Community Services Block Grant Modernization Act of 2022

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and for her leadership on this legislation.

Today the committee action agencies, or CAAs, form a network of more than 1,000 organizations that meet the unique needs of communities to help lift low-income individuals and families out of poverty. For decades community action agencies have been central pillars to our communities. They administer programs such as Head Start, to provide quality early childhood education for low-income children and support their families; Meals on Wheels, to support seniors experiencing hunger and isolation; and LIHEAP, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that helps people keep up with their utilities.

In fact, it is the only Federal program whose broad mission is to address poverty conditions and allow community action agencies to tailor services for low-income individuals in their communities, and they do this with the goal of giving a hand up, not a handout.

Community action agencies' work is made possible by the community services block grant, the CSBG. Unfortunately, the CSBG program has not been reauthorized since 1998 creating uncertainty in the program.

The bipartisan Community Services Block Grant Modernization Act of 2022 reauthorizes CSBG for 10 years, the longest period in history, and improves the statute to help CAAs expand their work and reduce poverty across the country.

This includes increased authorization levels and raising the CSBG program income eligibility thresholds to expand access to their services. This will put CSBG on solid footing so that the program continues to meet the complex and changing needs of low-income individuals and communities without changing local control to this important program.

I thank the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici), the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson), the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum), the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Stefanik), the gentleman from California (Mr. DeSaulnier), and the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Comer) for championing this bipartisan legislation.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the legislation.

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

The chair of the subcommittee has said a lot about the charitable choice provision and the fact that faith-based entities have long participated in community action programs from the very beginning in the 1960s, and there is no evidence that they will stop participating.

Charitable choice purports to advance religious freedom, ensuring participation of faith-based organizations. The fact is, they are going to participate. Some may not because they cannot operate without discriminating. Well, that is their right. But if you are going to take Federal money, you should not discriminate.

This language that is being offered, the language that is not in the bill, authorizes broad religious discrimination against employees and fails to adequately protect religious liberty rights of beneficiaries in taxpayer-funded social services.

Now, when a church runs a program, they can hire whoever they want based on religion with church money. But when you take Federal money, there ought to be equal opportunity in hiring.

So, the charitable choice language, which is not in the bill as it is, requires equal opportunity, so if you apply for a job, you won't be discriminated against.

Unfortunately, this charitable choice thing kind of redefines the victim of discrimination. When somebody applies for a job under charitable choice and is told, ``We don't hire your kind because you are the wrong religion,'' we have redefined the victim in that as the agency discriminating because if we don't let them discriminate, we are violating their religious liberty.

What about the person who applied for the job? They have been denied a job solely on the basis of religion. It is my view that that is the one who needs the protection. We don't need to protect the right to discriminate.

In fact, that is why a broad coalition of civil rights, labor, and health organizations supports the removal of the language that allows that kind of discrimination, and that is in the letter that the chairwoman has offered.

That letter says, in part: ``Charitable choice does not protect religious freedom; rather, it uses the guise of religious freedom to justify discrimination against employees and put people who need government services at risk.''

I think it is time that this language be removed, as this bill before us does, so that the real victims of discrimination who are being discriminated against can get the protection of the Federal Government as they have since the 1964 civil rights bill.

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