Grants Flow To Bush Allies On Social Issues

Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Tex.) was more outspoken. "I believe ultimately this will be seen as one of the largest patronage programs in American history," he said.

The Compassion Capital Fund has disbursed many multiyear grants of $1.5 million to $7.5 million to groups designated as "intermediary organizations" empowered, according to the White House to "issue sub-awards directly to qualified faith- and community-based organizations."

In effect, this designation turns the recipient organization into a major dispenser of federal money.

The Institute for Youth Development in Sterling, which is run by Shepherd Smith and his wife, Anita M. Smith, has been awarded $7.5 million over three years. In turn, the institute has parceled out $4.5 million of the federal money in grants of $5,000 to $50,000 to smaller organizations.

Shepherd Smith, who was a top strategist in Pat Robertson's 1988 presidential bid, said the institute's grants were "not an effort on my part to make the right stronger; this was an effort to help little people" who have difficulty getting access to federal money.

The recipients listed on the institute's Web site include many socially conservative groups, among them at least 15 pregnancy crisis and counseling centers that oppose abortion.

The Rev. Luis Cortés's Esperanza USA has received three $2.5 million grants. Cortés is an evangelical Protestant; many of the grants from his organization have gone to Protestant Hispanic providers.

Among organizations run by ordained ministers, every Latino group receiving a large grant is headed by a Protestant. Protestant Hispanics are a key Republican target constituency. From 2000 to 2004, Bush's support among Hispanic Protestants grew from 44 percent to 54 percent, while remaining unchanged among Hispanic Roman Catholics, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

In Milwaukee, a 2004 presidential battleground state, Pentecostal Bishop Sedgwick Daniels's Holy Redeemer Institutional Church of God in Christ was awarded $626,598 in 2003 and $824,471 in 2004 from the Compassion Capital Fund. Daniels, a Bush supporter, was a 2004 Republican National Convention delegate.

In Florida, another presidential battleground state, the National Center for Faith Based Initiatives, run by one of Bush's earliest 2000 supporters in the black community, Bishop Harold Calvin Ray, has received $1.75 million over three years from the compassion fund.

HHS is not the only department making such grants.

The Education Department awarded a $750,000 discretionary grant to the GEO Foundation, run by Kevin Teasley, a former staffer at the libertarian Reason Foundation and conservative Heritage Foundation, and conservative Center for the Study of Popular Culture, to "provide outreach and information" on public-school choice. The department also awarded $1.5 million over three years to the conservative Black Alliance for Educational Options, which was created in 2000 with support from such funders on the right as the Bradley, John M. Olin and Walton Family foundations, to provide information about the No Child Left Behind Act.

In addition to liberals, there are conservative critics of taxpayer funding of groups on the right.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said the grant-making is "corrupting."

"The danger is that any group that gets money from the government will end up serving the interests of the state rather than the constituencies they are trying to serve," he said. "The guy who writes the check writes the rules."