When the House passed H.R. 7, the bill allowing religious organizations to compete for federal social service funds, many journalists and pundits predicted the legislation would have a rough go of it in the Senate (and rightly so, said several newspaper editorials). But it appears that the obituaries were premature. Bush's faith-based initiative is actually "gaining traction among key Democratic senators," reports Cox News Service. The first key Democrat is Georgia's Zell Miller, who sent a letter to his fellow party members Thursday to fellow Democrats urging them to support legislation. "We cannot equivocate," he wrote. "We cannot abdicate this heretofore-Democratic mandate. We do so at our own peril." (Miller has been a recent ally of Bush, siding with Republicans on the recent tax cut and other measures.) According to Cox, Miller's letter quoted extensively from a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Andrew Young, a former Democratic congressman, mayor of Atlanta and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who now runs a nonprofit organization. "We all know that Al Gore endorsed charitable choice … during the presidential campaign," Young wrote.
In addition, the House has voted eight times on charitable choice provisions that would allow faith-based organizations to apply for various government grants. Fifty-two Democratic members voted for at least six of the eight provisions, and 20 voted for all eight. In fact, charitable choice was passed in 1996 under a Democratic administration with bipartisan support. Then, there were none of the alarmist reactions from various quarters that have accompanied the introduction of this year's legislation. … Are such reactions based on the fact that this year's bill was introduced by a Republican, rather than a Democratic, administration? … I am concerned that the Democrats in Congress, especially those who opposed the initiative even though they supported previous versions of it, now risk the perception that they are practicing partisan politics at the expense of the needy.
The other key Democratic senator pushing for the faith-based initiative is, of course, Joe Lieberman. "Right now, there are a lot of people standing back—people absolutely opposed, others highly skeptical," Lieberman said of the legislation. "So we've got a job to do to bring them in, but I think we can do it." In the meantime, the senator from Connecticut has been trying to work with the White House to make the legislation more enticing to Democrats. That likely means that the section of the House bill overtly exempting federally funded faith-based organizations from local anti-discrimination laws will be deleted from the Senate version. "I mentioned it [to Bush] and he expressed a total openness to consider the removal of that provision in the Senate legislation," Lieberman told reporters last week. Bush was less clear, saying that "We should never undermine the civil rights laws of the United States" (straight talker, that guy). On the plus side, it seems—for now, at least—that the version of the bill Lieberman will craft likely won't have a section explicitly forcing charities to comply with the local laws.
And really, the local level is where the real battle is. The Washington Times and The New York Times very rarely agree on their editorial pages, but this week their reporting on regulation of religious organizations is diametrically opposed. The conservative Washington Times suggests religious organizations are already over-regulated, while the liberal New York Times suggests they're hardly regulated at all.
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