The president, the cross and the cookie jar

By Molly Ivins
Published Feb. 1, 2001

AUSTIN, Texas -- Welcome to George
W. Bush's world of fuzzy policy thinking.
If you find yourself confused, befuddled
or confounded by his recent proposals, don't worry
about a thing. You understand them perfectly. They
just don't make much sense.

Let me see if I can help with some of your questions:

What, you wonder, does drilling for oil in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge have to do with solving
California's energy crisis? Absolutely nothing, so
don't waste time trying to find the connection. Less
than 1 percent of California's electricity comes from
oil.

Will allowing power plants in California to pollute
more help solve the energy crisis there? No, Bush is
just misinformed on that point, according to
environmentalists, California state officials and
energy-industry spokesmen.

Is there anything that the president can do about the
California crisis? Yes, he might impose a temporary
cap on wholesale electricity prices, but he has
already announced that he will not, thus foreclosing
(if nothing else) a useful threat.

Will, you ask, giving a huge tax cut to the wealthiest
people in the country help prevent a recession? No.
Isn't this the same tax cut Bush tried to sell us during
the campaign on the grounds that the economy was
so good we needed a tax cut? Yes.

And then, of course, there is one of Bush's faves:
Let's use the churches to provide social services. (In
W.'s policy world, churches are always "faith-based
institutions." The words "church" and "religious" are
never used.)

That is not, actually, a totally terrible idea, except that
it's unconstitutional and guaranteed to get screwed
up in the execution. We've already tried it here in the
National Laboratory for Bad Government -- aka
Texas -- and that's what we learned.

Bush's "faith-based" proposal includes a series of
tax changes to encourage charitable giving to
religious and other community organizations. This is
a good idea, but isn't it at cross purposes with his
other proposal to eliminate the estate tax, which now
provides a major incentive to recycle money into the
nonprofit sector?

Yes, indeed, these two policies will cancel each
other out, except the nonprofit sector will lose more
by repeal of the estate tax than it will gain by the
other tax changes. In other words, the net effect of
Bush's proposals moves in the opposite direction
from that which he says he wants. You will find this
often happens with Bush. It could be fuzzy math.

Bush is especially pushing religious programs that
work at rehabilitating inmates on the grounds that it
will encourage such splendid programs as Chuck
Colson's Prison Fellowship. What is believed to be
the largest religious program for prisoners? The
Nation of Islam, headed by Louis Farrakhan, the
noted loony and racist.

This is why the "faith-based" proposal does not
work. It's because the government has to keep
deciding what's legitimate religion and what's not.

Trying to keep money given to religious
organizations from being used for proselytizing is
hopeless; money is fungible, a wonderful word
meaning "interchangeable." If you give money to a
church for one purpose, that in turn helps fund the
church's other purposes since, obviously, it has more
money.

Those of you who know "Christians afire" -- those
who cannot stop witnessing -- will not be surprised to
learn that they will, in all good faith, set up, say, an
employment training program based on the premise
that once you have been born again, you're
automatically more employable. One
state-supported program in Brenham, Texas, used
to meet two nights a week, one for Bible study and
the other for job skills.

I'm sorry to say this, but anyone who reads the
newspapers regularly and notices the number of
religious figures accused of child molestation and
other abuses will not be surprised to learn that
religious social service programs are like other
social programs: Some are good, and some are not.
Pretending that they are all somehow superior to
state social services doesn't help anything.

Religious conservatives are correct to question this
Bush program. The government will inevitably have
to draw lines about what is acceptable and what is
not, what is preaching and what is not.

As that great orator, the late Texas state Rep. Billy
Williamson of Tyler, once declared during a debate
over state aid to Baptist-sponsored Baylor, "Yew
CAAAAAAAN'T trade the cross for the cookie jar!"

And this is the policy record that has been
pronounced a triumph by the Washington press
corps.

You may write to Molly Ivins at 1005 Congress
Ave., Suite 920, Austin, TX 78701 or via email at
mollyivins@star-telegram.com .

SOURCE;
http://www.sacbee.com/voices/national/ivins/ivins_20010201.html

Molly Ivins