EX-AIDE QUESTIONS BUSH VOW TO BACK FAITH-BASED EFFORTS

A former White House official said yesterday that President Bush has failed
to deliver on his promise to help religious groups serve the poor, the
homeless and drug addicts because the administration lacks a genuine
commitment to its "compassionate conservative" agenda.

David Kuo, who was deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based
and Community Initiatives for much of Bush's first term, said in published
remarks that the White House reaped political benefits from the president's
promise to help religious organizations win taxpayer funding to care for
"the least, the last and the lost" in the United States. But he wrote:
"There was minimal senior White House commitment to the faith-based agenda."

Analyzing Bush's failure to secure $8 billion in promised funding for the
faith-based initiative during his first term, Kuo said there was "snoring
indifference" among Republicans and "knee-jerk opposition" among Democrats
in Congress.

"Capitol Hill gridlock could have been smashed by minimal West Wing
effort," Kuo wrote on Beliefnet.com, a Web site on religion. "No
administration since [Lyndon B. Johnson's] has had a more successful
legislative record than this one. From tax cuts to Medicare, the White
House gets what the White House really wants. It never really wanted the
'poor people stuff.' "

Kuo's remarks were a rare breach of discipline for an administration that
places a high premium on unity among current and former officials, and they
mark the second time a former high-ranking official has criticized Bush's
approach to the faith-based issue.

In August 2001, John J. DiIulio Jr., then-director of the faith-based
office, became the first top Bush adviser to quit, after seven months on
the job. In an interview with Esquire magazine a year later, DiIulio said
the Bush White House was obsessed with the politics of the faith-based
initiative but dismissive of the policy itself, and he slammed White House
advisers as "Mayberry Machiavellis."

White House spokesman Trent Duffy said yesterday that Kuo is wrong about
the president's commitment.

"The faith-based and community initiative has been a top priority for
President Bush since the beginning of his first term and continues to be a
top priority," Duffy said. "The president has mentioned the initiative in
every State of the Union and fought for full funding."

In his first major policy speech as a presidential candidate in 2000, Bush
proposed an $8 billion program to promote religious charities and other
community groups. The idea quickly became the centerpiece of his call for
compassionate conservatism. But it met stiff resistance in Congress, where
Democrats said it threatened the separation of church and state, while
Republicans showed little enthusiasm for new welfare-related spending.

After Congress balked at allowing religious groups to receive government
funding and still hire, fire and promote employees on the basis of their
faith, Bush issued executive orders to make it easier for religious groups
to compete for government grants to run homeless shelters, counseling
centers for teenagers and a wide range of other social programs.

"I think some good progress has been made, especially administratively,"
said John Bridgeland, White House director of domestic policy during Bush's
first term. He added that Bush's decision to give chief speechwriter
Michael J. Gerson responsibility for expanding the initiative should give
the effort a lift in the second term.

In his Beliefnet column, Kuo said it was "a dream come true for me" when
Bush promised in 2000 that in his first year in office he would provide $6
billion in tax incentives for private charitable giving, $1.7 billion for
groups that care for the poor and $200 million for a Compassion Capital
Fund to assist local faith-based organizations.

"Sadly, four years later these promises remain unfulfilled in spirit and in
fact," he wrote.

In June 2001, the promised tax incentives were stripped at the last minute
from the $1.6 trillion tax cut legislation "to make room for the estate-tax
repeal that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy," Kuo said. The Compassion
Capital Fund has received a cumulative total of $100 million in the past
four years, and new programs for children of prisoners, at-risk youth and
prisoners reentering society have received a little more than $500 million
over four years, he said.

"Unfortunately, sometimes even the grandly-announced 'new' programs aren't
what they appear," Kuo wrote, citing as an example the three-year $150
million "gang prevention" effort Bush announced in this year's State of the
Union address. In reality, Kuo said, that money is being taken out of the
"already meager" $100 million request for the Compassion Capital Fund.

Kuo, 36, served as a special assistant to the president for 2 1/2 years and
was deputy head of the faith-based office from February 2002 to December
2003. Before joining the White House, he worked for several prominent
conservatives, including John D. Ashcroft and William J. Bennett. But
before that, he had been a campaign volunteer for former representative
Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.) and an intern for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

"I have always sought to try and figure out what's the best way for
government to care for the poor. I went to the left and to the right, and
I've ended up pretty much in the center," he said in a telephone interview
yesterday.

In the Beliefnet column, Kuo said that he continues to have "deep respect,
appreciation and affection for the president." Kuo added: "No one who knows
him even a tiny bit doubts the sincerity and compassion of his heart."

Asked whether that meant he believes that Bush was sincere about the
faith-based initiative but other White House officials were not, Kuo said
he would "let the column speak for itself."

"The point of the column is that the poor need to be dealt with by
everybody. There was phenomenal promise in the original vision for
compassionate conservatism . . . and to try to pin blame on any one
institution, one person, one body, one policy, is wrong," he said. "It's
not about the White House, it's not about the Congress, it's not about
interest groups. It's about everybody."