CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 6 (UPI) -- David Kuo, who worked in President George W. Bush's program to give government aid to religious groups, has died in Charlotte, N.C., his family said. He was 44.
Kuo died Friday, 10 years after he was diagnosed with brain cancer, his wife, Kimberly, said.
Kuo was deputy director of Bush's White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He left the position in 2003, accusing the administration of failing to give the offices the resources required for the mission, The Washington Post said Saturday.
His resignation came two years after the program's direct director, John DiIulio, resigned over similar concerns.
The faith-based initiative was intended to give churches and other charitable organizations federal funds in exchange for them assuming greater responsibility for delivering social services to the needy.
Kuo wrote a book about his experiences and told CBS' "60 Minutes" the conservative political movement that originally backed the faith-based strategy was overly fixated on social issues such as abortion, homosexuality and stem-cell research.
He described attending a conservative gathering where he saw booths devoted to a range of issues -- but none on the issue poverty.
"You've got homosexuality in your kid's school, and you've got human cloning and partial birth abortion and divorce and stem cell," he said. "Not a mention of the poor."
