Democrat and Chronicle

(July 11, 2003) — President Bush has chosen to ignore Rep. Louise Slaughter and a bipartisan group of 163 other members of Congress who asked him to add funding to his proposed federal budget to make AmeriCorps viable. Bush is making a huge mistake.

Fortunately, Sen. Hillary Clinton is picking up the ball, along with other Democrats in the Senate. They hope to add $100 million to a White House spending bill to help pay for the national public service organization, which provided college tuition to 67,000 young people who performed community service.

Despite protests from Slaughter, who represents the Rochester area, and others, Bush failed to include a requested $200 million in his $1.9 billion supplemental budget earlier this week. Obviously he doesn’t think the work of AmeriCorps should be a priority.

Bush is talking out of both sides of his mouth. In Bush’s 2002 State of the Union speech, he extolled the virtues of AmeriCorps, which has 1,300 volunteers in New York. But that was just six months after Sept. 11, 2001, and at a time when the appeal of public service was at one of the highest levels in recent history. Bush and Congress recognized that making more opportunities availablefor national service through such programs as AmeriCorps was what citizens wanted to hear.

For some reason that has not been fully explained, Bush has had a change of heart. As a result, more than 70 percent of the AmeriCorps volunteers in New York now face being axed by Aug. 1.

In Rochester, AmeriCorps will be shut down, leaving shorthanded scores of service organizations and agencies it helps. Locally about 80 workers provide 150 hours of community service.

True, the $240-million-a-year program has had management problems since its creation by the Clinton administration in 1993. But virtually shutting it down is not the remedy. Rather, the original goal of creating a 1-million-member corps is still worthwhile. No one expects that to happen anytime soon. But the Bush administration should move in that direction.

It can start to do so by supporting Clinton’s proposal, which would at least restore $100 million of the $175 million axed from AmeriCorps for the next fiscal year. Help young people help their country.