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Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to participate in Ask the White House again, and I'm pleased that you joined me. Tomorrow is an exciting day for my office. We are hosting a national conference called "Innovations in Effective Compassion" and over 1,000 have registered to attend. Headlining the event, President Bush will give a landscape view of what the Faith-Based and Community Initiative (FBCI) has achieved since he launched the Initiative over seven years ago. The conference bring together faith-based and community leaders of all stripes, as well as policymakers and others, to explore the scope and scale of the Initiative's impact and what the future holds now that this foundation has been laid. I'm pleased to take your questions.
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Good afternoon. This morning, I had the pleasure of presenting President Bush with a new report entitled The Quiet Revolution. This report offers the first-ever comprehensive analysis of the successful implementation of the President’s vision for his Faith-Based and Community Initiative. Although often working behind the scenes, it has reshaped the way government tackles human need and made grassroots charities central in a “determined attack on need” — from at-risk youth, addiction and prisoner reentry to malaria and AIDS abroad. The President highlighted some of the accomplishments detailed in this report to our nation’s governors during their annual National Governors Association meeting at the White House today, underscoring ways the Faith-Based and Community Initiative is taking root in communities across every state.
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Good afternoon. It's an honor for me to participate in Ask the White House today and to interact with you about the President's compassion agenda. President Bush is known as a compassionate conservative because he wants to respond to human need but he wants to do so in a manner that accomplishes results. This week, we launched a series of events called Compassion in Action to profile this work. I welcome your questions about these events as well as our related policies and programs.
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Previous Ask the White House sessions with Jim Towey, former Director, White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives |
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It is great to be back with you and I look forward to answering as many questions as I can. Tomorrow the President will address the National Conference on the Faith-based and Community Initiative, and we will have a packed ballroom - over 1500 registered, and we had to cut it off so that every one could get a chair! It will be a great day and the President will share his thoughts on what has been accomplished to date and what challenges remain.
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Good afternoon. This morning the President and Mrs. Bush attended a service at the National Cathedral to observe the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. All Americans today are asked to pray for or otherwise remember those who died because of this terrible storm, a number known now to exceed 700 souls. It is also a day for us all to recommit to helping rebuild the shattered Gulf State areas and last evening the President offered a number of ways to do this.
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Hello to all of you. It is great to be back on "Ask the White House." I always find the questions unique and interesting and I'll do my best today to answer as many of them as I can (although I have been warned that a ton of questions have come in already). I am excited about 2005 and I know the President is going to talk about his plans for his second term with his important faith-based and community initiative.
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Great to be with you during a week when President Bush is taking his compassion agenda to the heartland! Yesterday he
was in Cincinnati talking about marriage and welfare reform and tomorrow he will be discussing his efforts to address the AIDS epidemic -
both at home and abroad. So this month started off with the White House National Faith Based and Community Initiatives Conference in
Washington where President Bush gave one of his best speeches ever (ok, I'm biased) and over 1500 people gathered to learn more about
helping the poor, and this week his compassion initiative continues. Glad to answer some questions.
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Hello, welcome to Ask the White
House! I am happy to be back to answer some questions again. If you saw President Bush yesterday at our first National Conference,
you saw his passion and commitment to ending discrimination against faith-based groups and making sure that the best providers of
social services - sacred or secular - are funded so that addicts get treatment, the homeless get stable housing, and others in need
receive compassionate care.
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Hello again. Great to be back
online with you. Yesterday I traveled with the President and attended his
roundtable with faith-based and community leaders in New Orleans, and also
went to Atlanta where the President honored the memory of Dr. Martin
Luther King. It was a great day, and if anyone saw his speech at Union
Bethel, you saw a President who really believes in his faith-based
initiative!
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Good morning! I am thrilled to
be back on-line to answer your questions. This is a wonderful time of the
year. The President and Mrs. Bush hosted a Hanukkah reception last night,
and earlier in the month, was hosting Christmas receptions and welcoming
thousands of guests to the White House. So these days have been very
special at the White House and in our Office and I am glad to be back with
you and answer as many questions as I can.
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It is great to be back online and to have a chance to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to those
participating today. We have so much to be thankful for - I know my old English teacher would want me to say that without ending in a
preposition, but that truly my heart's sentiment. We are a blessed people.
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Hello. It was a privilege to represent the President and our country at this great time of
celebration. Remembering all that Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa have done to make the world a better place. The four days our group
had in Rome were extraordinary and Mrs. Columba Bush, the wife of Governor Jeb Bush, headed up our delegation and was elegant and
magnificent in how she represented the President and our country.
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Hi. My name is Jim Towey. President Bush appointed me 19 months ago to lead his office of
Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. This office hopes to help the homeless, the children of prisoners, the addicted and others have
access to the best programs in America, and to help some of our country's "Armies of Compassion" work in partnership in programs that can
help these people maintain their dignity. The President likes me out of Washington and on the road seeing "compassion in action."
Wednesday I was in Philadelphia looking at People4People's program to help the unemployed, and today I meet up with the President in
Houston. Fun job!
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