Faith-Based "Charitable Choice"

Ours is a time of polarization, partisanship, and decline in religion’s influence in public life, with heated debates about government’s relationship with religion. And yet, receiving little attention but no less significant than the divisiveness, is the 20-year bipartisan cooperation over federal aid to religious organizations that serve the poor and needy. The basic principles, termed “Charitable Choice,” were signed into law multiple times by President Bill Clinton, starting with the welfare reform act on August 22, 1996. Those same principles were endorsed by George W. Bush in an executive order and then promulgated in a series of “equal treatment” regulations stretching across all federal grants for charitable work. President Obama embraced the principles in an executive order of his own, which led, just this past April, to expanded equal-treatment regulations governing social service grants and cooperative agreements in nine departments, from HHS, HUD and Justice to USAID, Agriculture, Labor and Homeland Security.