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Bush's "Faith" based plan ... Unconstitutional?
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by David Sands: [QB] Hey everyone! Real life seems to have sucked me into reality the past year and I haven't gotten around like I used to. Yes, money is a fungible good that enables organizations to spend funds on items the government would not buy itself. However, the Federal government has long given money to private and religious hospitals on the grounds that they provide a public service that justifies public support (where it would be especially wasteful to demand a secular equivalent be built so the community could be given the money). As many here probably know, the GI bill authorized public funds being used for religious education at the collegiate level. As far as I've read in the relevant cases (it's been a while since my Civil Liberties class), the issue first got "settled" in [i]Lemon v. Kurtzman[/i] (1971) where Chief Justice Burger, writing for the majority, said that government must demonstrate that any program must (1) satisfy a secular purpose, (2) must not advance or inhibit religion, (3) and must not excessively entangle government. I would say Bush's plan is fine on (1), can satisfy the requirements of (2) as long as it's not propping up any or giving a big boost to any religions over other competing faiths, but would almost surely fall short of (3) if Burger was the tribunal. That, however, has changed. The new direction of the court came in 1973 with [i] Committee for Public Education & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist[/i] where Powell, writing for the majority, said that public funds funnelled through parents choosing their children's primary education was sufficiently removed enough from direct government entanglement, (3), that a program of tax breaks for money spent on private schools did not create excessive government involvement in religion. This would lead one to beleive that vouchers stand a good chance were they to come up in front of the Supreme Court. (Maybe. Only one, maybe two, of the members of the court in 1973 are still on today, so it's a toss-up, especially with the 5-4 split that balancing it right now). Later this ruling was reaffirmed in [i]Mueller v. Allen[/i] (1983). The operative variables in all this seem to be how much supervision would government have to do to make sure the money was used properly and whether the money is propping up or giving a leg up relative to other religions. Neither of those questions really can be answered without either an exhaustive empirical study assessing how much money going where will help religious organizations or just trying it. The follow-up question to that, though, is will the camel's nose bring down the tent of church-state separation. There's no way to know. As a pragmatic person, I'd like to see some kind of expiration on the legislation, sustained debate while the program is going on, and, most importantly, the gumption to be honest with the results of the program, then keep it if it works without harm or drop it if it is. The problem, as always, lies in the details. We shall see... [/QB][/QUOTE]
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