When Bush unveiled his faith-based initiative and established the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, he created “outreach offices” for most of his cabinet agencies. In some instances, this followed a fairly logical strategy. By creating a faith-based office in Departments of Education, for example, the president was signaling that he wanted religious ministries to play a larger role in American schools.
I was always a little confused, however, about why Bush wanted the Departments of Agriculture to have a faith-based outreach office. Is there a Christian approach to crop technology? Yesterday, it started to make more sense.
The Agriculture Department said it will give at least $1 million in grants to community and faith-based organizations to help poor families apply for federal food stamps.
The USDA said the grants will be used to inform the poor, immigrants and the elderly about the benefits of food stamps and show them how to apply.
The timing couldn’t be better. In early November, the Republican Congress slashed $700 million from the food stamp program, which will ultimately deny food stamps to more than 220,000 low-income people each month by 2008. And in late November, the Republican administration announced it would spend $1 million so that faith-based groups can tell poor people about the food stamp program.
So, the federal government is going to give religious ministries tax dollars to promote a food program for the poor, while at the exact same time, the federal government just made it tougher for the poor to access the same food program.
Washington is becoming an increasingly strange place.