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American Morning

Vote on Funding for Faith-Based Charities Expected in House

Aired July 19, 2001 - 11:32   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We have news coming from Capitol Hill, where President Bush's plan to spend federal money on faith-based charities is running into trouble in the House. Republican leaders had to hold up the bill on Wednesday when a dozen Republicans rebelled. They may get around to the vote today.

Let's bring in our congressional correspondent Kate Snow.

Kate, first if you could tell us exactly what the initiative and the bill is that they're looking at.

KATE SNOW, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Daryn, they are starting to look at it now in the House, and we do expect a vote will happen sometime probably middle this afternoon. This is a key initiative for President Bush. As you might remember, he campaigned on this faith-based initiative.

What it does, essentially, is it allows for charity groups, for religious-based groups to apply for federal funding for services -- things like crime prevention programs, housing grants, job training programs, domestic violence prevention, all of those sorts of charity programs -- charitable programs, they would be allowed to do with federal funding.

The bill also, incidentally, gives tax breaks to people who give to charity, even for those Americans who do not itemize their taxes -- those 80 million Americans who use those EZ forms would now be able to write off a donation to charity -- Daryn?

KAGAN: As we said, Kate, we expected this vote to come yesterday. But it was a group of Republicans, of all people, who rebelled. What went wrong -- or right, as the case may be, depending on how you see the initiative?

SNOW: It's a little bit complicated, too. But you're absolutely right: The Republicans thought they were going to bring this up yesterday. They thought it would be an easy vote. In fact, the chief sponsor of this bill, J.C. Watts from Oklahoma said that he was surprised that they had this delay.

The key part of it -- and what happened was there is some language in this bill, Daryn, that provides that organizations -- faith-based organizations would be possibly exempted from state and local anti-discrimination laws. The federal law that they would pass would supersede those state and local anti-discrimination clauses.

Democrats and a handful of Republicans were worried about that, and they still are worried about that. They say that that would allow these church-based groups -- or religious groups, I should say, to discriminate, potentially, against gays, lesbians and others.

On the flip side of that, though, Republicans say that that provision needs to be in there because say, for example, you are a Catholic soup kitchen and you want to hire people who agree with your faith and your beliefs. The Republicans and the sponsors of this bill believe that they ought to have the option and the flexibility to hire whoever they want.

That's the basic debate. That think they've worked it out, Daryn, and they think that they've got all their moderates onboard now. Which means Republicans think that they can pass this later today.

But Democrats still have a lot of concerns. In fact, Senator Tom Daschle talking about this issue just a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TOM DASCHLE (D-SD), MAJORITY LEADER: I think we have to continue to insist that tolerance be a part of our culture, and that we find ways, both through incentives as well as mandates, to eliminate discrimination of all kinds. I think that that's what this fight is about. And I can't imagine that we could pass any bill that would tolerate slipping back into a level of tolerance that would be unacceptable in today's society.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: Expect to hear more Democrats say that on the House floor today, as well. And that does raise the question of, what happens if this passes the House today? It still has to go through the Senate. Hearing what Senator Daschle just said -- of course, he's the majority leader now Daryn -- it doesn't look likely it's going to come up any time soon in the Senate -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Kate Snow on Capitol Hill; Kate, thank you.

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