ASHCROFT EXPLAINS WELFARE CHANGES

Private charitable and faith-based organizations will assume much of what the federal welfare system does now, U.S. Sen. John Ashcroft said Wednesday night at the Salvation Army Community and Worship Center in Cape Girardeau.

Ashcroft, R-Mo., is in the midst of a statewide tour of service organizations like the Salvation Army, explaining how the state will contract for welfare services as the welfare system begins a slow change.

"Charitable-choice provisions are designed to make it easier and to promote the involvement of charitable non-governmental institutions in meeting the needs of people who are on welfare," he said. "Institutions outside of government usually have a far better rate of helping people than government programs."

Ashcroft said he welcomes the services of faith-based organizations in providing welfare. He used the national Mormon welfare system as an example of how efficient private organizations are compared to the government. He said the Mormon system usually gets people off welfare within four months compared to the 150 months people average in the federal system.

"We're sending to the states a block grant," he said. "The states have the authority if they choose to call upon these agencies if they do a better job than the state would ordinarily do."

Special precautions must be taken in these instances to protect both the religious organizations providing the services and the individuals receiving them.

"The welfare reform law provides that states can contract with non-governmental units to provide services, but no person is required to accept those services if they are offended by taking them from a faith-based organization," Ashcroft said. He said the organization would have to provide an alternative method of supplying benefits for those people.

"Faith-based organizations can hire people without regard to discriminatory practices -- they can hire people out of their own faith framework in order to do the jobs. That way the institution is protected."

The idea has been challenged as a violation of church and state by the American Civil Liberties Union. Ashcroft said contracting services to religious organizations has been done in the past.

"We scrubbed this very carefully in constitutional law, and there has been precedent in this," he said. "They're achieving a social purpose in conjunction with the state. There is a prohibition against the use of federal funding for the teaching of doctrine."

Salvation Army Capt. Robert Gauthier said private social-service organizations have to be prepared for an expanded role.

"I believe in some instances we can provide services more economically than government agencies," Gauthier said. "Our overhead is a little less. I think private agencies have learned to do with less."

Specialization might be the wave of the future for private agencies in providing need-based services.