church and church affiliated programs that have shown success in the past.
Requirement #1 was….NO preaching. Soup, but no God.
#2 was….they had to accept anyone, from their own faith or no faith.
There are many more restrictions, but these were the 2 most important.
And what this snippet of the article dosen’t mention is that the 2.15 billion, isn’t even 15% of the money the goverment gives to all groups of this type.
And to answer someones question….it does mean ALL faiths.
The largest recievers of this money are black based christian groups and black muslim groups.
Some of the largest and most successful of the groups have refused to ask for the aid because God is an integral part of their mission, and they didn’t want goverment control of their programs. It seems they have to open their whole organisation up to anything the feds want to know in order to get the cash.
Some of the best and most successful anti-gang and anti-drug programs in the inner cities are run by black churches, and for years, until this program, they couldn’t get help from the goverment. Now they can, of course the liberal left (who claims to be the friend of blacks) want it shut down….which is normal operating procedure for them.
Joshua, you should read something more than the agitprop from these faith-based crocks — regardless of color, history and “respectability”.
It’s like everyone swoons over AA and their religion-based 12-step program helping “those poor alcoholics”. What statistics you can squeeze out of anyone tracking this kind of who-hah — is they have about a 5% success rate. Same as the average witch doctor. Same as any of the religion hustlers making a buck off peoples’ misery for centuries.
Only we have a government ready to institutionalize it — with our tax dollars.
Moss…..i just spent an hour trying to find satistics on faith based versus secular…..what an exercise in futility…..lol
Apprently from what I can gather, there hasen’t been any real up or down comparisons done to date. But I did find that the Rockefeller Institute is conducting one. Hopefully there can be some answers in the near future.
What my letter was mainly about was the amount of funds given to the FOB’s. They recieve a very small amount of goverment funding, in comparison to the non-FOBS(ie: govet run/for profit/non-profit)
2 billion sounds like a lot and makes a nice headline grabber, until you find out that 80% of goverment money goes elsewhere.
What I was able to learn is that FOB’s tend to have much more hard core clients, in houseing, drug dependency and food needs.
And that FOB run nursing homes tend to be more focused, caring, and violation free than for profit or goverment run.
But after that, there just isn’t much that show ‘s that one is better than the other. In fact, so far, it seems that they each have their strengths and weaknesses. Though it was also mentioned that FOB’s tend to be more located in the inner core of cities than rural.
http://www.religionandsocialpolicy.org/resources/effectiveness_resource.cfm
This is the link to the Rockefeller site with the study.
It’s interesting, but not complete.
I’m not as interested in the details, joshua. Science and technology still consumes me more than politics. My understanding of the differences in general flows from science newsletters over the years — specific hustles like AA from local/national projects essentially concerned with the politics of getting laws enforced/designed to deal with DUI drivers.
AA is the role model for the faith-based crowd — to the point that their “success” is automatically accepted. They’ve been the best at concealing legit studies and analysis; but, there have been insiders [especially] who have released numbers after years of frustration.
A couple of billion$ “starts to sound like real money” — but, in the marketplace of local/national charities fighting for every dollar they can dedicate to useful tasks — like Planned Parenthood, for example — and to have what federal support they had achieved in the distant past withdrawn because of the foibles on one set of religious ideologies becoming predominant in government perfectly illustrates the criminality of religion and government joined at the hip.
That’s the other side of this “kindness” manuever from the government.
So, Paul, you pray in the morning your Windows machines are still running? Is that faith-based or science-based?
Do you worry about all the science-based functions and products you utilize every minute of your day? Or do you accept the scientific procedures that overwhelmingly produce predictable, verifiable results?
No comparison whatsoever to the philosophic premises of religion vs. science. And you already know that.
I am intersested in mentoring a faith, and I would like to
petition for a grant to develop a settlement.
Walter J. Midolo