Watchdog Group Says Bush Administration Is Trying to Silence Charities

As debate heated up last spring over the Bush administration’s plans to overhaul the federal Head Start preschool program for needy children, an official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent a letter to local Head Start centers warning that they could get in trouble with the law if they lobbied against the proposed legislation.

A new report by a Washington nonprofit group called the letter “a ham-handed effort to stop advocacy in opposition to the president’s plan” and said the letter was also just one of many ways the Bush administration — in concert with conservative allies in Congress and elsewhere — has tried to limit the ability of nonprofit organizations to speak and act on matters vital to their missions. In the report, “An Attack on Nonprofit Speech: Death by a Thousand Cuts,” the Washington advocacy group OMB Watch cites a mix of examples affecting a broad range of charities.

In the case of Head Start, the Department of Health and Human Services ended up sending a second letter — following a federal court hearing on the matter — clarifying that Head Start grantees, staff members, and parents can indeed lobby as long as they “are not using resources funded by the Head Start program” or advocating while on duty. The government also wrote that the first letter was not intended “to discourage such activities.”

But OMB Watch said other attempts by federal agencies to limit nonprofit speech and activities persist. The report has begun to spark strong reactions from supporters and critics alike. Some observers praise it as a hard-hitting critique of Bush administration policies that cover tax-exempt organizations. But others call it a biased report that distorts the truth.

Many Small Steps

According to OMB Watch, the Bush administration’s efforts differ from previous government attempts to limit expression by nonprofit groups because there is no single legislative or regulatory proposal to point to. Rather, the report said, through a variety of smaller steps the Bush administration has:

• Attacked advocacy work by nonprofit organizations, particularly when disagreements have arisen over the Bush government’s policies. Added OMB Watch: “Taken one by one, these examples do not amount to much. But taken together, they spell trouble for the nonprofit sector.”
• Imposed limits on other kinds of speech by nonprofit groups, aimed especially at those organizations working on issues — such as reproductive rights, HIV/AIDS, and international-development activities — in which ideological differences with the administration are apparent.
• Forced changes on nonprofit groups that result from organizations’ fear of how laws, such as the USA Patriot Act, are being enforced. The Patriot Act is an anti-terrorism statute enacted after the September 11 attacks that broadens the government’s power to collect information in the hunt for terrorists and increases sanctions against people and organizations that support terrorism.

“It is to be expected that a president will push his or her policy agenda and use the tools at hand to do so,” said OMB Watch in its report.

“However, it is not appropriate for a president to attempt to silence those that disagree with him,” OMBWatch said. “The administration needs to change its tack, and cease its efforts to control the public, independent voice of nonprofit grantees.”

No ‘Unified Agenda’

Officials of the Bush administration had no comment on the OMB Watch report.

However, William A. Schambra, director of the Hudson Institute’s Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, in Washington, dismissed the OMB Watch report’s conclusions.

“Taken together, the examples spell conspiracy in the heads of these guys [at OMB Watch],” he said, “and that’s just not true.”

What’s more, the report’s authors “want to try to make things add up to a unified agenda on the part of the right and of the Bush administration when of course there isn’t a unified agenda,” said Mr. Schambra.

“The report doesn’t add up to anything. It’s a compendium of legislative desires, administrative edicts that were withdrawn, and random wishes that OMB Watch has heard about that might have cropped up in a legislative aide’s mind.”

Specific examples OMB Watch pointed to in making its case included the way the Bush administration has dealt with a San Francisco charity — the Stop AIDS Project, which works to prevent HIV transmission among homosexual and bisexual men.

OMB Watch said the charity’s experience illustrated how ideological differences between the Bush government and a local organization have led to government attempts to control the speech of nonprofit groups.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which provides money to support efforts of the Stop AIDS Project, recently wrote the organization that the charity’s programs on prevention of the disease might be in violation of the federal Public Health Service Act, which bars the use of federal funds for education or information designed to “directly” promote and encourage sexual activity.

The agency threatened to pull federal funds if the charity did not make changes.

Another concern cited by OMB Watch: new restrictions placed by the Bush administration on some international relief and development organizations that accept federal dollars for work in war-torn Iraq.

OMB Watch noted that the U.S. Agency for International Development recently awarded money to several nonprofit groups through a program designed in part to promote democracy in Iraq.

USAID required that recipients of the funds allow the federal agency to approve and coordinate all contacts the nonprofit groups had with the news media, at home or abroad.

That requirement and others reflected the administration’s “apparent belief that recipients of federal grants are agents of the U.S. government and its policies,” said OMB Watch.

USAID later backed down from its original position and now requires that nonprofit groups it supports report their contacts with the news media to the agency after they happen.

The report is available online at http://www.ombwatch.org. Print copies are also available free, with a charge for shipping and handling, by contacting OMB Watch, 1742 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009.