Republicans include Christian Right groups in pork-barrel legislation

[ck4829]

In September, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that Sen. David Vitter inserted an earmark into the federal budget to provide $100,000 to the Louisiana Family Forum, a Focus on the Family affiliate, apparently for the purpose of combating the teaching of evolution and global warming in public schools. Now the Kansas City Star is raising questions about whether earmarks from Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) and Kit Bond (R-Missouri) are going to religious purposes:

Sens. Sam Brownback and Kit Bond used earmarks last year to direct about $1 million to an area group "empowering the un-churched urban poor for the kingdom of Christ."

On the surface, the taxpayer-supported appropriations for World Impact Inc. raise constitutional questions about the separation of church and state.

… Brownback, a Kansas Republican, and Bond, a Missouri Republican, note that World Impact does a lot of good for the urban poor in the region, with wanting to create an outreach and education center in St. Louis and running a ranch in central Kansas that is used as a "Christian training center for inner-city young men ages 18-25."

World Impact operates programs in several other states and received nearly $2 million in earmarks in the 2008 spending bill, according to a report last fall in Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/2008/01/faithbased_earm.html

Focus on the Family, the Traditional Values Coalition, and other Christian Right groups have been operating in the red for the past couple of years, if we truly want to make America good, then we can't let these reactionary groups be subsidized by the government anymore.

[SpiralHawk]

1. Did Vitter earmark any tax dollars for Republicon Diaper Sex with Hookers?

I mean, that's his document special interest isn't it?

[Thothmes]

2. The entire earmark system

needs to be shut down. The Republicans have abused it for the last decade or so. The Democrats will abuse it for the next decade. It is nothing but an unregulated money machine designed to support incumbent congressmen in their reelection bids. JMO