PHILADELPHIA - John DiIulio says President Bush's faith-based initiative poses no threat to the constitutional separation of church and state, or to the integrity of the religious groups that join in.
In fact, just calling it faith-based may be going too far.
"It's not simply about faith initiatives," the director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives said this weekend in his native Philadelphia, where he made a series of public appearances.
The Bush administration's ambitious plan to let churches, synagogues and mosques help deliver $250 billion in federal social programs also aims to get corporate America and large foundations involved in alleviating poverty, he said.
And it hopes to correct a system that critics say pays scant attention to results while relying on secular nonprofit and for-profit groups to administer funding for illiteracy, drug addiction, homelessness and other programs.
"Here's the rub. Most people are not -- whether they're in the community or at the national level, Republicans or Democrats -- entirely satisfied with the return we're getting now on those hundreds of billions of dollars," DiIulio told a conference on religion and social work.
"Our prescription is to open up those government-by-proxy networks to people who provide and perform those services, regardless of whether they're religious or non-religious."
AUDITS TO DETECT FAILING PROGRAMS
He said the administration also would impose annual audits to ensure that funds did not continue to go to groups whose programs failed. And a special "compassionate" capital fund would be established to spotlight successful programs that draw half their funding from corporate and philanthropic donors.
"The rest of the civil sector has to take more seriously its responsibility to the folks who aren't sharing in the prosperity."
DiIulio, a 40-year-old political science professor from the University of Pennsylvania and a devout Roman Catholic, has until July 27 to come up with formal recommendations for making faith-based initiatives a reality.
Despite support from Republican leaders and some prominent Democrats including Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the former vice presidential candidate, DiIulio's office has come under fire from both ends of the political spectrum. "I've got the scars to prove it," he joked.
The faith-based initiative is a pillar of Bush's domestic legislative agenda of "compassionate conservatism," and comes five years after welfare reform began dismantling a government safety net put in place by Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s.
The Republican president wants to harness the nation's 350,000 religious congregations for an array of services funded by expanding a provision of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act that allows religious groups to compete for government contracts.
The administration also aims to ramp up charitable giving with new tax deductions that would generate $15 billion in new contributions for religious groups, he said.
But the plan has drawn criticism from civil liberties activists who see a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state. Religious conservatives such as Pat Robertson also have worried openly that the lure of federal money will lead religious charities to abandon their spiritual character.
"We're not talking about setting aside funding for religion. There can be no government funding for religion," DiIulio said dismissively.
"Muslims, Mormons, Methodists or good people of no faith at all collaborating together across the usual denominational, racial and urban-suburban lines to make things happen for needy people -- that's the model," he added.
"What we propose is to open every dollar the government spends on domestic and social programs to anybody who can do the work. We don't ask who you are. We ask, what can you do?
"Let them come as they are. Don't make them hide their religious identity. Don't let them be Mr. Vincent de Paul. Let them be St. Vincent de Paul."
11:16 04-01-01
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