Office of Faith-Based Cuts

The Bush Administration’s budget for FY2006 has many troubling provisions like the Faith Based Initiaves (through the Office of Faith- and Community-based Programs) that promotes marriage and abstinence at the expense of programs that have a track record of reducing unwanted pregnancies and reducing the amount the government spends on supporting the poorest families in the U.S. Specifically, the President’s budget cuts funding for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) High Performance Bonus, which rewards states with extra funding that reduce the number of families living in poverty in order to fund faith- and “community”-based programs that support marriage and abstinence to reduce the number of families living in poverty, essentially privatizing the role of government to religious organizations of social support. The really disturbing part of this idea is that abstinence education doesn’t work (it leads to higher teen pregnancy rates than promoting the use of condoms and other methods of birth control) and it attaches a method of “if you accept Jesus, we’ll help you but otherwise you are screwed (i.e., you go to hell)”. In a secular state like the U.S. this type of policy is completely unacceptable.