Back during the campaign, President Obama had promised to uphold the Bush administration’s generous aid policies with respect to faith-based groups — with the important caveat that he would no longer allow groups receiving federal aid to maintain hiring practices that discriminated on the basis of religion. Basically, Barack said, you can hire whomever you want, but United States government funds will not be used to subsidize religious discrimination.
Imagine my surprise this weekend (if I were speaking, I’d sound sarcastic right now), when news comes out that Obama has, in fact, decided to continue the former administration’s policies concerning faith-based funding. What about the bit about not discriminating on the basis of religion? The really important bit that he promised to abolish during the campaign because it flies in the face of our Constitution? Yeah, he kept that bit in too. As it happens, the faith-based community is an enormous constituency in our country, and they weren’t the least bit shy this weekend in publicly thanking President Obama for reversing an important campaign promise in exchange for their vote.
And about this whole 1,100 page stimulus package we just voted through but no one had a chance to read? Yeah, I’m not stimulated.
“I don’t see how we can have a separation of church and state in this government if you have to pass a religious test to get in this government. And I want to warn everyone in the press and all the voters out there if you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians, you are just begging to be lied to. They won’t all lie to you but a lot of them will. And it will be the easiest lie they ever had to tell to get your votes.” -Senator Arnold Vinick
