The Bush Faith-Based Taking Stock: Initiative and What Lies Ahead By David J. Wright An independent research project of The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government Sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts Photos: Top: President George W. Bush signs the executive order creating the White House Offi ce of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives on Jan. 29, 2001. Photo by AP. Bottom: President Barack Obama signs the executive order establishing the White House Offi ce of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships on Feb. 5, 2009. Photo by Pete Souza, Executive Offi ce of the President of the United States. Taking Stock: The Bush Faith-Based Initiative and What Lies Ahead By David J. Wright The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government State University of New York 411 State Street Albany, NY 12203 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE............................................................................................................................................................1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.......................................................................................................................................2 I. SETTING THE STAGE FOR THE BUSH FAITH-BASED AND COMMUNITY INITIATIVE.......................................9 II. THE ELEMENTS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S FAITH-BASED AND COMMUNITY INITIATIVE.................18 A. THE BUSH FAITH INITIATIVE IN CONGRESS...............................................................................................................18 The Push for a Comprehensive Bill................................................................................................................19 Strengthening Incentives for Charitable Contributions to FBOs...................................................................21 Removing Statutory Barriers to Government/FBO Partnerships..................................................................22 Programmatic Initiatives Through Legislation...............................................................................................31 B. INSTITUTIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL REFORMS.....................................................................................................33 The First Wave...............................................................................................................................................34 The Second Wave..........................................................................................................................................36 The Third Wave.............................................................................................................................................37 The Fourth Wave...........................................................................................................................................38 C. REGULATORY CHANGES.......................................................................................................................................39 Religious-Based Hiring...................................................................................................................................42 Religious Buildings.........................................................................................................................................44 Other Regulatory Changes............................................................................................................................45 D. TRAINING AND OUTREACH...................................................................................................................................51 E. LIFTING UP AND REACHING OUT............................................................................................................................55 III. PROGRAMMATIC INITIATIVES..................................................................................................................58 A. GLOBAL AIDS RELIEF..........................................................................................................................................58 B. COMPASSION CAPITAL FUND................................................................................................................................59 C. MENTORING CHILDREN OF PRISONERS...................................................................................................................62 D. ACCESS TO RECOVERY.........................................................................................................................................63 E. PRISONER REENTRY INITIATIVE..............................................................................................................................66 IV. THE SCOPE, FUNDING AND EFFECTIVENESS OF FAITH-BASED SOCIAL SERVICES.....................................70 A. SCOPE OF FAITH-BASED SERVICES..........................................................................................................................70 B. PUBLIC FUNDING FOR FAITH-BASED SERVICES..........................................................................................................72 C. EFFECTIVENESS..................................................................................................................................................74 V. TAKING STOCK OF THE BUSH FAITH-BASED AND COMMUNITY INITIATIVE............................................80 VI. THE OUTLOOK FOR FAITH-BASED INITIATIVES IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION.................................86 The Bush Faith-Based Initiative and What Lies Ahead PREFACE This summative report reflects the work of a special project of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government. Formed in 2002 with a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts to the Research Foundation of the State University of New York, the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy was created to engage and inform government, religious and civic leaders about the role of faith-based organizations in our social welfare system by means of nonpartisan, evidence-based discussions on the potential and pitfalls of such involvement. The Roundtable’s charge was to increase awareness among key stakeholders, including policy makers, religious and civic leaders, and the media, of the critical issues related to faith-based social service programs by means of in-depth analysis and discussion based on the best social service science, legal and policy research. Our purpose was to serve as the preeminent source of expert, unbiased information on policy and legal developments concerning the involvement of faith-based organizations in social services. We drew on a wide range of experts from government, civic, religious and research organizations, and sought through our publications and events to report and explain policy and legal developments; better define and measure the character of faith-based social services; gauge private and public sector support for their work; and provide fact-based assessments of their comparative effectiveness. We were honored to do this work and enormously grateful for the support of The Pew Charitable Trusts in making the project possible. Luis Lugo directed these efforts for The Trusts when the project began, before taking the helm of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, where his vision has continued to shape our work. Our program officer at The Trusts, Julie Sulc, has graciously and generously guided this project from its inception, and we benefited enormously from her insights and encouragement. Quite simply, she is the very model of a foundation officer. Stephanie Boddie joined the Forum as our project wound down, and we were grateful to work with her on transition and publication of this report. I am indebted to the co-director of the Rockefeller Institute of Government, Richard Nathan, for his leadership on this project. Our institutional partners at George Washington University School of Law – Professors Ira C. Lupu and Robert Tuttle – led the project’s work in tracking and explaining legal developments. They were enormously insightful and patient guides, and we were greatly privileged to work with them. We were equally privileged to find such talented people as Claire Hughes and Anne Farris, whose intrepid reporting and interviewing skills did so much to cover and tell this story. I am no less grateful to Patricia Cadrette and Lisa Montiel, my Rockefeller Institute compatriots, for their dedication, grace and good humor. The contributions and efforts of my colleagues on the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy are fully reflected in this report. Any shortcomings or errors are mine. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of The Pew Charitable Trusts or those of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government. The Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy 1 Taking Stock EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Few topics have been more durably contentious over our nation’s history than those involving intersections of church and state. And since few matters of domestic public policy were more controversial or associated more closely with President George W. Bush than his effort to expand government partnerships with religious providers of social services, it is all the more surprising to see the Faith-Based and Community Initiative appear to live on in fair measure, despite the current of sweeping change coursing through Washington with the historic election of President Barack Obama. A closer look suggests time will reveal both continuity and change in the Obama and Bush approaches toward service partnerships between the government and religious groups. The Bush administration and its supporters in Congress set out with high hopes for adopting laws to expand opportunities for faith-based social service providers in government programs and, through the tax code, to strengthen incentives for charitable contributions to their efforts. But this was not to be. Efforts on comprehensive legislation regarding the Faith-Based Initiative were stymied. Separate bills were attempted in three areas: financial incentives to encourage private giving to religious organizations; statutory authorization to explicitly partner with religious organizations in certain governmental programs; and new programmatic initiatives involving faith-based and other service providers, often as part of omnibus appropriations legislation. Few legislative successes on the faith agenda were achieved over the eight-year period however. Incentives to encourage charitable giving to religious and other charities were adopted, after many years of debate, as part of the Pension Protection Act signed into law by Bush in August 2006. But those incentives were scaled back compared with what was originally proposed. More divisive and ultimately even less satisfying were legislative efforts to modify statutory provisions in a number of existing federal programs that presented barriers, perceived or real, to wider participation of faith-based organizations. The principal barrier – in statute and to achieving new legislative agreement – involved the right of religious organizations to base employment decisions on matters of religious faith when hiring for positions paid for with taxpayer dollars. The Bush administration sought to clarify, protect and extend that right for religious charities across all federal programs, but several significant federal programs – among them Head Start, the preschool education program for low-income families, and the Workforce Investment Act, the principal program for job training and placement services for adults and youths – make no such provision for religious employers. As those programs and others with similar provisions came up for reauthorization, heated debate centered on whether legislation extending them into the future would maintain or change language that, among other things, permitted or precluded religious organizations receiving federal money from hiring and firing employees based on religious beliefs. The politics of religious hiring rights proved too difficult for Congress to resolve. No bill to modify existing language on hiring rights was able to pass both chambers of Congress during the Bush presidency. Inclusion of hiring rights provisions doomed attempts to reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act, extended only temporarily and without desired reforms. Congress approved a five-year overhaul of Head Start in 2007, but only by excising the proposal backed 2 The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government The Bush Faith-Based Initiative and What Lies Ahead by Bush to allow faith-based groups to consider religion when employing Head Start staff. The proposed Citizen Service Act, legislation authorizing volunteer programs administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, could not clear the legislative bottleneck of religious hiring. Conversely, Democrats in Congress failed in their efforts to remove existing religious hiring rights provisions included under the Charitable Choice elements of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families when that program was reauthorized. Attempts to grant any permanency to Bush’s administrative efforts to expand partnerships with religious groups failed. In part, this legislative record reflects the disinclination of Democrats in the highly charged partisan climate following the contested election of 2000 to go along with a personal initiative of the Republican president. But the Bush legislation also lacked a strong external constituency to support passage in Congress. Conservative Christian organizations, one natural base, were somewhat divided; some groups believed the initiative would encourage too much government intervention in religion. Another possible base of support – the low-income and mostly minority communities most likely to receive government services from faith-based organizations – lacked the coalescence, infrastructure and connections with leadership necessary to be a formidable force with members of Congress. Few were more dismayed than the strongest supporters for faith-based initiatives in Congress, who contended that the Bush administration’s legislative record on the faith agenda reflected a desire to have the continuing fight work as a political issue. In the absence of new legislative authority, Bush moved aggressively to advance the Faith-Based Initiative through executive orders, rule changes, managerial realignment in federal agencies and other innovative uses of the prerogatives of his office. Chief among those innovations was the creation of the high-profile special White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (FBCI). Complementing the White House office, FBCI centers were created by executive order in 11 government agencies, each with a carefully selected director and staff empowered to articulate, advance and oversee coordinated efforts to win more financial support for faith-based social services. Other agencies and quasi-governmental entities established similar offices and functions in areas ranging from citizen service to homeownership and business development to energy conservation. Bush’s executive orders directed all federal agencies to review their rules and internal operations to ensure that they provided equal treatment for faith-based groups. The Bush effort undermined and overcame the “culture of resistance” that had existed in the federal government toward faith- based organizations’ participation in social service contracts. “Measured by that standard, the initiative has been, I think, a success that really doesn’t have a parallel in contemporary administrative law, where you have a complete change in culture,” said Robert Tuttle of George Washington University School of Law. The legacy of this effort, to its architects and admirers, included: 16 federal rules rewritten to help faith-based organizations provide government services on a “level playing field” with secular groups and without diminishing their religious character; training and assistance provided to more than 100,000 religious and secular grassroots organizations through regional conferences around the country; 36 states and more than 100 cities encouraged to create faith-based offices or designate liaisons to religious communities; about $300 million in government money set aside to help small faith-based and community organizations apply for grants and build their The Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy 3 Taking Stock organizational capacity; and the use of vouchers advanced so government money could flow to even the most intensely religious organizations without violating constitutional laws separating church and state. A number of program initiatives were adopted during the Bush presidency that potentially or explicitly included faith-based groups in the mix of providers, but without putting them front- and-center as principal to the effort. The most notable of these programmatic initiatives begun during the Bush presidency is PEPFAR – the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. PEPFAR made a massive, $15 billion commitment to AIDS relief in Africa. In July 2008, PEPFAR was extended through the end of 2013 and expanded for up to $48 billion more to combat global HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Obama has highlighted the global AIDS initiative as a success of the Bush administration. Using religious and other community-based organizations as social support networks was a central tenet of Bush administration approaches in several other programmatic initiatives that met with some success. The Mentoring Children of Prisoners and the Prisoner Reentry programs are examples of this approach, programs that establish mentoring relationships for people in need using the social networking apparatus of religious charities as a keystone. The Compassion Capital Fund, the only pot of new money established expressly as part of the Bush Faith-Based and Community Initiative, has as its primary purpose the building of organizational capacity, in part by connecting small and less-experienced community groups in mentor-like relationships with more-established intermediary organizations that provide training. Obama signaled similar goals and approaches in his own developing plans during the campaign and since. Many faith-based organizations report that Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative raised public awareness of their social service work. On the upside for advocates of faith-based services, there appears to be increased openness among more government officials to the possibility of partnering with faith-based groups. Many governors, for example, followed the Bush administration’s lead in advocating for similar initiatives at the state level. The 2004, 2006 and 2008 elections saw more than a dozen new governors take office, including a sizeable number involving a changeover in party control. In no case during that period did a change in tenure result in a decision to end a state faith-based and community initiative in any of the roughly two-thirds of the states that had such a policy in place. Yet the Bush White House Office of FBCI did not function without controversy, and questions remain about its operation. Criticism was raised about politicization of the effort, and concern voiced in a number of quarters – including the operational oversight arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office – about inadequate guidance and administrative oversight of contracting entities with regard to what activities could be supported legally with public dollars. The heightened visibility had negative impacts also. Conflict over the Bush Faith-Based and Community Initiative translated into a big organizational boon for the entrenched interest groups arrayed on either side. Particularly as the issue gained prominence in political circles and the courts, special interest groups grew in size and wealth as they waged legal, legislative and public relations battles over religious liberty and the separation of church and state. 4 The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government