The government should get out of the way of charity

George Will

7/18/2004 12:00:00 AM - George Will


     Carroll's St. Vincent de Paul Village is a bustling, no-nonsense, life-changing dispenser of compassionate conservatism. ``The government,'' he tells those who come for help, ``gives you civil rights. I give you my rules.'' Such as: Everyone works.

     Some work in the kitchen that dispenses 4,000 meals a day (the village's freezer capacity is sufficient for when, say, Costco donates 100,000 pounds of meat) and has provided ``graduates'' to kitchens in some San Diego hotels. Other villagers work in a nearby commercial laundry that cleans the linen for the village's 855 beds, which are always full.

     The children -- upward of 200 are usually in residence -- get public schooling on site. The separation-of-church-and-state fetishists have been mollified by Carroll's charging the school rent.



     They are taught how to shake hands and how to dress -- there is a closet full of loaner suits for job interviews. They get glasses, high school equivalency diplomas, computer training and, thanks to the University of California, San Diego, there are 12 psychiatrists on site to try -- with the help of $300,000 worth of Prozac and other pharmaceuticals each year -- to undo the mental damage that homelessness causes. A local hospital estimates that Carroll's prenatal care saves it $250,000 a month by getting babies to term.

     The village offers courses on anger management. And parenting, which involves anger management. Everyone receives instruction that, Carroll says, teaches them that ``mom and dad did not mess you up, and neither did your siblings, the government or society.'' Which leaves? Accepting responsibility is a step toward recovering what is lost on the street -- personhood.


     Charitable institutions nationwide raise many millions of dollars by having donated vehicles auctioned. In 2000, 733,000 taxpayers reduced their liability by about $654 million. Congress is dismayed -- too much so -- at the disparity between the valuation placed on a car by a donator (say, $5,000 -- the threshold above which an independent appraisal already is required) and the amount a charity may reap from auctioning it (say, $500).


     Why not simply require donors to reduce their tax liability by the Blue Book well-calibrated assessment of vehicles' fair market values? Most will bring close to that when retailed after auction. Considering the bang for the buck from charities, and the savings their good works mean for governments, the Senate and House bills are pound-foolish without even being penny-wise.

     It takes a village to raise the fallen to their feet -- a village like Carroll's. And it takes various rivulets of donations. Were Congress to divert to the government's convenience a portion of one such stream -- one crucial to charities, but trivial in relation to federal revenues -- this would traduce the principle that government should empower, not hinder or supplant, civil society's ameliorative works.