Efforts to resolve American’s fiscal crisis–the large gap between government income and expenditures, annually and as it has accumulated into our massive national debt–could lead to the undermining of our civil society institutions.

This can happen intentionally: the imperative to balance federal, state, and local government budgets provides a choice opportunity for activists to disallow tax exemptions to allegedly discriminatory faith-based organizations or to deny tax deductions for donations to such organizations. Which organizations are discriminatory? Of course: any organization that considers religion or sexual conduct in its employment decisions or that refuses to facilitate elective abortions or that thinks it best to place orphans in married mother-father families. Strip them of tax-exempt status or eligibility for tax-deductible contributions and in one stroke you foster equal rights and also improve the government’s balance sheet! Fortunately, it does not seem that this tactic is being used (but other arguments continue to be made to label the organizations as discriminatory and to strip benefits from them).

And it can happen (presumably) unintentionally. Cut back the federal tax benefit for donating to nonprofits and one alleged leak in federal finances will be slowed–but at the cost of undermining the financial viability of a wide range of faith-based and secular organizations that serve the common good in a myriad of ways. A reduction in the value of the charitable tax credit-a change recommended consistently by President Obama and deficit hawks of various stripes and by conservatives determined to staunch the flow of red ink-will harm not only cultural institutions, prestigious universities, and hospitals that count on the wealthy to give them big bucks in return for a big reduction in federal taxes, but also the many smaller organizations that count on individual donations and can’t realistically replace those donations by ginning up profit-making activities or winning big government grants.

Such a tax reform would amount to obtaining limited fiscal relief at the great expense of serious damage to private organizations and their good works. And yet a key purpose of government is to protect those private organizations and to enable them to flourish. Their flourishing reduces the need for government services. And the money that the government doesn’t take when it provides a tax deduction for charitable contributions is, after all, not the government’s money but rather that of the taxpayers, who should be encouraged to donate to good causes.

Representatives of religious and secular nonprofits sadly report that the young congressional staff members who do the grunt work for Senators and Representatives who are trying to get control of federal finances seem to treat the charity tax deduction as simply a tax expenditure, as just another number to crank into the financial calculus. These young staffers, trained in economic logic and statistical public policy tools, seem to be dangerously oblivious to the real-world reality of rescue missions, schools, after-school programs, emergency shelters, private drug-treatment programs, and so many other secular and faith-based organizations that make enormous daily contributions to the well-being of their neighbors and communities.

That’s no basis for making good public policy.