Great Society II
By Kate O'Beirne and Ramesh Ponnuru. Mrs. O'Beirne is Washington editor, and Mr. Ponnuru a senior editor, of National Review.
President Bush's faith-based initiative is meant to encourage the charitable efforts of private groups, including religious ones -- in his words, to "rally the armies of compassion" to help the poor and needy.
And it has certainly stirred up lively debate. Left-wing secularist critics see the initiative as a first step toward the establishment of a theocracy. But, then, they see after-school Bible-study clubs that way too. Some conservative critics, meanwhile, complain that Mr. Bush's initiative would aid objectionable religious groups like Louis Farrakhan's.
The Real Problem
A more fundamental problem is that the initiative will hurt the charities it is meant to help, while increasing the constituency for the welfare state. The initiative has three components: regulatory obstacles to the work of charities are to be removed; tax incentives are to encourage donations to poverty-fighting charities; and these groups will be allowed to participate in federal programs. It's this third idea that's problematic. It entails direct federal grants to religious groups, and those grants could undermine their effectiveness and independence.
So why not just go ahead with the first two ideas, which would do a lot of good for charities and the poor without raising that danger? John DiIulio, the initiative's director, has given his answer. It has almost nothing to do with the principles of church-state relations that dominate debate. Instead, Mr. DiIulio sees the initiative as a means to reform federal programs. It is an ambition that goes to the heart of what's wrong with the initiative.
In a 1999 article, Mr. DiIulio noted that almost all of the welfare state consists of "government by proxy." Rather than directly providing services, the federal government works with networks of nonprofit organizations and state and local governments to provide them. But because the government doesn't hold these groups accountable for results, these programs have fallen far short of the social benefits they were supposed to deliver.
Mr. DiIulio's solution: "Opening competition for federal funds to all, including tiny local faith-based organizations, could usher in a new era of results-driven public administration. Scores of federal social welfare programs could be cured or killed." This is an imaginative response to a real problem. It is also a pipe dream.
Mr. DiIulio believes that grants will be awarded -- and, just as important, withdrawn -- based on results. Those decisions will not be made based on the clout of churches involved, the relationship between those churches and the administration in power, or the biases of federal officials. Neither party will channel funds to reward friends or appease foes. And these happy conditions will continue in perpetuity. They don't call it a faith-based initiative for nothing.
The Great Society did not fail because of a lack of competition or of accountability-minded administrators. It failed because it bred mutual dependency between federal government and proxy networks. Middle-class nonprofit managers not only provided services under federal programs; because they provided services, they also became the primary constituents for those programs. Keeping the grants flowing became the main concern of both the nonprofits and the government. That's why these programs have been a political but not practical success. They are impervious to reform.
The initiative may well bring a new set of organizations into this network of futility and mutual dependency. It is no good to say that charities that fear dependency do not have to participate. Nobody has to collect welfare either, but people become dependent on it nonetheless.
Dependency grows with time. A church group may accept a grant with every intention of walking away at a later date if necessary. But will this intention be remembered after a few years, when the grant is built into the budget? When the group has had to make only a few modest changes -- hiring a grant-application writer, joining some other charities to open a small office in Washington? When the church down the street has just built a new day-care facility with its grant?
Worse, federal grants will affect which churches grow and which shrink. Churches that get grants will be able to provide more services than those that do not, and it is not unknown for people to join churches that gave them job training, counseling or a preschool. Do we really want federal funding to affect America's religious dynamics in this manner?
It will be a particular problem for the Catholic Church. The church supports charity generously. But Catholics' charitable work tends to be institutionally separate from their parish churches, which are more concerned with the sacraments than with social services. Unless the church restructures itself, it will be disadvantaged by grants to local churches.
Some Republicans offer two crass political arguments. One is that liberal groups already get grants, so "our guys" ought to get some too. Another is that Republicans will be able to make inroads among black voters by directing funds to their churches. Really? Have blacks been loyal to the GOP for a generation because Richard Nixon created affirmative action?
Republicans put themselves at a long-term disadvantage when they increase dependence on the welfare state. Farm subsidies have kept otherwise Republican states electing Democrats for years. "Our guys" won't stay our guys when they join the coalition for big government.
Repeating Mistakes
Messrs. Bush and DiIulio are right to want to strengthen faith-based charities, and doing so through deregulation and tax cuts makes sense. But they can learn lessons from previous antipoverty crusades.
In the '60s, secular nonprofits were thought to be accomplishing miracles on a shoestring, just as faith-based groups are now. Surely federal funding would be able to take these isolated success stories and replicate them nationally. Somehow it didn't work out that way. If it continues down its path, the administration will not be correcting the mistakes of the Great Society. It will be repeating them.