Posted on 05/23/2002 5:38:14 PM PDT by Asmodeus
This week the House Ways and Means Committee is holding hearings on a bill by Rep. Walter Jones which would guarantee that members of the clergy will have their first amendment rights restored. Years ago, Lyndon Johnson got a paragraph inserted in a tax bill that prohibited members of the clergy from engaging in politics from the pulpit. That provision should have been challenged in the courts right there and then. But forty some years ago, the public interest law firms that we have on the right today did not exist. There was basically only the American Civil Liberties Union, and they were delighted with the provision.
The problem with that law is that it is not at all clear what it means. Is opposing abortion practicing politics? Those lawyers who are familiar with the thinking of the Internal Revenue Service on the subject believe it is not. Abortion is one of the most troubling moral issues of our time and the clergy ought to have the right to speak about it without endangering their 501(c)(3), tax-exempt status. Indeed no pastor has been prosecuted for having spoken out on the subject. But because of liberal propaganda, at least half the clergy is convinced they have no such right, so they avoid the subject.
The same goes for homosexuality and other moral questions which are also often legislative questions. Members of the clergy are confused about how far they can go on these questions without running contrary to the law. Most agree that they can say abortion is a sin. But can they tell their congregations to support or oppose legislation on the abortion issue? Can they tell parishioners to support or oppose candidates based on their position on that issue?
Over 20 years ago, I asked the prominent Washington tax attorney Alan Dye to draft a memo spelling out what the clergy can and cannot do when it comes to politics. Thousands of copies have been distributed. Most of the recipients were shocked at how many rights they did have. Still, most have been reluctant to exercise those rights.
At least that is true in churches that tend to be conservative in their outlook. Churches that tend to be liberal have for years engaged in outright politics and little has been done about it. When the Reverend Jesse Jackson has run for the presidency, not only did black churches serve as his headquarters in many local communities, but hundreds of thousands perhaps even millions of dollars were collected in those churches for Jackson's campaign. It is not known how much money was collected because most of it was in cash via the collection basket and records were not kept. If Rev. Al Sharpton runs for president, he will no doubt use the same network of churches to support his campaign.
In 1988, when Gov. Michael Dukakis was the Democratic nominee to run against then-Vice President George Bush to succeed Ronald Reagan in the presidency, it was a well-known secret that Dukakis collected much of his campaign money in Greek Orthodox churches. Even though many Greeks didn't agree with his politics, they were happy to have one of their own running for president. The Orthodox were less blatant than Jackson's people. They didn't take up collections during Divine Worship services. Instead, the campaign often rented the church hall for a meeting after the Liturgy where the pitch was made. And money given was done so legally. There were no cash collections. Still, did those Orthodox churches violate the law?
It will be interesting to see how far Rep. Jones gets with his bill. It is comparatively late in the legislative session. If he gets the bill through the Ways and Means Committee, it is not clear if he has the votes to pass the full House. Then there is the Senate, which has become the do-nothing dumping ground for most anything worthwhile. It will take 60 votes to get the measure past the Senate. Considering the fact that most liberal groups and liberal religious denominations oppose the bill, it is hard to imagine that there will be enough support to pass it. That is unless Al Gore, John Edwards, Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry and all the other hopefuls for the Democratic nomination somehow find this bill to their advantage. In that case it will sail through the Senate almost without objection. It is hard to see that happening, but then it will be interesting to see how Congressman Jones does in the House as he starts the legislative process rolling.
Paul Weyrich is president of the Free Congress Foundation.
WHich part sticks in your craw?
It seems that any prohibition of any speech is wrong. The law Johnson passed seems unconstitutional, but it hasn't stopped the minority churches from political speech in church. It has worked against the conservatives to limit their speech, political and religious. If anyone believes in the 1st admendment, just try it. It seems now that the 1st admendment is only for minorities and immigrants. The citizens who have lived under the 1st admendment and helped to make it strong are now 2nd class and we have lost the 1st right.
A politician (regardless of color but not of political party) who speaks from the pulpit on Sunday is somehow not politicking and is not a religious extremist. This is reported almost every election as happening in black churches.
The minister appears also to be free to endorse candidates from the pulpit.
The entire idea of a tax exempt status for religion, renders those religions accepting it, to the status of being nothing more than a government sponsored instution. As institutions of the government, they become subject to government regulation and arbitrary enforcement of its laws.
The issue should not be how to adjust, or readjust such blatantly unconstitutional law. The issue should be how to have religion completely removed from statutory law.
In a speech last week, Senator Daschle blamed last year’s modest income tax cut for both the current recession and the vanishing budget surplus. On the recession, his diagnosis and prescription are both wrong. The recession began at least last March, before the tax cut was even enacted. It’s tough – even for a politician – to credibly argue that something that did not exist caused anything at all.
So, in classic Daschle-speak, the would-be presidential candidate hedged his bets a bit by also saying the tax cut may at least have made the recession worse. Gosh, he’s good. His speeches are so full of words such as “may” and “perhaps” and delivered in that gooey, honey-dripping tone of his that folks aren’t sure whether he’s really said anything definite at all. It’s as if his main instruction to his speechwriters is plausible deniability.
Still, his point was clear. One side of the coin is that the tax cut caused the recession; the other side is that canceling the tax cut is needed to ease the recession. Canceling (or repealing, modifying, scaling back, whatever) a tax cut is a tax increase. And any economist worthy of the label will tell you that raising taxes is exactly the wrong thing to do in an economic slowdown.
Even Senator Daschle’s fellow Democrats know this. Some of them, after all, voted for the tax cut. Senator John Breaux of Louisiana, for example, said after his leader’s speech that raising taxes in a recession is “the worst thing you could do.” If anything, the tax cut helped limit the severity and duration of the recession.
Senator Daschle also blamed the tax cut for the vanishing budget surplus. On this point, he’s actually right. A budget surplus means the government takes more of our money than it spends. Since the government spends way too much money already, a surplus means the government takes way, way too much of our money. Senator Daschle is just still mad that he and his fellow liberals did not get to spend the surplus rather than giving the money back to its rightful owners – the taxpayers.
The issue is not that the tax cut made the surplus disappear. It did, and it should. The issue is that the surplus is disappearing sooner than expected. Well, massive spending on unexpected things like wars and stuff tends to do that. Legislating a 10-year tax cut requires making a whole lot of economic and budget assumptions. Osama bin Laden was not one of them, and his attack on America necessarily changed those assumptions.
Stripped of its spin, Senator Daschle’s speech revealed the same tax-and-spend liberal we have seen in the past. “We’re here from the guv’ment,” the liberals always say, “and we’re here to hep ya.” To them, the government does not have to justify taking our money, we have to justify keeping it. Since it’s the government’s money, giving it to us through a tax-cut is no different than hiking welfare payments – it’s all government spending anyway. So it’s no wonder Senator Daschle is frustrated that some of it slipped through his grasp and wound up in ours.
Here’s the bottom line. The power to tax is the power to destroy – and Senator Daschle wants more of it. The power to spend is the power to regulate and Senator Daschle wants more of it. If that’s the platform on which he wants to run, so be it – but it’s the wrong prescription for the wrong diagnosis.
Tom Jipping is the director of the Free Congress Foundation’s Center for Law and Democracy.
DITTO, man DITTO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$4444
An ideal? For whom? It is nowhere in the constitution. It was put into constitutional law by the former Klu Klan Klan member, nativist and anti-Catholic bigot, Hugo Black in 1947. In the last 4 years, the Supremee Court has dropped the Separation metaphor. They have not yet replaced it with anything. So we had Separation from about 1947-98, not before and not since.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.