Keeping The Faith
President Bush is giving a governmental helping hand to faith-based charities and grappling with the energy crisis in California as his second week in office gets under way.
Staying true to a campaign promise, Mr. Bush in an executive order on Monday created a special White House office on religion-based community initiatives, reports CBS News Correspondent Bill Plante. Those initiatives would distribute billions of federal dollars to religious groups and charities over the next 10 years.
"Compassion is the work of a nation, not just a government," the president said.
Mr. Bush said such groups grapple daily with "deep needs and real suffering" in communities, and deserve a chance to compete for taxpayer money for after-school programs, prison ministries and drug treatment, among other things.
"Government will never be replaced by charities and community groups," he said. "Yet when we see social needs in America, my administration will look first to faith-based programs...We will not discriminate against them."
In another executive order, Mr. Bush on Monday instructed five Cabinet-level agencies to create entities to work with religious groups. The president said he issued the second order to clear barriers "that make private groups hesitant to work with government."
The president chose University of Pennsylvania political science professor John J. DiIulio Jr. to head the new White House office - and former Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith will chair a new advisory board whose work will complement it.
Skeptics say shifting government money to churches, synagogues, and mosques to expand their assistance programs raises questions about the constitutional separation of church and state.
"Inevitably what happens is government ends up either funding religious beliefs or some beliefs at the expense of others," Ira Glasser, executive director of the ACLU, told CBS News on Monday.
"Do you want Methodists and Baptists and Jews competing for government money and charging discrimination when they don't get money, but not others?" Glasser added.
Others fear that religious charities may not be staffed by trained professionals. And they point out that churches are exempt from civil rights laws.
"What will happen if a synagogue doesn't want to hire a Muslim, or a church doesn't want to hire a Jew," says Laura Murphy, also of the ACLU. "Who's gonna step in to make sure that federal dollars are used in a non-discriminatory fashion."
At the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Rev. Barry Lynn called Bush's planned expansion an assault on constitutional principle that will only lead to more litigation.
"President Bush seems to think he was selected not just as president but also as national pastor," said Lynn, an attorney and United Church of Christ minister. "He really needs to undersand that that blurs an important constitutional line."
Even some churches are leery of taxpayer dollars that might come with strings attached. But Mr. Bush argues that religious groups must be part of the solution to society's ills.
"A compassionate society is one which recognizes the great power of faith," he said last week. "We in government must not fear faith-based programs, we must welcome faith-based programs."
To build support, Mr. Bush will meet throughout this week with leaders of spiritual and charitable groups - and he plans to attend the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday.
Later on Monday, California's power problems were part of Mr. Bush's agenda when he and top advisers discussed national energy policy.
While the administration has been taking what could be called a "tough love" attitude toward the Golden State's electricity woes - saying the power crunch is a state problem, not a federal one - Mr. Bush at Monday's meeting voiced alarm that the California crisis is spilling over its borders.
Assembling the group in the Cabinet room, the president directed Vice President Dick Cheney and several Cabinet members to develop a strategy on "how best to cope with high energy prices and how best to cope with reliance on foreign oil, how best to encourage the development of pipelines and power-generating capacity in the country."
Top energy officials were being dispatched to see governors of Western states affected by the power crunch. Mr. Bush said those governors who recently visited with him and Cheney are "deeply concerned about the situation spreading beyond the California borders and so are we," the president said.
"And so, the task force that's being assembled will not only deal with the very short-run issue dealing with the West, but obviously the longer-term issues that will be confronting our country throughout unless we're willing to act boldly and swiftly, which we will do," he added.
Finally, the president intends to formally propose his prescription drug plan for seniors later this week.
Borrowing elements of a congressional Republican plan, Mr. Bush has pledged to revamp the entire Medicare program, giving senior citizens a choice of health plans, including some that offer drug coverage. But the president said this overhaul would not take effect for four years. In the meantime, he would give states money to help low-income seniors pay for drugs.
Critics question the wisdom of creating a new web of programs that may disappear four years later. They also argue that once created, the grants would be hard to stop after four years.