The leading Congressional sponsor of President Bush's religion-based initiative has agreed to strip the measure of a provision that would have helped religious groups compete for government grants. The move will clear the way for Senate passage.
The sponsor, Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, agreed to the change after weeks of negotiations with Democratic opponents, Senators Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Jack Reed of Rhode Island. The two had vowed to try to amend the bill, which offers tax breaks and other aid to charities.
Mr. Durbin and Mr. Reed objected to a provision that offered groups with religious names or religious icons in their literature explicit protection from disqualification in applying for government grants.
Mr. Reed said he feared that the provision would give tax dollars to groups that made their services contingent on the client listening to sermons or taking part in other religious activities.
Mr. Durbin said he feared it would open the door to discrimination in employment. And he said he worried how the government would audit the money without appearing to interfere in the business of tax-exempt religious groups.
Mr. Santorum was in Pennsylvania and could not be reached. A top aide, Mark Rodgers, said the senator compromised to hasten the bill's passage, and because Mr. Bush had already issued an executive order putting the provision in place.
"The president took steps administratively to implement this very language which Senator Santorum is putting aside," said Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives. "This legislation was going to codify that."
Indeed, legislation would be hard to undo, while an executive order can be reversed by a future president.
With the provision out of the way, the Senate could take up the bill the Charity, Aid, Recovery and Empowerment Act as early as next week. Mr. Durbin and Mr. Reed said Mr. Santorum had said that the changes would be in the House version of the measure as well.
The religion-based initiative, a central component of President Bush's domestic agenda, has been mired in controversy from the moment Mr. Bush announced it in the earliest weeks of his presidency. Mr. Santorum's measure was the vehicle the White House had hoped would carry the initiative into law.
It offers tax advantages intended to encourage charitable giving and benefit soup kitchens, maternity homes and other community groups. It would increase social services grants to states by $1.4 billion and would provide technical assistance to small groups, including black and Hispanic churches, that need help competing for federal financing.
Those provisions will remain intact. But whether the bill can still be called "faith-based" is now a matter of some disagreement.
"This bill, by the very nature of the charities that will benefit, is a faith-based initiative," Mr. Rodgers said.
But Mr. Reed said, "This is not the faith-based initiative that was talked about a year ago or two years ago. Obviously, it's been scaled back."
Nor is this the first revision. Last year, in a bid to win Senate passage of the measure, President Bush agreed to drop another contentious element, the "charitable choice" provision, which would have let religious groups favor members of their own faith in hiring and ignore antidiscrimination laws.