Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, it should be clear to our colleagues today that the underlying bill, the reauthorization of the Community Services Block Grant program, has been done on a broad bipartisan basis. The only issue here of disagreement in the Chamber is the issue of whether faith-based providers would give up their title VII exemption in order to continue working in this program. As I mentioned before, for the last 6 years this language allowing faith-based providers to receive federal funds and to maintain their exemptions under title VII has in fact been the law. And to my knowledge, there has been no complaints. Now, it is pretty clear to me, and I think to most of my colleagues, that faith-based organizations, whether they are using their own money or they are using federal funds, I would venture to say that the vast majority of them probably would never take up their title VII exemption or need it. But the fact is that that is the law. The 1964 Civil Rights Act made it very clear that religious organizations did not have to give up their rights to hire the person of their choice under that act.”