Is Compassionate Conservatism the Problem?

Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) writes in today's Wall Street Journal that what has ailed the Republican party recently are its "big government" ideas, including not just the lobbyist-oriented "K Street Project" but also "compassionate conservatism":

Compassionate conservatism's starting point had merit. The essential argument that Republicans should orient policy around how our ideas will affect the poor, the widow, the orphan, the forgotten and the "other" is indisputable – particularly for those who claim, as I do, to submit to an authority higher than government. Yet conservatives are conservatives because our policies promote deliverance from poverty rather than dependence on government.

Compassionate conservatism's next step – its implicit claim that charity or compassion translates into a particular style of activist government involving massive spending increases and entitlement expansion – was its undoing. Common sense and the Scriptures show that true giving and compassion require sacrifice by the giver. This is why Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell his possessions, not his neighbor's possessions. Spending other people's money is not compassionate.

I wonder if this means Sen. Coburn wants to eliminate not just earmarks and the Medicare prescription-drug benefit (the big recent social spending increases), but also the Bush initiative for making more assistance available to faith-based and other community organizations helping the needy.  No doubt we all here agree that "policies [should] promote deliverance from poverty rather than dependence on government."  But let's suppose, as I think is true, that many private nonprofits receiving government social-service funds do aim to empower people to escape poverty, often in part through personal transformation, rather than just tide them over with material support.  Sen. Coburn's logic seems to reject assisting even these agencies with tax funds because "true giving and compassion require sacrifice by the giver" and "[s]pending other people's money is not compassionate."  Is that argument well-founded?  Assume that a certain form of help to the needy is truly empowering rather than dependence-inducing, and is properly administered -- then isn't it supported by demands of justice as well as of charity, and therefore proper for government to assist and promote?  Isn't compassion in part an obligation of justice as well as of charity?  Should government assistance in that context be dissed as "spending other people's money"?

Tom