With congressional Republicans beating the drum about profligate and wastefulgovernment spending, they may want to take a hard look at a federal program pushed by a host of top GOPers during the Bush-era and re-authorized in late 2010, as the Republican deficit craze took hold. Originally championed by lawmakers including Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, and current Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R), a federal initiative to promote marriage as a cure for poverty dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into programs that either had no impact or a negative effect on the relationships of the couples who took part, according to recent research by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).Launched during the Bush administration at the behest of evangelical Christian activists and with the aid of congressional Republicans, the federal Healthy Marriage Initiative was designed to help low income couples put a little sizzle in their marriages and urge poor unmarried parents to tie the knot, in the hopes that marriage would enhance their finances and get them off the federal dole. Starting in 2006, millions of dollars were hastily distributed to grantees to further this poverty-reduction strategy. The money went to such enterprises as "Laugh Your Way America," a program run by a non-Spanish speaking Wisconsin minister who used federal dollars to offer "Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage" seminars to Latinos. It funded Rabbi Stephen Baars, a British rabbi who'd been giving his trademarked"Bliss" marriage seminars to upper middle class Jews in Montgomery County, Maryland for years. With the help of the federal government, he brought his program to inner city DC for the benefit of African-American single moms.The marriage money was diverted from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program (formerly known as welfare), and much of it went to religious groups that went to work trying to combat the divorce rate in their communities by sponsoring date nights and romance workshops.
this is the second most egregious effort on the right to push their yes "THEIR" failed agenda using funds designated for the poor and elderly citizens to promote their ideological way of life, you know forcing their way of life onto "we the people" who don't ascribe to their IMO phony principles. how can you be all holier then thou and impose the tenet's of a religion they don't respect themselves, on the entire country, something they accused the Pres. of doing and the Muslims and the Gays and anybody not buying their blasphemous agenda.
nothing worse on earth then religious zealots who hold in their hand the direction of so many lives and exploits it to their own ends. what if when they die and they find out the object of their deception is true and they are treading water in that "lake of fire" poetic or what?
