WASHINGTON, March 17 — Rejecting criticism that they are acting too hastily, members of Congress plan to introduce legislation next week supporting President Bush's proposal to expand financing for religious charities, including a new provision to help alleviate hunger.
The proposal would give new tax incentives for charitable donations and allow religious charities to receive federal money for social programs, including child welfare and after-school care, crime prevention, job training and hunger relief.
Lawmakers of both parties said that while they respected their religious critics, whether conservative evangelical Protestants or liberal reform Jews, they believed the new programs would neither corrupt religious institutions nor threaten the wall between church and state.
"The right has to be careful that they don't make the same mistakes they made in the 1950's and 1960's during the civil rights movement," said Representative J. C. Watts Jr., Republican of Oklahoma and co- sponsor of the House bill. With notable exceptions, Mr. Watts added, "the faith community was largely silent while the underserved community was in distress because of Jim Crow laws."
Mr. Watts and Representative Tony P. Hall, Democrat of Ohio, will introduce the bill on Wednesday as Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, introduces a more limited version in the Senate.
Mr. Santorum said he hoped to offer the rest of the billm soon.
"We are moving full steam ahead in drafting legislation," said Mr. Santorum, who is co-sponsoring the Senate bill with Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut.
The Senate bill will include tax credits to help low-income workers open savings accounts, charitable contribution deductions for people who do not itemize deductions on their income tax returns, and full deductions for donations of food to charities. Lawmakers say they hope the deduction for food will encourage more restaurants and grocers to give charities some of the 96 billion pounds of food thrown away in this country every year.
Mr. Hall, who asked that the food provision be added to the bill before he co-sponsored it, said he was surprised by the opposition to the measure. As founder of the Congressional Hunger Center, Mr. Hall said, he had seen religious organizations use federal money to fight hunger overseas.
"This is a no-brainer," he said. "I have seen this thing work overseas for a very long time, so why can't we use the same funding to care for our own people in this country?"
Some religious leaders say the fast-moving legislative agenda has put them in a quandary. They applaud the president for promoting their charitable work, but they worry that flaws in his proposal could undermine their efforts.
"The speed with which they're moving this along could blitz us away," said Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute, who is working with religious leaders trying to block giving money directly to churches, synagogues and mosques.
"There is far more disquiet in the religious community than the president realizes," Mr. Horowitz said.
In a joint letter with Marvin Olasky, one of Mr. Bush's original advisers on religious initiatives, Mr. Horowitz asked the president to drop the idea of directly financing religious charities. Accepting federal grants, they argued, would "exert strong and consistent pressure on religious groups to dilute or eliminate the very component of their programs that in their view are essential to their success."