Watchdog Reveals Effort to Gag Anti-Bush Causes

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Watchdog Reveals Effort to Gag Anti-Bush Causes

Muffling the Left

by Chisun Lee

August 6 - 12, 2003

 

he Bush administration is actively seeking to gag or

punish social service organizations that challenge the

party line on such matters as health care for poor

children and HIV prevention, according to a new

report. Nonprofits that disagree with the president's

own solutions, or go further and blame him for

problems in the first place, have come to expect

unpleasant consequences. Those might include audits of

federal-funds spending and reviews of content, such as

workshop literature.

 

" If you disagree with the administration on

ideological grounds, they're going to come down with a

hammer. This has huge implications for the free flow

of speech in this country, " says Gary Bass, executive

director of OMB Watch, itself a nonprofit, which

released the report last week as part of its

20-year-old mission to monitor White House budget and

spending decisions.

 

As dramatic as that assessment sounds, the assault has

been nearly invisible to the public. The Bush

administration and its allies have hit progressives

under the radar, maneuvering in the soporific—if

enormously important—realm of nonprofit oversight.

 

The idea of a right-wing conspiracy to audit

nonprofits is more likely to set off yawns than

outrage. Yet virtually every imaginable social

cause—civil liberties, reproductive rights,

affirmative action, accessible health care—relies on a

lifeline of nonprofit advocates, fundraisers, and

service providers. Since nonprofits operate on a

tax-exempt basis and often receive government funding,

they have always been subject to federal oversight and

are forbidden from engaging in electoral politics.

Under George W. Bush, however, oversight has quietly

morphed into ideologically motivated intimidation and

censorship, according to OMB Watch's review of some

dozen specific conflicts.

 

Even though causes of the right have their own

tax-exempt advocates, conservatives have long reviled

nonprofits in general for " supporting the welfare

state, " according to Bass. He points to the major

efforts to defund nonprofits and restrict their

advocacy during the Reagan administration in the '80s

and in Newt Gingrich's Congress in the '90s.

 

But those were head-on, equal opportunity offensives,

going after an entire genre. Under obvious attack,

" the nonprofits really rose up like a firestorm " and

survived, says Bass. The selective, stealthy approach

of today is " unprecedented, " he says. His organization

had wanted to put out the alert months ago, but

piecing together the scattered developments took time.

" Almost every example we have here, there's a link to

the Bush administration directly, not just

ideologically, " says Bass.

 

Bush spokesperson Allen Abney declined to comment

Monday, saying the White House had not yet thoroughly

reviewed the July 28 critique.

 

In perhaps the clearest example of the report's claims

of squashed dissent, Bush's Health and Human Services

Department (HHS) threatened advocates of the nonprofit

Head Start—including parents and teachers of poor

children—with monetary sanctions or even prosecution

for speaking out against a presidential proposal.

 

Head Start is the hardly controversial program that

has promoted education and healthcare for young

children nationwide since 1965. Participating

providers launched a campaign earlier this year to get

parents and teachers to tell Congress their concerns

that standards and funding might fall with Bush's plan

to decentralize the program. HHS soon began warning

Head Start affiliates that their lobbying might

violate nonprofit rules. This summer the National Head

Start Association sued the administration, claiming it

was interfering with First Amendment rights, and won.

But organizers worry that the administration's

warnings, wrong as they were, might have frightened

many into silence.

 

HHS began its apparent policing of protest a year

earlier, when it audited over a dozen AIDS service

organizations after they publicly shamed the

administration at a July 2002 AIDS conference in

Barcelona. There, U.S.-based advocates accused the

Bush administration of cheaping out on HIV prevention

and, during HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson's closely

watched speech, heckled so forcefully as to drown out

his entire address. Conservative members of Congress

immediately demanded that HHS review the nonprofits'

spending of federal funds in Spain. HHS complied.

 

Thompson's deputy, Claude Allen, told The Washington

Post at the time that advocacy groups " need to think

twice before preventing a Cabinet-level official from

bringing a message of hope to an international forum. "

 

In an interesting but brief mention, OMB Watch also

reveals that groups currently applying for federal

grants to provide humanitarian relief in Iraq are

required to advertise the U.S. government's

generosity. Presumably, any criticism of Bush

administration policy would be considered to send the

opposite message.

 

Proof that this new scrutiny of nonprofits is

political, and not just about careful accounting,

shows in the probes of work that groups do with money

from nonfederal sources, according to the report.

" What is striking is this notion that government may

be reaching into groups they don't agree with to see

even how their private dollars are being spent—and

using that to decide whether they receive federal

dollars, " says Bass.

 

Most squarely in the administration's sights are

groups that deal progressively and explicitly with sex

education. One of them, Stop AIDS, is a San

Francisco-based nonprofit that has used streetwise

language to promote HIV prevention among gay and

bisexual men since 1984. Since Bush took office, it

has been audited twice by HHS and forced to submit

program materials for review by the HHS subsidiary

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),

according to Stop AIDS spokesperson Shana Krochmal.

 

Even after these grillings, Stop AIDS received a

letter this June from the CDC objecting to workshops

with titles such as, " Oral Sex = Safe Sex? " and " In

our Prime: Men for Hire, " which promised to cover

" seven guidelines for safe and friendly relations with

escorts. " The government letter threatens a

" disallowance or discontinuation of federal funding "

if Stop AIDS continues to use language the

administration believes promotes sexual activity.

 

Krochmal says the organization has been careful not to

use its federal funding for such workshops, instead

relying on the more progressive support of city

government. " We know that what it takes to catch the

eye of a guy walking down Castro Street 20 years after

the movement began may raise the eyebrows of men in

Washington, D.C. But it takes a certain kind of method

to get our point across, " she says.

 

She called the Bush administration's crackdown on Stop

AIDS " about politics, not about public health, "

because the language it wants quashed has proved

effective in luring clients for prevention services.

 

The fight with Washington has forced Stop AIDS to

consult with legal counsel, something many

resource-strapped nonprofits worry about having to do.

If CDC prevails, Krochmal says, it will add another

brick in an overall homophobic agenda she sees

building under Bush. From Stop AIDS's troubles to the

proposed federal anti-gay marriage legislation, " It's

an institutionalizing of policies that continue to

devalue the lives of gay and lesbian people in this

country, " she says.

 

At the same time the Bush administration is making it

harder for some progressive nonprofits to operate, it

has bent over backward for those with which it is more

ideologically in tune, says Bass. While OMB Watch

supports federal funding of faith-based nonprofits,

Bass says it is unfair that Bush has granted these

groups special exemptions, for instance the ability to

discriminate in hiring and substitute religious

qualifications for professional ones.

 

Meanwhile, a December 2002 letter from the federal

government to groups dealing with HIV prevention and

sex education abroad admonished that " all operating

units should ensure that USAID-funded programs and

publications reflect appropriately the policies of the

Bush administration. " Some nonprofits worry that the

smallest conflict—for instance over the use of words

like " condom " or " abortion " on a website—could give

the government an excuse to funnel funds to groups

whose views it prefers.

 

OMB Watch's report also touches on nonprofits' fears

about post-September 11 surveillance by law

enforcement. A major lawsuit filed by the American

Civil Liberties Union and Muslim interest groups last

week calls unconstitutional a section of the USA

Patriot Act that allows investigators to secretly

examine organizations' financial and membership

records and even seize them without notice. Such

probes need only be minimally linked to a national

security investigation. The privacy of nonprofits'

staff and clients is not guaranteed, and advocates say

the fear of attracting the FBI's notice restricts

freedom of expression.

 

" If this is a pattern that is sustained, then it

erodes a key part of our ability to pursue justice, "

says Bass of the selective policing of nonprofits.

Indeed, Stop AIDS's Krochmal says, " We have been told

there is a shortlist of organizations that won't be

funded next year. It's obviously of great concern to

us. "