The base of poverty

In the debate over Bush's faith-based charity plan, church vs. state is not the issue.

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February 1, 2001 2:00PM (UTC)

On Monday morning, President Bush announced the establishment of a new White House office of faith-based and community initiatives intended to help the neediest Americans by integrating religious organizations into the provision of social services.

The announcement came at the same time as Alan Greenspan was making it official that the economy is at nearly "zero growth," and as I was reading "Searching for America's Heart," the just-released book by Peter Edelman, who resigned as assistant secretary of health and human services when Bill Clinton signed the welfare reform bill.

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The bad news is that, as Edelman reminds us in the book, "When the economy catches cold, the poorget pneumonia." The good news is that we may be about to reengage in a debate that was abandoned in 1996 when welfare reform was passed: What are the most effective ways to combat poverty and turn lives around? Edelman's book can help rekindle this debate by taking us beyond the sterile squabbling of the Great Society vs. the Rising Tide.

"Robert Kennedy," writes Edelman, who served as RFK's legislative assistant, "was the first 'new' Democrat, the first to espouse values of grassroots empowerment and express doubts about big bureaucratic approaches, the first to call for partnerships between the private and public sectors and insist that what we now call civic renewal is essential, the first to put particular emphasis on personal responsibility."

So RFK would likely have been entirely