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Bush urges next step in war on poverty
Compiled from Times wires © St. Petersburg Times, published May 21, 2001 SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- President Bush used a commencement address at the University of Notre Dame to defend and declare his faith-based initiative as the next, crucial wave in a "war on poverty" that President Lyndon Johnson launched more than three decades ago. In sweeping language, Bush delivered perhaps his most forceful message on behalf of a controversial proposal that has divided Congress and the nation. He said that government had done the right thing in the 1960s by expanding services to poor Americans and the right thing in the 1990s by putting limits on such assistance. Now, he said, it was time for government to act as a catalyst for the private sector -- to encourage individuals and groups, including religious ones, to address the needs of those who are struggling. "There is no great society which is not a caring society," Bush told thousands of students and teachers, invoking a phrase associated with Johnson's ambitious social programs. Then, referring to the co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, which is devoted to helping needy people, Bush added, "Any effective war on poverty must deploy what Dorothy Day called 'the weapons of spirit.' " Bush told graduates that government will never be replaced by charities but nevertheless must "do more to take the side of charities and community healers, and support their work." "Welfare as we knew it has ended, but poverty has not," Bush said in the domed field house of the Fighting Irish. "America has a long tradition of accommodating and encouraging religious institutions when they pursue public goals. My administration did not create that tradition, but we will expand it to confront some urgent problems." Bush called his plan "the third stage of combating poverty in America." He said the first was the war on poverty Johnson, a Democrat, declared in 1964, which resulted in Medicare, Medicaid and Head Start. The second was the welfare reform of 1996, which cut the nation's welfare rolls from a peak of 14.2-million in 1994 to 5.8-million last year by requiring work in return for time-limited benefits. Bush, wearing a royal blue academic robe but forgoing a mortarboard cap, said the Great Society programs had "noble intentions, and some enduring successes." He said the welfare reform bill has returned self-respect to many lives, and drew applause when he saluted "the president who signed it, President Bill Clinton." As Johnson argued that a prosperous nation had a duty to overcome racial and economic divisions, Bush spoke of "our nation's commitment to the poor" and noted that much of today's poverty "has more to do with troubled lives than a troubled economy." The address constituted Bush's first detailed response to the critics who have pummeled him from the left and, to his surprise and dismay, from the right in the three months since he released his long-promised "faith-based initiative" to encourage churches, mosques and neighborhood charities to seek government contracts to help homeless people, drug addicts and others in need. With the faith-based legislation moving much more slowly on Capitol Hill than the administration had hoped, Bush said government "should never fund the teaching of faith, but it should support the good works of the faithful." Bush noted that organizations like Catholic Charities already receive government funding. "Do the critics really want to cut them off?" Bush asked. "Medicaid and Medicare money currently goes to religious hospitals. Should this practice be ended? Child-care vouchers for low-income families are redeemed every day at houses of worship across America. Should this be prevented? Government loans send countless students to religious colleges. Should that be banned?" "Of course not," he said, his voice rising to meet the cheers. "A determined assault on poverty will require both an active government and active citizens." Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, credited Bush for acknowledging his critics, but said the president had not addressed their concern that his plan allows organizations to use private money to proselytize their clients as long as the public money goes only to social services. "The president still does not seem to understand that under the Constitution, you cannot turn over to churches the social services system of the United States," Lynn said. "His plan would let churches use public funds as a lure to people they would then seek to convert." Notre Dame, a Catholic institution, is one of three schools where Bush will deliver commencement addresses this week; he speaks at Yale University, his alma mater, today and the U.S. Naval Academy on Friday. In his speech to 2,500 graduates Sunday, Bush aggressively courted Roman Catholics, a bloc of swing voters who make up about a quarter of the electorate and narrowly favored former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. At the start of his 21-minute speech, Bush, who is Methodist, mentioned that his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, is Catholic. The president invoked Mother Teresa and laced Catholic rhetoric throughout his address at the university, where Mass is celebrated in each dorm and the 132-foot-high mosaic known as "Touchdown Jesus" keeps watch over the football stadium from the library. The visit by the president, who was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree, coincided with an announcement that the university had endowed a Laura Bush Scholarship, which will pay the tuition for a chosen student enrolled in a Catholic elementary or secondary school in Texas. Bush announced he will convene a summit at the White House this fall to ask corporate and philanthropic leaders from throughout America "to discuss ways they can provide more support to community organizations, both secular and religious." He also said he is adding two prongs to his faith-based agenda. He said he plans to triple his request for federal funding for groups like Habitat for Humanity, which promote home ownership for low-income people, from $25-million in 2002 to $75-million in 2003. He also said he will work to increase the drug-treatment funding going to faith-based and community groups. "The methods of the past may have been flawed," Bush said. "But the idealism of the past was not an illusion." - Information from the Washington Post, New York Times and Chicago Tribune was used in this report.
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