Democrats inspect faith-based initiative

WASHINGTON -- Two leading Democrats on the House International Relations Committee said they want to investigate President Bush's faith-based initiative to determine whether taxpayer funds are being used to reward Bush's Christian conservative supporters and whether the faith-based groups are using the funds to help gain converts.

In addition, Democrats on the panel said they could be in a strong position to try to overturn a measure that requires one-third of AIDS prevention money overseas to be spent on "abstinence-until-marriage" programs.

The $1 billion abstinence measure was passed by the Republican-led Congress and signed by Bush, but many Democrats have complained that the money could be better spent on other measures such as condoms. Many of the religious groups receiving funds under Bush's faith-based initiative have received money as a result of the abstinence-until-marriage program.

Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, said last week that she wants the committee to follow up on an October report by the Globe that the Bush administration has given 98.3 percent of the faith-based foreign-aid money to Christian groups and to examine whether faith-based groups are using taxpayer funds to help their proselytizing efforts.

The review could be overseen by Representative William D. Delahunt, the Quincy Democrat who is in line to chair the International Relations subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Delahunt last week said he agreed that the program should be examined.

The Globe reported that Bush has doubled the percentage of US foreign aid dollars going to faith-based groups and that the president systematically eliminated or weakened rules designed to enforce the separation of church and state. As a result, some faith-based providers attempted to recruit members immediately before or after providing government services, and others favored Christians over Muslims.

The Globe also reported on cases in which secular groups said they were denied funding because they emphasized the distribution of condoms or worked with prostitutes in an effort to stop the spread of the AIDS virus.

"When you look at what has been exposed and revealed, I think we have a factual basis to move forward with this," Lee, a member of the International Relations Committee, said in an interview.

Calling for a review of whether the faith-based initiative has violated the separation of church and state, she said wanted to examine whether "people are being required to participate in faith-based prayer service. Are people being steadily convinced or subtly pressured to participate in organized religions activities in terms of the funding?"

Bush was unable to win congressional approval for the faith-based program even with Republicans in control of Congress, so he used executive orders to implement the program. The International Relations Committee, which oversees foreign programs, has been chaired by Representative Henry J. Hyde, an Illinois Republican who strongly supported the faith-based initiative.

Now, with Democrats preparing to take over the chairmanship, party members who had questioned the faith-based program and the abstinence policy are preparing to use their majority power to review the administration's effort. "It certainly demands some sort of review," Delahunt said.

He said, for example, that if US-funded Christian groups work in Muslim-dominated countries, the effort could be "perceived to be proselytization and it can generate a harsh negative reaction that implicates and impacts in a negative way on America's image in the world and have significant consequence to our foreign policy goals."

Delahunt said that the recent trip by the pope to Turkey, which prompted protests, provides the latest evidence that non-Muslim faith-based organizations tread a difficult line if they want to operate in a Muslim nation.

"One only has to pick up today's newspaper and note the visit of Pope Benedict to Turkey to understand that there can be an unfortunate reaction to initiatives that implicate proselytizing," Delahunt said.

Democrats said they also want to repeal a Bush-backed measure that required US groups receiving faith-based funds to have a policy opposing prostitution. Some groups have said the pledge impedes their work with prostitutes who spread AIDS, and two federal judges have ruled that the pledge is unconstitutional; the Bush administration has appealed the rulings.

Lee, meanwhile, is the prime sponsor of a bill that would remove the Bush-backed requirement that one-third of the money spent by the US government on AIDS prevention overseas go for "abstinence until marriage" programs. The measure has garnered 85 cosponsors and Lee said she is "cautiously optimistic" that she can gain enough backers to pass the bill.

A report issued earlier this year by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that the effort to steer money to abstinence has taken funds away from other anti-AIDS programs.

The GAO said that devising a system around spending mandates for abstinence had created a program that is "ambiguous and confusing."

"We will take a close look at the impact of these ideological restrictions on the effectiveness of HIV/AIDS programs abroad," Representative Tom Lantos, the California Democrat who will chair the committee in January, said in a statement to the Globe.

Lantos expressed concern that contractors who favor distribution of condoms and work with prostitutes have lost out to groups who agree to preach abstinence before marriage as an AIDS prevention measure. He said he would investigate reports about "contractors who have been harassed for providing comprehensive prevention services and denied federal government funding on the basis of their AIDS education programs."

"Our global HIV/AIDS policy should be about saving lives," Lantos said. "It is inconsistent with this goal to place ideologically driven restrictions on the implementation of efforts to prevent spreading the virus."

In addition to the review by the House International Relations Committee, an investigation might also be conducted by the House Government Reform Committee.

Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the likely chairman, has been a vocal critic of the way the Bush administration awarded an abstinence-based contract to a group that a government review panel found "not suitable for funding." Waxman has said that the Bush administration's decision to award the $10 million contract to the group "raises questions of political cronyism."