New Chief Oversees a Less Visible Faith Office

From the start, Charitable Choice was seen as a way to broaden the services available to single mothers, the homeless and impoverished elderly people. But it was also controversial on church-state grounds, particularly because it allowed government-funded groups to hire and fire employees on the basis of religion.

During his first campaign for president, Bush promised to unleash "armies of compassion" by extending a charitable tax deduction to the 70 percent of taxpayers who do not itemize their deductions. After taking office in 2001, he pushed other tax cuts through Congress but met resistance over his efforts to apply Charitable Choice to all federal social spending. In the end, Bush issued executive orders to put the faith-based initiative into effect administratively, dropping his plan for major tax breaks to spur charitable giving.

One result, according to a study by the independent Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, is that government grants to religious charities are rising, but grants to charities overall have been squeezed.

Another result, according to former administration officials, is that the office Hein occupies has become more of a coordinator of existing executive branch activities than a producer of bold new policies and legislation.

"What he needs to do is consolidate and put into practice a lot of things that have already been talked about," said Stanley Carlson-Thies, who worked in the faith-based office during Bush's first term.

In contrast to his sometimes-flamboyant predecessors, Hein is a "very orderly and businesslike person" who is well-suited to run the faith-based effort for the remaining 18 months of the Bush administration, said William A. Schambra, an expert on philanthropy at the Hudson Institute, a think tank where Hein once worked.

Because the faith-based office "has a very poor track record when it comes to getting legislation passed," Schambra said, Hein's task will be "to pull out of the wreckage of the faith-based initiative the pieces of it that really should be preserved as a legacy for the next Republican administration."

Hein agreed that "the initiative is well under way operationally."

"The policies are being implemented not only at Cabinet agencies but at the state and local level, as well," he said. "So I'll be taking a policy wonk approach into the job."