WASHINGTON (ABP) — A wide variety of religious and political leaders are expressing outrage over House leaders' last-minute alterations to an affordable-housing bill they say discriminate against religious groups.
The House passed a bill late Oct. 26 that would exclude many religious groups from a government-subsidized housing program — even though the move contradicts President Bush's efforts to make it easier for religious groups to get government funds for social services.
The Federal Housing Finance Reform Act, H.R. 1461, passed 331-90. But that was after the amendment that would effectively exclude many religious groups passed by a much narrower margin — 210-205.
The amendment vote fell mostly along party lines, with the vast majority of Republicans voting for it and all but two Democrats voting against it.
“It is shameful, especially given those left homeless by [Hurricane] Katrina, that our bipartisan efforts to support increased home ownership and wealth-building through the creation of an affordable-housing trust fund have fallen victim to the right wing's ongoing assault on democracy and programs designed to help the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the communities of color, and our underserved community,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) in denouncing the amendment.
The bill is designed to reform the federally chartered home-loan corporations Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae after a series of accounting and regulatory scandals at the organizations. It had emerged from the House Financial Services Committee in May, on a 65-5 vote, with a provision dedicating 5 percent of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's after-tax profits to a fund that would give grants to organizations building affordable housing.
But the most conservative Republicans in the GOP-dominated House — a group calling itself the Republican Study Committee — objected to the housing fund as too loosely managed, fearing that groups with left-leaning political agendas that do voter-registration or get-out-the vote work could receive funds for housing projects — thus freeing up their own funds for more voter work.
The Republican Study Committee members got the House leadership to ensure that the bill would not come to the floor without significant restrictions that would essentially prohibit non-profit grant recipients from engaging in any voter-registration or voter education. It also included a provision that required any non-profit receiving a grant from the fund to have housing as its “primary purpose.”
A wide array of religious leaders objected, saying those provisions would effectively ban their participation. They ranged from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to the Episcopal Church to the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.
“The primary purpose of faith-based organizations is faith,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the ranking minority member of the Financial Services Committee.
They also objected to the bans on voting-related activity, noting that many religious organizations conduct non-partisan voter registration and education activities as part of their work and consider being responsible citizens an integral part of their ministry.
Supporters of the amendment argued that it was necessary to keep politically activist organizations from subsidies.
“If people are engaged in assistance as a charitable activity in affording housing to low-income individuals and registering people to vote, this bill will not preclude that activity from going forward,” said Rep. Richard Baker (R-La.) in floor debate on the bill. “What it merely says is that in an instance where we have limited funds available, estimated to be perhaps $500 million spread across the entire country, that those funds first and foremost should be utilized to help people in true need of housing, not political activism.”
The original bill included several safeguards designed to ensure that the funds would go directly to support housing construction by such organizations and not their other ministries or services. However, those safeguards apparently did not satisfy objections from conservative Republicans.
Frank and other opponents attempted to have the full House vote on an amendment that would remove the added language to which the religious groups objected. However, Republican leaders made such an amendment out of order, and coupled the objectionable provisions with a widely supported amendment that would give priority to hurricane-devastated regions in distributing the grants.
Those moves virtually ensured the bill would pass with the provisions to which the religious groups objected intact.
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) said it is ironic that many of the same Republican Study Committee members who are the strongest supporters of government funds to religious groups in other contexts took a different tack when it came to affordable-housing ministries.
“Despite the divisiveness of the term 'faith-based,' most Americans are united in their support of religious organizations,” he said. “That's why it's surprising that the Republicans are using an otherwise worthy effort to reform government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to throw a wrench in the relationship between government and the religious community.”
The bill now goes to the Senate, where the fate of the religious provisions is unsure.