Dan Coats: “I rise to offer on behalf of myself and Senator Ashcroft, the charity tax credit amendment. This amendment is designed…”

“I rise to offer on behalf of myself and Senator Ashcroft, the charity tax credit amendment. This amendment is designed to expand the ability of private and faith based charities to serve the poor by making it easier for taxpayers to make donations to these organizations. It is an important, urgently needed reform, but it also symbolizes a broader point. The Congress is currently focused on the essential task of clearing away the ruins of the Great Society. Centralized, bureaucratic anti-poverty programs have failed--and that failure has had a human cost. It is measured in broken homes and violent streets. Our current system has undermined families and fostered dependence. This is undeniable. But while our Great Society illusions have ended, the suffering of many of our people has not. Indifference to that fact is not an option. We cannot retreat into the cocoon of our affluence. We cannot accept the survival of the fittest. No society can live without hope--hope that its suffering and anguish are not endless. I think we have seen the shape of that hope it is not found in the ivory towers of academia. It is not found in the marble temples of official Washington. I found it five blocks from here, in a place so distant from Congress it is almost another world.”