The Washington Office has continued to work to advance the community’s public policy priorities, as summarized below. We are particularly proud, however, this month to mention our role on the team of Washington-based Jewish communal offices in mounting the April 15 Solidarity Rally for Israel on Capitol Hill. Like every other Jewish Washington Office, our staff ‘dropped everything’ to help make the event the overwhelming success that it was. We helped secure the permit for the site, coordinate crowd logistics and secure speakers for the program. If you traveled to Washington for this event, we can assure that its impact on America’s policymakers was real…they are still mentioning it behind the scenes.

LEGISLATIVE ISSUES

Education Policy
We continue to work with congressional allies on is a federal education expense tax credit. Thanks to our efforts over the past year (along with coalition partners) President Bush’s proposed budget for FY’03 contains an allocation for a federal education tax credit proposal. We are currently working intensely with key Administration staff and congressmen to structure this proposal in a way that will directly benefit our day school families and also have sufficient political appeal that it might be passed into law. We anticipate a bill introduction in early June. For a look at pending proposals to date, see - http://www.ou.org/public/Publib/edsavings.htm Also on the education front, we are working with key Hill staffers and Administration officials as they prepare to reauthorize the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (‘IDEA’) – the federal government’s funding mechanism for special ed. programs.

Workplace Religious Freedom Act
We continue to work toward securing greater protection for the religious needs of employees in the workplace. Such protections are needed to secure the ability of employees to observe religious holidays and wear religious garb if not already allowed to do so by their employer. We are pleased to announce that Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) has recently agreed to serve as the lead Republican sponsor of this critical legislation. Senator Santorum is the third highest member of the Senate Republican leadership and has a proven track record of legislative accomplishment along with a personal appreciation for the importance of religious liberty. We are confident that his leadership will bring us success on this critical issue.

“Faith-Based Initiative”
Legislation designed to implement the President’s plan to open federal social service grant programs to participation by religious organizations passed the House of Representatives last summer and is now on the verge of Senate action. The Senate proposal, dubbed the ‘CARE Act’ is a compromise measure sponsored by Senators Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Rick Santorum (R-PA) that contains important tax incentives to increase charitable giving in the U.S., increased funding for federal social welfare grant programs, and new rules that will help ensure that religiously affiliated charities are treated on equal terms with secular charities by federal grantmakers. We are pressing for Senate action before Memorial Day.

Energy Policy
On the legislative agenda as well was the U.S. Senate’s debate over energy policy. The Union’s position on this matter stems from a Convention Resolution that recognizes the need to reduce U.S. dependence upon oil imports, particularly from Arab countries. Thus, the OU Resolution supports increased energy production at home as well as increased conservation measures (including an increase in auto fuel efficiency, or “CAFÉ”, standards). We made this policy statement available to Senators on both sides of this debate. Unfortunately, neither provision was included in the final legislation passed in April. It remains to be seen how the Senate and House bills are reconciled.

Bioethics & Scientific Research
A very important public policy issue fraught with ethical and religious currently confronting the congress is the issue of “cloning research.” In brief, the debate at hand is over the question of whether congress will ban scientific research that involves the manipulation of unfertilized embryonic cells in the laboratory not for the purpose of creating a live human being, but for the purpose of developing and researching stem cells. Such research may hold the key to revolutionary cures for illness and disease, but implicates serious ethical questions. The OU, together with the Rabbinical Council of America, convened a special working group of Orthodox rabbis and scientists to study this issue and develop a policy statement for the Union community. That statement, which supports “therapeutic cloning” research while opposing “reproductive cloning” research was released in March, 2002 and has received considerable attention in Washington’s discussion. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A17263-2002Mar12 The OU-RCA policy statement and related materials may be viewed at http://www.ou.org/public/publib/cloning.htm

JUDICIAL DOCKET

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit heard arguments in the case of Tenafly Eruv Association et. al. vs. Borough of Tenafly, New Jersey on March 21. This case arises from the decision of Tenafly’s town council to deny the new Orthodox residents of that suburb permission to use the town’s right of way to establish an eruv. The argument session went extremely well for eruv proponents. The three judges were each well informed and actively engaged the attorneys with probing questions over the course of more than one-and-one-half hours. A decision is anticipated by the fall.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has taken an unusual step of raising a legal question that was not at issue in a dispute involving the federal tax policy’s allowance for clergy to receive a tax-exempt housing allowance from their employers (known as “parsonage”). The appellate court has questioned whether this 80 year old policy is a violation of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause. We have joined with other Orthodox organizations in an amicus brief drafted by Nat Lewin. We have also supported a legislative effort to have the parameters of the parsonage allowance codified into the tax code, thereby mooting the case before the 9th Circuit. To date, both the House & Senate have passed this bill overwhelmingly and the President is expected to sign it shortly.

Finally, with this year’s Supreme Court term coming to a close next month, we are awaiting the likely landmark ruling on the constitutionality of Cleveland’s school voucher program.

LIEBERMAN SCHOLARS UPDATE

Mid-April brought the Lieberman Scholars back to Washington to participate in the AIPAC Policy Conference. The Scholars attended the first day of the Conference and then had a series of activities and meetings including Dr. Mitchell Bard, author of the well-known, Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, the IPA’s Betty Ehrenberg and the program’s namesake, Senator Joseph Lieberman. The Scholars also had the opportunity to meet with Aaron Saiger, one of Justice Ginsberg’s clerks at the US Supreme Court and Dr. Peggy Pearlstein, of the Hebraics Section at the Library of Congress who shared a number of the Hebraic section’s most important and primary books with the group. This program brings to an end the second year of the program.