Faith-Based FEMA

FEMA is planning to reimburse churches and other faith-based groups for the contributions in housing disaster victims from Katrina. QandO calls it obvious pork-barrel partisan pandering. They might be right. On the other hand, if you ask libertarians to trim federal pork, they're likely to put 90% of the federal government on the chopping block. It's an ideology thing.

I have mixed thoughts here.

I would greatly prefer churches go to their denomination and then faith-based charities like Samaritans Purse. That keep the Feds out of it and prevents this from becoming some sort of free money entitlement that will only corrupt the church's mission. However if the church can't meet the needs of these refugees without additional cash coming in and can't get funding elsewhere, aren't the Feds ultimately responsible for helping out in these sorts of situations?

Would this still be a story if the government were bailing out local community centers who have housed victims instead of churches who have housed victims? Probably not. Would the churches be doing the same damn thing as the community centers? Yup.