Back before he became president, George W. Bush used to tell us that “not every good idea should be a federal government program.” Maybe it is advice he should have remembered before he announced his recent plan to distribute billions of dollars in federal funds to private and religious charities over the next 10 years.
Few in Washington dispute the good work done by private faith-based charities. Such organizations have a proven history of transforming individual lives and helping to raise people out of poverty and despair. Indeed, private charities have often proved more effective than government welfare programs in fulfilling these roles. They often do more with less, and their success can be seen in the tens of thousands of former addicts, self-sufficient families, and others who have turned their lives around.
In light of this record of success, it might seem natural for President Bush to want to encourage these groups. But in proposing that the federal government distribute billions of dollars directly to these groups, he risks mixing government and charity in a way that could undermine the very things that have made private charity so effective.
The first round of debate over the president’s initiative has been dominated by questions of church-state separation. Certainly there are reasons for concern here. President Bush has tried to assure critics that any funds given to faith-based initiatives would not be used for sectarian purposes. But the line between sectarian and nonsectarian is not so easy to draw.
Diana Etindi, an analyst with the Welfare Policy Center at the Hudson Institute, points out the many difficulties in drawing such distinctions: “If the pastor of a church where a new government job readiness class is starting stops by to welcome the new group of job-seeking welfare recipients and offers a prayer on their behalf, is that sectarian worship? If God or a biblical principle is mentioned during the course of counseling, is that sectarian instruction? If a client suffering a bitter divorce is invited to attend one of the church’s regular support groups, is that proselytizing?”
There are also issues raised about the fungibility of money provided to religious charities. If faith-based organizations are able to use federal funds for their “secular” charitable activities, funds that they had previously used for those activities will be freed up to be used by their religious activities, essentially taking money out of one pocket and putting it into the other. In a real sense, the effect would be the same as if the federal government were directly funding the religious activities. This is what the Supreme Court has called “a legalistic minuet.” In fact, this is exactly the same logic that President Bush used in barring government funds to organizations that provide abortion counseling overseas.
Finally there is the question of what criteria the government will use in determining whether a faith-based institution will be eligible for federal funds. While President Bush has been careful to insist that faith-based initiatives will be funded without regard to denomination, recent history provides ample cause for concern here. For example, many observers believe that one of the most effective organizations in addressing substance abuse and criminal behavior is the Nation of Islam. Yet when it was revealed in 1995 that the Nation of Islam had received contracts from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for providing security in public housing projects, there was an uproar in Congress. Critics claimed that the organization’s history of anti-Semitism and discrimination against Whites disqualified it from receiving federal contracts.
During the 2000 presidential election campaign, then-candidate Bush was asked if he would be willing to provide public funds to the Nation of Islam. He replied, “I don’t see how we can allow public dollars to fund programs where spite and hate is the core of the message.” Of course, “hate” is frequently a subjective term. Some have even accused Catholics and evangelical churches of preaching hate toward gays or even Jews.
There have been other attempts by Congress to bar public funds and facilities for religious groups that are out of the mainstream. For example, Representative Bob Barr (R-Ga.) has called for prohibitions on Wiccans conducting religious services on U.S. military bases. One wonders what reaction Representative Barr would have if a Wiccan group were given a grant to provide social services.
But while church-state arguments are important, they may be obscuring another equally important issue—how the president’s initiative may harm the very charities he wishes to help.
Both the president and some religious leaders speak of a partnership between government and charity, but we should all remember that in any such “partnership” it is the government that is the senior partner. Government standards and the considerable regulation intended to ensure accountability and quality care inevitably come attached to government grants and contracts. In the end, what these standards and regulations would likely ensure is nothing more than tremendous waste and major headaches for faith-based charities. Charities will have to prove that they are not using government funds for proselytizing and other exclusively religious activities. That means government regulators will be snooping through their books, checking for compliance. The potential for government meddling is tremendous, but even if the regulation is not abused, it will require a redirection of scarce resources away from charitable activities and toward administrative functions. Officials of these charities may end up spending as much time reading the Federal Register as the Bible or other holy books.
Many large charities have avoided the worst of these regulatory intrusions by setting up separate, virtually secular arms of their organizations to handle their social services. But this is not a tactic easily available to the small neighborhood churches that are among the most effective.
Besides, why should faith-based charities eschew proselytizing and explicitly religious functions? There is a reason for the “faith” in “faith-based” charities. These organizations believe that helping people requires more than simply food or a bed. It requires addressing the deeper spiritual needs. It is ultimately about God. Yet in the end Bush’s proposal may transform private charities from institutions that change people’s lives to mere providers of services, little more than a government program in a clerical collar.
Amy Sherman, a social policy analyst with the Hudson Institute, has studied faith-based charities and found that “the most effective groups challenge those who embrace faith to live out its moral implications in every significant area of their lives, from breaking drug or alcohol addiction and repairing family relationships to recommitting themselves to the value of honest work.” But Sheridan expresses concern that government social service contracts are not concerned with such outcomes. They don’t measure success by whether a person has changed their life or embraced God, but by “the number of meals served, beds available, or checks cashed.”
Even those charities with the best of intentions will be tempted to subtly shift the emphasis of their mission to comply with the grant criteria. In some cases this means becoming increasingly secular in orientation; in others it may simply be the adoption of new missions and services that distract from the church’s original goal. It is one thing for a church to open a soup kitchen because its congregation feels that God has called them to do so. It is another to open that kitchen because someone dangles grant money in front of them.
There is an even more profound threat to the identity and mission of these charities themselves. If the history of welfare teaches us anything, it is that government money is as addictive as any narcotic. Ironically, therefore, given that many private charities are dedicated to fighting welfare dependency, government funding may quickly become a source of dependency for the charities themselves. Lobbying for, securing, and retaining that funding can quickly become the organization’s top priority.
Already many of our largest charities receive more money from the government than from private donations and maintain large professional lobbying organizations in Washington. One newspaper described these organizations as “transformed from charitable groups run essentially on private donations into government vendors—big businesses wielding jobs and amassing clout to further their own agendas.” Kimberly Dennis, former executive director of the Philanthropy Roundtable, notes that such organizations are “more interested in expanding government’s responsibilities than in strengthening private institutions to address social concerns.” In many ways they have simply become another special interest at the trough of federal largesse.
Surely we do not want to put charities on the dole. Is there any reason to believe that welfare for charities would be any less destructive than welfare for individuals?
In fact, one could wonder about what kind of message such charities would be sending to their clients. On the one hand, they would be trying to teach people to be responsible and independent, to find work rather than welfare, to take care of themselves. But at the same time the organization would have its own hand out asking for a form of welfare. That seems as contradictory as an anti-smoking group investing in tobacco stocks.
The whole idea of government charity is an oxymoron. After all, the essence of private charity is voluntariness, individuals helping one another through love of neighbor. In fact, in the Bible, the Greek word translated as charity is agapao, which means love. But the essence of government is coercion, the use of force to make people do things that they would not do voluntarily. As historian and social commentator Gertrude Himmelfarb puts it: “Compassion is a moral sentiment, not a political principle.” This difference is as simple as the difference between my reaching into my pocket for money to help someone in need and my reaching into your pocket for the same purpose. The former is charity—the latter is something else.
True charity is ennobling of everyone involved, both those giving and those who receive. A government grant is ennobling of no one. Alexis de Tocqueville recognized this more than 150 years ago when he called for the abolition of public relief, citing the fact that private charity established a “moral tie” between giver and receiver. But that tie is destroyed when the money comes from an impersonal government grant. The donors (taxpayers) resent their involuntary contribution, while the recipients feel no real gratitude for what they receive.
Private charities may find even fewer people contributing voluntarily. If people come to believe that government will provide the funding, they may decide that there is less need for their own contributions. This will result in a loss not only of money, but of the human quality of charity. As Robert Thompson, of the University of Pennsylvania, noted a century ago, using government money for charitable purposes is a “rough contrivance to lift from the social conscience a burden that should not be either lifted or lightened in any way.”
The result will be a substitution of coercive government tax financing in the place of compassion-based voluntary giving. That would mean an end to charity as we know it.
More than 20 years ago religious scholars Peter Burger and Richard Neuhaus argued against government funding of faith-based charities, warning that “the real danger is that [faith-based organizations] might be co-opted by government in a too-eager embrace that would destroy the very distinctiveness of their function.”
There is no reason to take this risk. Private charity is thriving in the United States of America. We are arguably the most generous nation on earth. In 1999 Americans contributed more than $190 billion to charity. More than $80 billion of that was given to religious organizations. And that represents an increase of more than $4 billion over the previous year.
In addition, more than half of all American adults perform volunteer work. That time and effort is worth more than an additional $225 billion. And that does not include the countless dollars and time given to family members, neighbors, and others outside the formal charity system.
To his credit, President Bush’s proposal does contain a number of valuable ideas to make it even easier for Americans to build on this generous record, including proposals to allow taxpayers who do not itemize to deduct their charitable contributions. Some experts estimate that this could encourage an additional $12-15 billion in contributions each year.
The few billion dollars per year that the federal government could add to this mix would be little more than drops in an ocean of charitable giving. Yet with those few dollars will surely come strings, regulations, and serious questions regarding the separation of church and state. Charities that accept government funds might find themselves overwhelmed with paperwork and subject to a host of federal regulators. And as they became increasingly dependent on government money, these charities could find their missions shifting, their religious character lost, the very things that made them so successful destroyed. The whole idea of charity could become subtly corrupted, blurring the difference between the welfare state and true charity. It is a very high price to pay for a handful of federal dollars.
Mr. President, private charity is a good idea. But please don’t make a federal program out of it.
Michael Tanner is director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
A prolific author and frequent guest lecturer, Tanner served as director of research of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation before joining Cato in 1993.
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