Wednesday, July 25, 2001
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Wednesday, July 25, 2001 |
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Bush's latest idea violates Hay's law By DAVE HAMRICK My first publisher, a wise man named Tom Hay, once told me that it's OK to make people mad, as long as you don't make everybody mad at once. Maybe Tom should be in Dubya's Cabinet. Looks like the Bush Administration could use that advice. So far, in my opinion, Bush has been light years better than the alternative would have been, but certainly not a likely candidate for president of the century. Well, perhaps he does qualify as president of the century ... so far. I've already complained about the wimpy, phased-in tax cut. Now there's this federal funding of faith-based charities. It's like Bush and his advisors sat down one day and tried to think of what they could do to kindle the anger of people at all points on the political spectrum. My most liberal friends are
mad because, in dolling out money to faith-based charities, Bush and the
House Churches and other religious groups like the Salvation Army can hire whomever they please. It's called freedom of religion. But in all other situations I can think of, if the federal government gives you money, you have to promise to hire without regard to race, religion, etc. And that's just one string. A myriad of strings is usually attached to any federal grant or loan. So the federal government doesn't give money to religions. It's called separation of church and state. Many conservatives, of course, are also mad because they think the federal budget for charitable work is already too high, or they don't think there should be one at all. Republicans in the House and the president seem to be in lock step when it comes to doing things to tick off their conservative base. Instead of a simple, across-the-board, permanent tax cut, they gave us a complicated, targeted, phased-in, temporary tax cut. And instead of streamlining government, they keep coming up with feel-good legislation that increases spending along with the size of the government that must administer that spending. So faith-based charitable spending angers liberals and conservatives alike, probably Libertarians too, and I'm only guessing the ACLU will probably find something it doesn't like about giving tax money to churches as well. But at least the churches and the poor people they help will like it, right? Wrong. Sooner or later, the pressure on the religious organizations to change their ways will come, whether directly from the administration or from lawsuits, and these groups will realize they've sold their souls for a few pieces of silver. As for the poor who receive the service, they're always angry about the help they receive, because it's never enough. It's bad enough when Democrats are in charge and they can blame the fact that it's never enough on the Republicans. Now that Republicans are in charge, they're seated even more firmly on the hot seat. Hey, here's a novel idea ... why don't we just permanently lower taxes so people have more money to contribute on their own to faith-based charities, and they can give to the ones they like and agree with, and not give to the ones they don't. Don't tell me they won't do it. During the Reagan tax-cut years, charities reported a strong surge in giving. As stated earlier, concerning taxes we need to figure out what our government should be doing (using constitutional principles), hire people who can do it efficiently, figure out how much tax it takes to do it, and maintain taxes at that much-lower-than-current level. Where charity is concerned, we need to figure out what the federal government's role in charity is, hire people who can accomplish that role efficiently, and run those programs under the auspices of the federal government. This mickey-mousing around with touchy-feely ideas apparently is designed to get more women to vote Republican. You might convince a few thousand women to change their voting patterns, but in the meantime how many hundreds of thousands of Republicans will be convinced to vote Libertarian or independent?
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