House Vote on Jobs Act Would Codify Religious Discrimination, Opponents Await Senate Vote On March 3, the House approved H.R. 27, the Job Training Improvement Act, which would allow publicly funded religious agencies to hire and fire workers based on their religious beliefs. A coalition of organizations had urged the House to reject the bill unless it was amended to ensure that workers could not be discriminated against on religious grounds in federally supported social service programs. Rep. Robert “Bobby” Scott (D-VA) introduced an amendment to restore civil rights protections to the bill. His proposal was defeated in a 239-186 vote that fell largely along party lines. The bill now moves to the Senate where it has been referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. President Bush Pushes Faith-Based Initiative at Leadership Forum In a speech March 1 at the White House Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Leadership Conference, President Bush promoted three aspects of his faith-based initiative: advocating the right of faith-based charities to discriminate in religious hiring; tax incentives for faith-based charities; and increasing the faith-based initiative at the local level. In advocating what he called “freedom in religious hiring,” Bush said faith-based organizations should have the right to discriminate against people of different faiths when hiring for positions funded with federal dollars. The president also discussed his proposals for tax incentives on charitable giving, which has always been linked to his faith-based initiative. His fiscal year 2006 budget includes food donation enhancements and provisions to permit individuals to direct a portion of their retirement accounts to a charity. However, the president dropped the largest part of the tax incentives -- the non-itemizer deduction. These tax incentives have not yet gained steam even as Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) introduced The Family and Community Protection Act of 2005 (S. 6). The bill would provide charitable giving incentives, including the non-itemizer deduction, but it currently has only four cosponsors and no timeline for making it out of committee. Additionally, the Bush administration is pushing the states to be more active in establishing and implementing grant opportunities for faith-based organizations. The majority of federally funded social services are implemented by state and local government. However, most state and local governments have not followed the Bush administration’s example and have not mounted large initiatives to engage in faith-based social services. They have their own, and sometimes conflicting, constitutional and statutory provisions on the relationship between church and state, on hiring rights for employers, and requirements for contractors doing business with government. The states manage the nation’s programs for public welfare, education and training, health care, and public protection, among many other areas. The administration has succeeded in devolving more administrative and financial responsibility for these programs to the states, while decreasing federal funding for them.