[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 13 (Wednesday, January 31, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H135-H136]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         FAITH-BASED INITIATIVES A PRIORITY WITH PRESIDENT BUSH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SOUDER. Earlier this week, President George Bush announced his 
faith-based initiatives office and different proposals that he will be 
sending down to Congress. Earlier today, the gentleman from Oklahoma 
(Mr. Watts), who has been a leader in this effort, and Senator Rick 
Santorum, along with the gentlewoman from Kentucky (Mrs. Northup) and 
myself, and Senators Tim Hutchinson and Sam Brownback held a press 
conference with a number of leaders from Michigan, Florida, and other 
places around the United States to highlight some of these initiatives.
  There are a number of questions that I wanted to address here as we 
prepare to analyze and hopefully report the President's package and add 
different things we have considered here in the House and Senate to it 
as well.
  First and foremost, this is not a new idea. Former Congressman and 
Senator Dan Coats, when he was in the House, had a number of these 
initiatives. In the Senate, the Agenda for American Renewal. Former 
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp had a 
number of faith-based initiatives there because a lot of people would 
not reach out and care for those with AIDS. In the early stages of the 
AIDS crisis, as people were dying, there were all sorts of false rumors 
around and many people did not care for them. Without the faith-based 
communities, if the government had not reached out to the faith-based 
communities and involved them, there would have been many people dying 
of AIDS who would not have received any assistance whatsoever. Nobody 
objected to the faith-based communities coming and working.
  Similarly in homelessness, the Federal dollars, the State dollars, 
and the local dollars were not enough to address the homeless 
questions. So, under HUD, they expanded into the faith-based 
organizations back in the Bush administration. That was continued under 
Secretary Cisneros and continued under Secretary Cuomo. It is not fair 
to say that these things are suddenly new and that President Bush is 
trying to insert religion into the national debate. It has been there. 
The difference is, instead of an afterthought, President Bush wants to 
make it a focus. He is saying that all these flowering organizations 
that are developed in every neighborhood, particularly those that are 
hurting the most, there are people making a difference and we need to 
tap into that.
  Now, a second question that comes up is, well, these examples that 
are brought forth and are talked about at press conferences or that are 
talked about by Gene Rivers in Boston or Freddie Garcia in San Antonio, 
they

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are just exceptions. They are not the rules. We could not possibly make 
this program work on a large scale because, while there are a few 
people here and there toiling away, this cannot possibly be part of an 
integrated strategy. That is just false.
  The largest city in my district is Fort Wayne, Indiana. I want to 
give an example of the breadth of what we are talking about here. 
Reverend Bill McGill was executive director of Stop the Madness. After 
one pastor's son was shot in the center city of Fort Wayne while he was 
sitting at a YMCA and two guys got in a gun fight, he decided to form 
an organization called Stop the Madness. Bill McGill headed that 
organization. Now he is executive director of One Church, One Offender. 
We have churches throughout northeast Indiana and Fort Wayne in 
particular who are working to adopt people who have gotten in trouble 
with the law and who are now coming out. Who is going to help them get 
a job and work with them? This is a tremendous program.
  The Ewell Wilson Center was started by Shirley Woods and her husband 
after their boy, who was a star athlete, was shot. She has a community 
center now who works with kids. It is disconcerting that she has to 
fight for every little game unit, for every computer, for every little 
thing because she is not a high-powered organization. It is just a 
couple of people who said we care about the kids in our area. They do 
not have grant writers or the so-called beltway bandits. How can people 
making a difference at the grass roots level do it?
  Reverend Jessey and Anthony Beasley came to me. They have an inner-
city church and they are trying to figure out how to get a youth 
program started for the after-school kids because we have a huge crack 
problem in Fort Wayne and a high murder rate, and they do not know 
where to turn to do that.
  George Middleton took some of his savings out to help build a youth 
center, and he is building this with his private money and getting 
volunteers in. But he can only do so much. And when someone does not 
get the help, they get tired too fast. They are working 18 hours a day. 
Here are the people who are actually doing it in the ZIP code where 
they live and we cannot get the dollars to them.
  Friends of mine, Barb and Lonnie Cox, had their family touched and 
friends touched by the drug problem, so they went to the bishop and 
through the parish there they formed a house to reach people who have 
been battling drug addiction.
  There is Father Glenn Kohrman in Fort Wayne. We have an influx of 
Burmese come in, as they have had a conflict in that country. We have 
programs for people of Spanish language, often through faith-based 
organizations because often they are involved in the Catholic church or 
Pentecostal churches, but in this case, in the Asian community, we did 
not have any direct funds where the Catholic church could figure out 
how to do English as a second language to a subgroup.
  This is what President Bush is talking about. We have lots of people 
already there; we have lots more interested, but they have not had 
access to it. I congratulate the President for making this a foremost 
priority rather than an afterthought.

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