From Shrub's personal bible:
"Whoever is last shall be made first to die."
Or as an old political joke in British Columbia says,
"He declared war on poverty. He's throwing rocks at the beggars."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6971511/
How compassionate. How conservative. How unsurprising.
Bob Dog
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Bush's faith-based efforts questioned
White House falling short on 'poor people stuff,' ex-aide says
By Alan Cooperman and Jim VandeHei
Updated: 12:32 a.m. ET Feb. 15, 2005
A former White House official said yesterday that President Bush
has failed to deliver on his promise to help religious groups
serve the poor, the homeless and drug addicts because the
administration lacks a genuine commitment to its "compassionate
conservative" agenda.
David Kuo, who was deputy director of the White House Office of
Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for much of Bush's first
term, said in published remarks that the White House reaped
political benefits from the president's promise to help religious
organizations win taxpayer funding to care for "the least, the
last and the lost" in the United States. But he wrote: "There was
minimal senior White House commitment to the faith-based agenda."
Analyzing Bush's failure to secure $8 billion in promised funding
for the faith-based initiative during his first term, Kuo said
there was "snoring indifference" among Republicans and "knee-jerk
opposition" among Democrats in Congress.
'Poor people stuff'
"Capitol Hill gridlock could have been smashed by minimal West
Wing effort," Kuo wrote on Beliefnet.com, a Web site on religion.
"No administration since [Lyndon B. Johnson's] has had a more
successful legislative record than this one. From tax cuts to
Medicare, the White House gets what the White House really wants.
It never really wanted the 'poor people stuff.' "
Kuo's remarks were a rare breach of discipline for an
administration that places a high premium on unity among current
and former officials, and they mark the second time a former
high-ranking official has criticized Bush's approach to the
faith-based issue.
In August 2001, John J. DiIulio Jr., then-director of the
faith-based office, became the first top Bush adviser to quit,
after seven months on the job. In an interview with Esquire
magazine a year later, DiIulio said the Bush White House was
obsessed with the politics of the faith-based initiative but
dismissive of the policy itself, and he slammed White House
advisers as "Mayberry Machiavellis."
Initiative called 'top priority'
White House spokesman Trent Duffy said yesterday that Kuo is
wrong about the president's commitment.
"The faith-based and community initiative has been a top priority
for President Bush since the beginning of his first term and
continues to be a top priority," Duffy said. "The president has
mentioned the initiative in every State of the Union and fought
for full funding."
In his first major policy speech as a presidential candidate in
2000, Bush proposed an $8 billion program to promote religious
charities and other community groups. The idea quickly became the
centerpiece of his call for compassionate conservatism. But it
met stiff resistance in Congress, where Democrats said it
threatened the separation of church and state, while Republicans
showed little enthusiasm for new welfare-related spending.
After Congress balked at allowing religious groups to receive
government funding and still hire, fire and promote employees on
the basis of their faith, Bush issued executive orders to make it
easier for religious groups to compete for government grants to
run homeless shelters, counseling centers for teenagers and a
wide range of other social programs.
"I think some good progress has been made, especially
administratively," said John Bridgeland, White House director of
domestic policy during Bush's first term. He added that Bush's
decision to give chief speechwriter Michael J. Gerson
responsibility for expanding the initiative should give the
effort a lift in the second term.
'Promises remain unfulfilled'
In his Beliefnet column, Kuo said it was "a dream come true for
me" when Bush promised in 2000 that in his first year in office
he would provide $6 billion in tax incentives for private
charitable giving, $1.7 billion for groups that care for the poor
and $200 million for a Compassion Capital Fund to assist local
faith-based organizations.
"Sadly, four years later these promises remain unfulfilled in
spirit and in fact," he wrote.
In June 2001, the promised tax incentives were stripped at the
last minute from the $1.6 trillion tax cut legislation "to make
room for the estate-tax repeal that overwhelmingly benefited the
wealthy," Kuo said. The Compassion Capital Fund has received a
cumulative total of $100 million in the past four years, and new
programs for children of prisoners, at-risk youth and prisoners
reentering society have received a little more than $500 million
over four years, he said.
"Unfortunately, sometimes even the grandly-announced 'new'
programs aren't what they appear," Kuo wrote, citing as an example
the three-year $150 million "gang prevention" effort Bush
announced in this year's State of the Union address. In reality,
Kuo said, that money is being taken out of the "already meager"
$100 million request for the Compassion Capital Fund.
Kuo, 36, served as a special assistant to the president for 2 1/2
years and was deputy head of the faith-based office from February
2002 to December 2003. Before joining the White House, he worked
for several prominent conservatives, including John D. Ashcroft
and William J. Bennett. But before that, he had been a campaign
volunteer for former representative Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.) and
an intern for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).
"I have always sought to try and figure out what's the best way
for government to care for the poor. I went to the left and to
the right, and I've ended up pretty much in the center," he said
in a telephone interview yesterday.
'It's about everybody'
In the Beliefnet column, Kuo said that he continues to have "deep
respect, appreciation and affection for the president." Kuo added:
"No one who knows him even a tiny bit doubts the sincerity and
compassion of his heart."
Asked whether that meant he believes that Bush was sincere about
the faith-based initiative but other White House officials were
not, Kuo said he would "let the column speak for itself."
"The point of the column is that the poor need to be dealt with
by everybody. There was phenomenal promise in the original vision
for compassionate conservatism . . . and to try to pin blame on
any one institution, one person, one body, one policy, is wrong,"
he said. "It's not about the White House, it's not about the
Congress, it's not about interest groups. It's about everybody."
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