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June
18, 2002
Union Of Orthodox Jewish Congregations Applauds
Senate Committee’s Favorable Action On
Charity Assistance Legislation; Urges Full
Senate To Act Quickly
This afternoon, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America,
through its Institute for Public Affairs, applauded the Senate Finance
Committee’s vote to favorably report the Charity Assistance Recovery &
Empowerment (“CARE”) Act to the entire United States Senate. (The
Committee voted to do so by a vote of 9 to 1 with one senator abstaining.)
The bipartisan CARE Act – sponsored by Senators Joe Lieberman, Rick
Santorum and more than twenty other senators -- is a significant element
of President Bush’s “faith-based initiative” – an initiative designed to
use a variety of federal laws & policies to increase the resources and
roles of America’s charitable organizations in the good works they do. The
Union has been a leading supporter of the initiative since its inception.
As originally introduced, the CARE Act primarily addresses the “resources”
element of this initiative through tax and spending provisions. It will
spur new individual contributions to charities by providing a tax
deduction of up to $800 per family to the millions of Americans who do not
take itemized deductions on their taxes. It will allow people to rollover
their Individual Retirement Account assets directly to charities without
paying a tax penalty. It will provide increased incentives for donations
to foodbanks, reduce the federal excise tax on charitable foundations and
raises the cap on how much a corporation can contribute to charity. The
CARE Act will help the working poor begin to build personal savings
accounts through tax credits for matching contributions by banks. Finally,
the CARE Act would increase the budget of the federal Social Service Block
Grant program, the primary source of federal grants to social welfare
charities, by more than one billion dollars over the next two years. The
bill reported out by the Finance Committee contains substantially all of
these provisions.
In the wake of the Committee’s vote, Nathan Diament, director of the
Union’s public policy Institute, issued the following statement:
The Orthodox Jewish community applauds today’s action by the Senate
Finance Committee, with special appreciation to its leaders Senators
Baucus and Grassley, for moving us a major step closer toward getting
America’s charities the help they need and deserve. We urge the Senate to
waste no time in bringing this important measure to the floor for a vote.
We will work with Senate leaders and the White House to ensure the bill is
passed swiftly and in a form that will accomplish the goals championed by
President Bush which we strongly support.
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