 he
spontaneous response of Americans to the Sept. 11 attacks should serve
as a rebuke to critics who fret about an anemic civic spirit. Charities'
coffers were filled, blood banks overflowed, and inventories of Old
Glory were exhausted. In November, President Bush marveled that the
Communities of Character initiative he had on the drawing board, "designed
to spark a rebirth of citizenship and character and service,"
had been so abruptly overtaken: "The events of September the
eleventh have caused that initiative to happen on its own, in ways
we could never have imagined." But now Washington is getting
into the act, with a new program — the USA Freedom Corps —
to ensure that the federal government will have a role in mobilizing
volunteers.
According to
the president, "The federal government did not create this
civic spirit; but we do have a responsibility to help support and
encourage it where we can." So the Freedom Corps, based at
the White House, will coordinate the activities of expanded current
programs — AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and the Peace Corps —
and a spanking new Citizens Corps that will focus on homeland security.
Former Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith, chairman of the board
of AmeriCorps' parent, the Corporation for National and Community
Service, explains that it's Washington's duty "to capture the
civic spirit" evidenced after Sept. 11. Writing in the Wall
Street Journal, Goldsmith and Leslie Lenkowsky, the Corporation's
CEO, concede that "the U.S. is rich with opportunities for
its citizens to volunteer," but argue that AmeriCorps and its
sister programs "are among the few ways Washington can respond
to the many people who want, after Sept. 11, to express their patriotism."
Because AmeriCorps
can "foster good citizenship," Goldsmith and Lenkowsky
expect that their fellow conservatives will join with liberals to
support the expanded program. But ever since Bill Clinton created
it in 1993, AmeriCorps has involved a different sort of flag-waving
for its conservative critics, who saw only red at the notion of
a bureaucratized paid-"volunteer" program. Under AmeriCorps,
about 50,000 members a year sign on to work between 20 and 40 hours
a week, for up to two years, in exchange for a $4,725 annual award
to use for college costs. About half of the participants also receive
a living allowance, bringing the total cost of each AmeriCorps "volunteer"
to $14,025 a year, according to Goldsmith. Bush's proposal would
increase the number of members by 25,000, and impose new accountability
measures in response to the program's conservative critics.
But the critics
are right: AmeriCorps is a wasteful boondoggle. After a few years
of monitoring the program — and armed with critical reports
from the General Accounting Office — the House Appropriations
Committee eliminated the funding for AmeriCorps. (The program was
spared by the Senate.) James Bovard found enough abuses in AmeriCorps
to devote a whole chapter to it in his book Feeling Your Pain:
The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore
Years. Bovard found plenty of examples of AmeriCorps participants'
wasting their time, engaging in liberal advocacy, and making wildly
exaggerated claims about their accomplishments. In Buffalo, for
example, members ran a program that paid children $5 for each toy
gun turned in; and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center's AmeriCorps
program tackles "society's last 'acceptable' prejudice: anti-gay
bias." About half of AmeriCorps members are involved in tutoring
and mentoring programs, and Clinton praised participants for having
"taught millions of children to read"; but this homage
is dubious, given the lack of evidence that a single child is now
literate because of AmeriCorps.
Nor have charges
of waste, abuse, and excessive credit-claiming been the only criticisms
of AmeriCorps. In 1996, John P. Walters — then president of
the New Citizenship Project, now the Bush administration's "drug
czar" — expressed the philosophical reservations of the
many conservatives who objected to AmeriCorps' expansion of government
in the name of civic renewal. In a Policy Review article,
he wrote that "using federal resources to promote voluntarism
. . . contradicts the principle of self- government that lies at
the heart of citizenship." He criticized the view of citizenship
"based on universalized interests and responsibilities, not
genuine familial and social attachments."
AmeriCorps
is a misguided response . . . to a nonexistent problem: Even before
Sept. 11, the citizenry was plenty active, without Washington's
help. According to the most recent survey by the Independent Sector,
a coalition of volunteer groups, in 2000, 44 percent of adults —
an estimated 84 million people — volunteered with a formal
organization, for an average of 3.6 hours a week (per volunteer).
Charity closer to home, not included in the survey, would have included
additional millions who are caring for an aging family member, babysitting
for a relative, or helping a sick friend. An effort like the first
President Bush's much-ridiculed "Thousand Points of Light"
— a simple call to service, and a celebration of those who
answer — could likely mobilize more volunteers than the hundreds
of millions of dollars in federal grants that fund paid volunteers
to piggyback on well-established local programs. In one of its glossy
brochures, the Corporation for National and Community Service points
out that AmeriCorps' troops typically serve with organizations like
Habitat for Humanity, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and Boys and Girls
Clubs. Former GOP congressional aide Derrick Max, who studied the
program during his stint in the House, found that cost-shifting
wasn't uncommon, with an AmeriCorps worker sometimes replacing one
of a community group's salaried employees.
Even though
there's no shortage of volunteers, and no evident need for federal
intervention between citizens and community groups, the current
administration plans to create this new Citizens Corps, under the
direction of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The corps
will engage volunteers in homeland-security efforts by assessing
possible terrorist threats (the Neighborhood Watch program is doubled)
and helping local law enforcement. There is also an export component
to this new push: The administration wants to double the number
of Peace Corps workers over the next five years, to match the program's
historic high of 15,000 in 1966. Conservative activist Grover Norquist
spots a fundamental contradiction in an administration committed
to faith-based initiatives showing such enthusiasm for these secular
do-gooders: "It always seemed to me that the Peace Corps secularized
the missionary spirit that encouraged Americans to serve overseas."
And all of
this volunteering won't come cheap. The president is asking for
an additional $560 million to cover next year's costs for his new
initiatives, and although Republican eyes are rolling all over Capitol
Hill, he's likely to get exactly what he is asking for. One House
member who has objected to AmeriCorps in the past says, "The
federal government getting more involved in Bill Clinton's program
of national service is the silliest idea I have ever heard of,"
before speculating ruefully that "the president has 350 votes
for this."
Americans answered
the call on Sept. 11, without waiting for Washington's guidance;
and now they're going to pay for that snub.
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