Why the non-profits are watching Team-O very carefully

Their jobs are on the line. The government uses non-profits* to outsource their programs--i.e., the government is really much, much larger than it looks. President Bush believed in "partnerships with private industry and non-profits." This is not the Obama plan.

For instance, the AAHSA (American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging) we read:

AAHSA [according 2002 testimony by Thomas W. Slemmer, NCR president] represents more than 5,600 mission-driven, not-for-profit members, senior housing, nursing homes, continuing care retirement communities, assisted living, and community services organizations. Every day, our members serve more than one million older persons across the country. AAHSA is committed to advancing the vision of healthy, affordable, ethical long-term care for America. Housing is a critical part of the long-term care continuum. Our members own and manage more than 300,000 units of federally assisted and market rate housing, including the largest number of sponsors of Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly.

Representing close to 6,000 members, all not-for-profit and many faith-based, AAHSA does a lot of testifying on Capitol Hill. Looking through the various press releases during the campaign, it was extremely careful not to take sides or rattle any cages. That's a lot of careers, jobs, salaries, benefits, regulations, consumers (the elderly) and their families. And that's billions in government grants. Here's what Obama said in October in a letter to HUD:

Because of the fiscal mess left behind by the current Administration, we will need to look carefully at all departments and programs. We plan specifically to look at work that is being contracted out to ensure that it is fiscally responsible and effective. It is dishonest to claim real savings by reducing the number of HUD employees overseeing a program but increase the real cost of the program by transferring oversight to contractors. I pledge to reverse this poor management practice.

Let's put aside the fact that a member Congress, which has oversite for the "fiscal mess" including the Barney Frank and Chris Dodd dog and pony show which precipitated our melt down, attributes the blame to Bush, he the Great O-Hope, next president, is going to fix it. How? By taking all those contracts away from the not-for-profits and faith-based organizations. He will Katrinasize the Old Age Industry in the U.S., one of the fastest growing demographics in the country. He'll Amtrak it into chaos and bankruptcy by returning these programs to the ever more inefficient federal government.

I personally think the oversite for these grants is outrageously lax, I could probably start a non-profit using calico cats to fight dementia in the elderly and wouldn't need to report how inefficient I was unless I spent more than X-amount of $$. But I wouldn't expect better from HUD if it had its sticky fingers in the pie directly from the beltway to Beaverton. Even if he doesn't return all the jobs to HUD, HHS and USDA, he'll so over regulate them that they might as well become government agencies in name if not in fact. I do not expect to see his favorites on the Left like ACORN lose their funding (hundreds of entangled in every imaginable non-profit from nutrition to housing to health), but if you're working in a faith-based agency, you ought to be very, very scared.

Many of the experts on government like Karl Rove, are applauding his "moderate choices" and retreads which will insulate him from his "change and hope" no-program ideas, but I'm not convinced. Sorry Karl, I think you're wrong on this one. I think the radical left is just waiting for all these billions currently out sourced to the faith-based and conservative/benign not-for-profits.

*Non-profit and not-for-profit are often used interchangeably, but the first seems to be an agency and the second an organization, for instance, Lutheran Social Services would be a non-profit but it might be a member of a not-for-profit like AAHSA.

** Photo from Cat Woman who rescues and finds homes for cats.