Obama continues to drift right

In what would appear to be an attempt to woo religious voters generally expected to vote Republican, Democratic presidential nominee-apparent Sen. Barack Obama visited a church food bank in Zanesville, Ohio, on Tuesday and called for expanding President Bush's program that steers federal tax money to religious groups.

The Democrat said he also supports letting such groups hire and fire based on faith.

Sen. Obama does not support requiring religious tests for recipients of aid nor using federal money to proselytize, according to a campaign fact sheet. And he supports letting religious institutions hire and fire based on faith only in the non-taxypayer-funded portions of their activities, a senior adviser to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press.

For a Democrat to resist promising to spend more tax money would, of course, be like a day without sunshine. So saying social service spending -- now higher than at any time in history -- has been shortchanged under President Bush, Sen. Obama also proposed a $500 million per year summer-school program for 1 million poor children to help close achievement gaps with white and wealthier students. A campaign fact sheet said he would pay for that by better managing surplus federal properties, reducing growth in the federal travel budget and streamlining the federal procurement process.

If we may be pardoned for not being idiots, that means this program to eliminate summer vacations and initiate year-round schooling for these already overstressed poor kids will cost $1.5 billion almost immediately, to be funded with higher taxes.

On the subject of diverting more tax dollars to religious charities, the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, quite properly criticized Obama's proposed expansion of a program he said has undermined civil rights and civil liberties.

Of course religious organizations should -- must -- be free to consider faith when hiring, though most will voluntarily waive any "religious test" when deciding who deserves their charitable help. To rule that a pastor hiring an assistant for some charitable endeavor cannot hire from among his or her own flock, must consider or at least pretend to give equal consideration to someone directly opposed to his beliefs -- Baptists forced to hire Satanists or Voodoo practitioners, whatever -- is absurd.

Furthermore, money is fungible. Claiming there can be "tax-funded" and "non-tax-funded" portions of such an enterprise is a mere accounting trick.

The counter-argument is made that no one accepting tax money should be allowed to enforce a religious test for employment.

That premise is equally valid. But there is no real conflict here; the problem is that neither Mr. Bush nor (now, if his current "shift to the right" is to be viewed as anything but cynical "positioning") Sen. Obama has grasped the obvious solution.

Charity is best handled by private churches and other non-governmental organizations, whose independence of action should not be compromised by sending them tax money.

The Constitution grants the government no role in charitable endeavors, where its intrusion only weakens the churches and other private institutions best suited to do such work, the same way a government library loaning out free DVDs will sap the strength and threaten the survival of the non-tax-subsidized video store next door.

President Bush's program to steer tax dollars to religious organizations is misguided.

Sen. Obama's move to embrace it may well be part of a cynical "shift to the right" designed to disguise the kind of enormous growth in tax-funded government which he and his Democratic legions really have in mind. If he's not just posing, though, he's wrong.