Having often bandied the phrase "compassionate conservatism," Texas Gov. George W. Bush finally gave the term meaning early this summer when he proposed a massive effort to support "faith-based institutions" as providers of social services. Bush announced that he would dedicate $8 billion of Federal money to these groups, saying that "in every instance when my Administration sees a responsibility to help people, we will look first to faith-based institutions, to charities and to community groups that have shown their ability to save and change lives."

Bush referred to groups as "faith-based institutions," perhaps because "religious charities" seems too close to "religious right," a voting segment that Bush would like to win without public wooing. But his choice of words cannot veil the fact that the proposal would represent a philosophical retreat, not only from the small-government rhetoric of the 1994 Republican Revolution, but also from the modern social compact that America has developed since the New Deal. Handing off some of the government's programs to religious charities would not only endanger the programs but would handicap the charities and abdicate social responsibility for social ills.

Bush's proposal represents a shift in the provision of social services rather than an expansion. If funding for religious charities were increased, given the current budget climate, it is unreasonable to think that funding for the government's social programs--Bush's "secular alternatives"--would not decline. While some would rejoice in seeing motivated individuals supplant a government bureaucracy, this is not always good public policy.

Beyond the anecdotal evidence of success stories, is there any evidence that the private groups would do better on the scale at which government agencies operate? Some volunteer organizations can thrive on a shoestring budget, but others are plagued with at least as much administrative overhead as the Department of Health and Human Services. Furthermore, government agencies, despite all their inefficiencies, have built-in oversight procedures and are always directly accountable to a higher authority, as well as, indirectly, the voting public. Would a private group be under--or be willing to submit to--such oversight?

The prospect of intrusive government oversight shows why Federal support may not always be a blessing to a charitable institution, especially a religious one. Bush was quick to deal with the prospect of a mixing of church and state, adding that under his proposal the government would not discriminate "for or against Methodists or Mormons or Muslims, or good people with no faith at all," and said there would always be "secular alternatives" to religious programs.

Although it seems perfectly constitutional for the government to contract with religious groups to provide social services, many religious charities use the offer of services as bait for a proselytizing effort. This is not always a bad thing--many groups see their mission as feeding souls as well as stomachs--but it would be incompatible with federal funding, since the use of taxpayer dollars to proselytize is almost the definition of the "establishment of religion" prohibited in the Bill of Rights. These groups would be unable to transmit their religious message with public funds--meaning that something as simple as a blessing before meals could turn into an ugly lawsuit. Widespread federal involvement in religious charities could gut the charities of all religious meaning and destroy the original purpose of the programs.

Moreover, packing off those in need of social services to religious groups for help implies that they need spiritual counseling as well as financial assistance. Even if true, it is an insulting assumption--that the poor, disabled, or unemployed are spiritually impoverished as well, and that the best way to remedy social ills is to expose them as a captive audience to what Bush calls "the transforming power of faith." Higher on the social scale does not mean closer to God, and the people do not become more sinful because they are unemployed.

The most troubling aspect of Bush's plan, however, is the notion that social services should be performed by religious charities rather than the agents of the public as a whole. Not all social services are the results of "compassion"; rather, they are part of the social compact that accompanies the modern economy. One of the unpleasant, but unavoidable, side effects of the economy is unemployment, and it is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. (For one thing, if unemployment were to fall below 4 percent tomorrow, the Federal Reserve would quickly jack up interest rates until a safe number of people were unemployed.) To send those who are counted among that four percent to private charities is to treat them as beggars rather than citizens. We may not need a complete cradle-to-grave welfare state, but we do need social programs to be motivated by something other than noblesse oblige. As author Mickey Kaus noted in a New York Times commentary earlier this year, the Medicare program is not charity, and neither is the minimum wage.