Faithfully Yours, John DiIulio

...But what's not common," he adds, is to find such an egregious example of a law's being ignored...

...The report confirms that the government favors large providers over small ones in the award of social service contracts...

...Only rarely are federal programs and grantees examined to determine whether taxpayer funds achieve the desired results...

...Bush directed the five centers to conduct department-wide audits of their programs in order to identify barriers to participation of faith-based and community organizations in the delivery of the agency's social services...

...That was also the position of the president and his political aides, some of whom spoke critically of DiIulio in anonymous remarks to the press...

...DiIulio's chief legacy may well be a report he released on August 14, the day he told Carr about his decision to leave...

...The report points out that Washington doesn't know much about the performance of the groups it already funds...

...Large because Bush's faith-based initiative contemplates a massive shift in the way the nation provides social services— away from reliance upon large, often secular social-service providers and toward reliance upon smaller, community-based groups, many of them motivated by religious faith...

...This is a Grand Canyon of a gap...

...Yet "it has done very little to apply the rules to its own grant making or to ensure that the state and local governments that received covered funds adjusted their own procurement rules to comply with the congressional directives...

...Yet, says "Unlevel Playing Field," the new charitable choice laws have been "almost entirely ignored by federal administrators...

...This funding gap can't be explained on the grounds that big providers outperform smaller ones...

...But obviously he was frustrated in the job...

...But most barriers concern religion...

...A reader of "Unlevel Playing Field" might wonder why there should be more charitable choice if the charitable choice that now exists is largely unimplemented by a recalcitrant federal bureaucracy...

...The report identifies 15 barriers, such as overly complex applications and burdensome regulatory requirements...

...And barriers await any that try to compete for them...

...7 dominated the faith-based news, the five centers quietly did their work...

...DiIulio, as it turns out, will have done the job seven months—too long in the eyes of his many critics...

...For example, the Labor audit found that reviewers of grant applications assume that "Jefferson's 'wall of separation' metaphor automatically disqualifies all but the most secularized providers...

...Seeking to build broad-based support for President Bush's project, DiIulio reached out to black and Hispanic pastors, only to incur the wrath of white evangelical leaders who thought their interests merited as much attention...

...There is, says the report, "an overriding perception by federal officials that close collaboration with religious organizations is legally suspect...

...Unlevel Playing Field," DiIulio's report, summarizes their findings...

...The report points to survey data suggesting that there are many small, faith-based organizations, particularly in urban areas, which don't have these concerns and would be willing to administer federal social service programs in their neighborhoods...

...George W. Bush's faith-based initiative qualifies—more than any other of his policy proposals—as such an enterprise...

...made clear that he expected to be in the post for only a short while...

...On January 29 the president issued an executive order establishing a "center" for the new undertaking in each of five departments— Justice, Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development...

...Charitable choice seeks to ensure that faith-based social service providers are not disadvantaged by virtue of their religious orientation but are allowed to compete for grants on the same basis as all others...

...Indeed, these officials "often seem stuck in a 'no-aid,' strict separationist framework...

...Health problems made it easy for DiIulio to stick with his original plan to leave now and return to his home in Philadelphia (he had commuted by train) and the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania...

...Notably, the bias against religion exists even though many programs audited by the five departments are covered by the "charitable choice" laws passed since 1996...

...Notes of my January interview with DiIulio begin: "Do at least six months...

...As Dilulio put it to me: "Someone has to turn this into action...

...Unlevel Playing Field" includes examples of federal programs that actually ban outright all religious organizations from applying for funding...

...only 14 Democrats joined Republicans in passing H.R...

...Whether the government is directly awarding grants or passing funds to states and local governments for their distribution, the story from the five departments is the same: faith-based and other grass-roots groups receive very little...

...DiIulio told Cox News's Rebecca Carr, a reporter he saw as more evenhanded than most and who broke the story of his decision to leave, "I hate the nonsense that goes on here...

...Many of the groups don't know about the programs...

...While the legislative fight over H.R...

...In The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton viewed the presidency as the office uniquely constituted for the undertaking of "extensive and arduous enterprises" for the public good...

...In retrospect it is apparent just how large and complicated DiIulio's assignment was...

...Charitable choice, after all, "applies literally to scores of billions of dollars of welfare services...

...Part of the funding gap can be explained by reference to the small groups themselves: Some don't want government funds for theological reasons, or they fear dependence on government or its regulatory tentacles, or they fear losing their soul (having gained the world, so to speak...

...Our big government happens to be ignorant government, notwithstanding a 1993 law demanding results-based management...

...The Education audit noted that an official believed the Constitution flatly forbids the use of grant funds even for activities that merely have a religious component...

...In our conversation, DiIulio described himself, happily, as "a free man...

...Dilulio, a student of politics and public administration, says "implementation gaps" are common enough with new laws...

...For many on the right, including its religious conservatives, he was too friendly to big government, favoring as he did traditional grant-making over indirect assistance (such as tax credits and vouchers...

...Unlevel Playing Field" shows, however, that those concerns can only explain so much...

...The project is complicated because accomplishing such a shift requires not only new law but right administration of current law, as well as considerable outreach and exhortation— to big business and big foundations that, like big government, have long supported mainly the big providers...

...In July, Terry Eastland is publisher of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...For the secular left, which dominates the leadership of his own party, DiIulio was too friendly to religion...

...DiIulio wanted significant Democratic support for the legislative piece of the project—a view that put him at odds with House Republicans, who wanted a bill this year even if few Democrats would vote for it...

...And: "Virtually none of the programs has ever been subjected to a systematic evaluation of their performance that meets rigorous [or] even rudimentary evaluation research standards...

...The project thus threatens well-established political alignments and the secular dominance of social services...

...BY TERRY EASTLAND UPON BEING NAMED DIRECTOR of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, John DiIulio Jr...

...An unabashed Democrat of prodigious intellect and energy, as well as a Catholic of evident conviction, DiIulio, who is a contributing editor to this magazine, drew fire from all sides...

...Health and Human Services has more programs covered by charitable choice law than any other agency...

...7, Bush's faith-based bill, which now faces an uncertain future in the Democratic Senate...

...He will go, having helped push the president's project onto the national agenda, no mean feat...