TIM O'BRIEN: Proponents of Alabama's tax reform package are pulling out all the stops. This week -- less than two months before voters decide -- they started running this TV spot promoting how the plan would transform education in the state.
The package calls for radical reforms -- dramatically shifting the tax burden away from the poor and toward the rich. What has surprised nearly everyone, and outraged more than a few, is not its $1.2 billion price tag, but that it would be the cause celebre of the state's new governor, Bob Riley, a conservative Republican. Riley, a devout Baptist, says the reforms he proposes are not just dictated by common sense -- they're dictated by a higher power, his Christian faith:
Governor BOB RILEY (State of Alabama): I hope we never get to the point that we put ourselves in Jesus' place. But when I read the New Testament basically, we get three mandates: to love God, to love each other, and to take care of the least among us. And I think this is at least a step in the right direction.O'BRIEN: That the governor's tax package would take care of the least among Alabamians is not in dispute. Currently, a family of four with a combined income of only $4,600 -- below the poverty level -- still has to pay state income taxes. No other state starts taxing so low. Under the governor's plan, Alabama's threshold would climb to $17,000.
CALLIE GREER: When this tax passes, it's going to tear down some walls. It'll be an awesome change, for the better.O'BRIEN: Callie Greer, drug addict turned social worker, spends most of her days at this day care center in Montgomery. She says she is committed to steering her young wards away from violence -- the kind that claimed her own teenage son in a gang shooting four years ago. And Greer calls the governor's tax package "a blessing" for Alabama's poor.
Ms. GREER: I would have about $432.
O'BRIEN (to Ms. Greer): A year?
Ms. GREER: Yes, if this passes. For a lot of people, that is not a lot of money. But I have two kids who are going to school, and they are going to two separate schools. And they have to have uniforms. That's, like, two or three different sets of clothes, if you are a churchgoing person, because you have to have churchgoing clothes for children. You have to have social clothes for the children. You have to have school clothes for the children. It is a moral issue to me, an ethical issue. It's a moral issue.
Governor RILEY: I think we are probably one of the more religious states in the Union. And I think there is a strong feeling that we want to live up to what we consider, you know, New Testament teachings here.
Ms. GREER: It is the more fair way to go or the more Christian way to go. But I am afraid a lot of people, they hear "tax" and, you know, it's like, "I'm not voting for another tax."
O'BRIEN: Church and state are often intertwined in Alabama -- as evidenced by the two-and-a-half-ton rendering of the Ten Commandments the state's chief justice had placed outside his courtroom. But despite that, and the governor's Christian motives, his tax plan is running into fierce opposition from some unlikely sources, including long-time supporters like the Christian Coalition.
MIKE KILGORE (Executive Director, Alabama Farmers Federation): If it was something reasonable, farmers may be able to accept it; but we feel like this is totally unreasonable. We feel like the package disproportionately puts the burden on homeowners, working people, and farmers, who don't have the ability to pass it along.
Pastor MARK LABRANCHE (Chaplain, Huntingdon College): Taxes are a moral and ethical concern, and how we apply taxes is also a moral and ethical concern -- who pays what. It is an ethical issue that we provide enough and we do it fairly. But there does seem to be a disconnect between what people profess to believe and then what they actually do. That is true about faith in general. In Alabama, that means that although people believe that we should be helping the poor, when it comes to the way it affects their personal checking account, it is quite another matter. 
