White House Missteps Stalled Bill to Help Religious Groups, Report Says

Missteps by the White House hobbled President Bush’s effort last year to funnel more federal money to religious charities for social services, according to a new report.

The report, by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a Washington group supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, says that poor coordination between the White House office charged with promoting Mr. Bush’s plan and senior administration advisers hurt the president’s efforts.

Mr. Bush sought to persuade Congress to approve legislation that would, among other things, open several federal grant programs to religious organizations. But key White House officials failed to develop a coherent plan to achieve Mr. Bush’s goal, the report says. It says John J. DiIulio Jr., former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, was not consulted when decisions that affected the religion proposal were made by Bush administration officials, including the president’s senior political adviser, Karl Rove.

Mr. Rove put a greater emphasis on education and tax cuts, which hampered Mr. DiIulio’s ability to promote the plan, the report says. Mr. DiIulio left the post in August, citing health reasons.

The House of Representatives wound up approving a faith-based bill by a narrow margin, but the Senate has yet to take any action on a related proposal introduced by a bipartisan group of sponsors. Mr. Bush last month endorsed the Senate bill, increasing the likelihood that the Senate will eventually approve some of the administration’s faith-based proposal.

Despite its failure to persuade Congress to pass a faith-based bill, the White House made some headway on the issue, the report says. Most notable was its behind-the-scenes effort to urge the federal departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, and Labor to begin rewriting rules to allow religious groups to receive federal grants. The revision, which is under way, may be more effective at steering federal money toward religious charities than the proposals the White House asked Congress to approve, the report says.

The new head of the White House faith-based office, James Towey, said in an interview with The Chronicle that the revised regulations will help small nonprofit groups, both religious and secular, gain better access to federal social-service programs than they have had in the past. “You’ve got a lot of small groups out there doing great things, and I feel they often get overlooked because the focus gets on the really big players,” said Mr. Towey, who was appointed by President Bush last month.

Mr. Towey said small neighborhood groups can be more effective at fighting poverty than large ones, including Catholic Charities or the Salvation Army, or secular ones like United Ways.

The government must “be careful not to overlook the little operators at the grass-roots level that are most in touch with the needs of the people they serve,” Mr. Towey said. “It’s very hard for a huge organization to have that kind of intimate identity.”

Well-established groups have argued that they have a proven track record in solving social problems, but Mr. Towey said those groups fail to provide data to support that claim.

White House Rank

Before joining the Bush administration, Mr. Towey directed Florida’s Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services and served for 12 years as legal counsel to the late Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun who served the poor in Calcutta. Mr. Towey said that in 1996 he was inspired by Mother Teresa to start Aging With Dignity, a nonprofit group in Tallahassee, Fla., that advocates better hospice care for dying people.

Mr. Towey and Mr. DiIulio are both Catholics and Democrats. But observers expect Mr. Towey to bring a more low-key approach to the administration’s faith-based plan compared with Mr. DiIulio, who clashed with Christian evangelicals and Republican lawmakers during his time in office.

Mr. Towey’s role is expected to be less prominent than Mr. DiIulio’s because Mr. Towey is subordinate to the director of the newly established USA Freedom Corps, a White House office that promotes national service and volunteerism. Mr. DiIulio had a higher ranking in the administration chain of command.

The report, “Can an Office Change a Country?: The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, a Year in Review” is available on the Pew Forum’s Web site at http://pewforum.org or by contacting the organization at 1150 18th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036-3823; (202) 955-5075.