Improving the Community Services Block Grant Act of 2003

IMPROVING THE COMMUNITY SERVICES BLOCK GRANT ACT OF 2003 -- (House of Representatives -
February 04, 2004)

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, there has been a misconstruction here of what this amendment is all about, in particular by the gentleman from Georgia who just spoke. This amendment will restore the Civil Rights Act as it was from 1964 to 1998. It undoes an amendment put there in the dead of night, after no hearings and almost no debate, only 6 years ago. And from 1964 to 1998, the gentleman is quite correct, we had no problems with this.

Now, Community Service Block Grants help communities provide services for low-income families and individuals who address the ever-rising number of people living in poverty through employment programs, housing programs, nutrition programs, and education programs. For years these grants have been praised by both sides of the aisle. Yet today we find ourselves debating the issue of whether or not religious discrimination should play a part in providing
these services.

Religious discrimination is not the American way. Asking someone his or her religion in a job interview is simply wrong. Asking people what they believe before they can feed the poor, help the homeless, or provide protection to battered families is, frankly, immoral.

Government saying that this is okay and funding it is a betrayal of our most cherished values.

Now, no one with this amendment, or with the law as it existed between 1964 and 1998, which this amendment would restore, no one is telling any religious person not to adhere to his or her faith or to advocate it. No one is telling religious institutions what to teach its members or who should conduct their religious ceremonies. No one is even telling a religious institution who to hire as the janitor. And if the Presbyterian church wants to say only Presbyterians could be hired to be the janitor or the priest, that is fine.

Nor, despite the rhetoric, are religiously affiliated charities under this amendment barred from participating in publicly funded programs. Every Member, including myself, has worked to obtain public funding for these worthwhile organizations. These religiously affiliated charities are the backbone of our social service delivery system, and no one is suggesting we change this, except for this administration and the Republican majority, which wants to destroy what has worked well for years.

What is at issue here is not whether a church or a religiously based group can have a religious test for anyone at all. What is at issue here is whether they can have a religious test for people, paid for by public funds; paid for by public funds to provide a public service.

If the church wants to have a religious test, as I said, for the minister or for the singers or for the choir director or for the janitor, it is free to do so. But those things are not paid for by public funds. If the church wants to compete for a public contract to provide services to the homeless with public funds, or to provide housing with public funds, it should compete for that contract. It should get that contract if it has the best proposal. But it should not be permitted, as it was not permitted until 1998, to have a religious test to say no Jews or no Irish or no Catholics and no Muslims may apply for the publicly funded position to help administer these public funds. For the nonpublicly funded positions of doing anything at all in the church or in the charity, have any religious test you want; that is religious freedom. It is not religious freedom to put a religious test on employment in a public program paid for by the tax dollars of everybody. Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, atheist, we all pay taxes, and our tax policy, our tax funds, should not be used to discriminate against any of us on the basis of religion.

No one should ever see a sign at a government-funded program that says "No Catholics need apply" or "No Jews need apply" or "No Presbyterians need apply," but that is what this bill would allow. In the Yorker case, an applicant for employment with public funds was asked on his job application what his religion was, on the job application. Is that the America we want to live in?

I know that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle complained about what they view as religious tests when it comes to approving judges in the Senate. Why should the person who serves soup in the soup kitchen, the publicly funded soup kitchen, or who aids the poor or the homeless with public funds be entitled to any less consideration?
The amendment in the existing law that we are trying to take out was passed in the dead of night in 1998 with few Members understanding the full implications of the language in it. The gentleman from Virginia and I were here at 1 in the morning to talk about the dangers this kind of publicly funded discrimination posed to our social services programs. Perhaps many of my colleagues were not fully aware of the scope of these change.

Now, as we debate this in the light of day, I urge everyone to take a close, hard look at what is being done. I urge my colleagues to reject this betrayal of our first freedom, our most fundamental of values, the freedom of conscience. I urge support of the Woolsey amendment, and I urge that, again, we are not talking about telling church-based organizations not to participate in public programs; they can do that as they always did prior to 1998. We are simply saying you can only use public funds in a public contract in a nondiscriminatory manner.

I urge support of the Woolsey amendment to restore the law as it was.