Bush Drops Non-Itemizer from Budget

In President Bush's March 1 speech, he promoted three core ideas associated with the 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. However, he did not talk about how he dropped non-itemizers, which used to be the cornerstone of his "compassionate conservative" agenda, from the 2005 budget. Sen. Rick Santorum keeps plugging away, though. "We're going to work on the charitable giving package and try to do the best we can," said Santorum, who aides say would spend about $25 billion on the program Bush has dropped. Santorum has added the non-itemizers into his CARE Act, S. 6.
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