Sojourners Magazine Demonstrates Religion and Progress Can Coincide

Not all Christian nonprofit organizations are created equal. My hat goes off to Sojourners Magazine, a small nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. that is gaining momentum within the ranks of Christians thanks in part to its evangelical leader, the Rev. Jim Wallis’ tireless media tour and its staff’s dedication to progressivism.

While many of its fellow Christian organizations commenting on politics in the US are remaining steadfast Sojourners has instead been outspoken against the war in Iraq, the administration’s failure to address domestic issues of poverty and healthcare, and the US’s lack of commitment to peaceful diplomacy (see their most recent publication, If You Only Have a Hammer…).

In its August 2006 issue, Sojourners also expresses a vision shared with NCRP; the importance of financial accountability in nonprofit organizations. On page 11, an article entitled “Follow the Money” elaborates on a report released by the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC last May that explains the philanthropic activity of various secular and religiously affiliated donors that have funneled money toward politically conservative advocacy groups in an attempt to campaign against the ordination of homosexual clergy within the Episcopal Church.

Sojourners shows its commitment to adhering to a message that is not only socially responsible, but also financially moral by reporting on the financial motives of foundations and individuals alike who are attempting to politicize a Christian church. Read NCRP’s summer issue of Responsive Philanthropy for my article, “Warming Up to Environmentalism: A Changing Climate in the Politics of Evangelicals.” It offers a review of evangelical Christian organizations and addresses a pragmatic approach in analyzing the motives and activities of such organizations as they apply to the current state of the environmental movement in the US.

Kevin Kovaleski is a summer research intern at NCRP.

Gambling on the Trifecta Bill: The Estate Tax, Minimum Wage, and Tax Cut Extenders

It’s difficult to fathom the depths of hypocrisy embodied in the impending vote by the House of Representatives approval of H.R. 5970. The House voted, amazingly enough, to virtually gut the estate tax, costing our nation $800 billion in tax resources, using a hike in the minimum wage as camouflage. Without approving a disemboweled estate tax, Congress can’t get a minimum wage increase. How hypocritical! Amazing!

So the House bought a ticket at the window for the “trifecta” (the name for the bill because it combines the gutted estate tax, the minimum wage hike, and some other tax cut “extenders” as a three-pronged legislative package) and is now betting on the Senate placing its money on the same three horses. The Senate could vote on this, as early as tonight, with the Republican leadership jamming the estate tax down the throats of Democrats if they want the minimum wage hike. Oh, there’s also a few extra tax benefits aimed at enticing Democrats in timber states like Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray to vote their parochial interests and sacrifice the estate tax (word is that Bill Frist has had to accept the reality that Cantwell and Murray couldn’t be bought). But it’s oh so hypocritical—and transparently so.

You might expect an organization like the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy to oppose the trifecta bill because of a concern—actually, the knowledge—that gutting the estate tax will substantially reduce the number and amount of charitable bequests spurred by the estate tax’s provisions that encourage charitable giving. The impact of cutting the estate tax is real, but that’s not the reason for NCRP’s position.

From the beginning of conservative efforts to eliminate the estate tax or weaken it so much that it might as well be dead, NCRP’s position has been based on several factors that perhaps supersede our concerns about charitable bequests:

• The estate tax is a significant tool in a progressive tax structure, taxing only the very largest estates. Without the estate tax, we edge toward a system of unfettered hereditary wealth that simply makes the wealth and assets gaps in the U.S., already horrendous, even worse.

• The estate tax generates significant revenues for government programs. It has to be clear to everyone that by cutting $800 billion in revenues, conservatives are simply laying the groundwork for arguing that Congress has to then cut vital programs and services because of the lack of tax revenues to pay for them.

• As revenues and programs get cut, the burden falls on charity and philanthropy. A financially strapped federal government will increasingly turn to foundation grantmaking and charitable giving to substitute for rather than supplement government programs. That is not the purpose of charity and philanthropy.

The American public—and our nation’s nonprofits—shouldn’t be fooled by wrapping an eviscerated estate tax with the high-minded toga of support for a minimum wage hike, brought to you by the conservative politicians and business interests that have fought raising the minimum wage for the past decade. Working people and the poor know that they will be losers in this trifecta. Every nonprofit and foundation leader committed to providing assistance to disadvantaged and disenfranchised populations in this nation ought to be calling their senators and saying, don’t put your money on the horses in this race. The trifecta is rigged, and we’ll all be losers if the Senate follows the House’s lead.

by Rick Cohen
Executive Director, NCRP