April 7, 2003
Senator drops hiring discrimination
language from faith-based bill
___By Robert Marus
___ABP Washington Bureau
___WASHINGTON (ABP)--The sponsor of a Senate bill, which the White House counted as an important part of President Bush's "faith-based initiatives," has agreed to drop a provision that opponents said would allow employment discrimination with federal dollars.
___Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., announced in a March 27 news conference that he agreed with fellow Senate leaders to drop a portion of the Charity, Aid, Recovery and Empowerment Act of 2003 in order to ensure its passage.
___Santorum and other Senate leaders "have agreed in a unanimous-consent request to remove that provision from the bill," he said. "We have spoken to several who have expressed concerns ... . The ones I have spoken with have said that, if that issue is off the table, this can pass."
___The CARE Act is the Senate version of President Bush's faith-based initiatives. Bush's plan would expand the ability of the government to grant funding to deeply religious organizations--including churches and mosques--for the provision of social services.
___The plan has proved controversial on two fronts--strong supporters of church-state separation say the government should not provide direct funding to heavily religious organizations, even for the delivery of so-called "secular services"; and the government should not fund religious organizations that are, under special provisions in federal civil-rights law, allowed to discriminate in hiring on the basis of religion or ideology.
___Although the House passed a faith-based bill that included both controversial provisions, the CARE Act was crafted in the Senate last year as a compromise that would avoid those two pitfalls. However, a section of that proposal stated organizations that have religious names, religious art or icons on their walls or religious requirements for service on their boards of directors should be treated the same as other potential government grantees for social services.
___Federal law already allows for organizations with some religious affiliation to receive funding under all federal programs so long as the groups are not pervasively religious in their make-up or work.
___Therefore, some congressional critics thought the CARE Act left the door open for the Bush administration to interpret the statutes as expanding government's ability to fund pervasively religious groups directly.
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