Editorial: Bush policy is hurting AmeriCorps

Monday, Aug. 25, 2003 | 10:20 a.m.

President Bush inherited a record budget surplus and a booming jobs market and has steadfastly presided over a record deficit and record unemployment statistics. His management of AmeriCorps, the national service program, follows this same pattern. Under the program's founder, President Clinton, AmeriCorps had a healthy surplus and its workers were at full strength in helping to reduce poverty, illiteracy, crime and other social ills. After three years of Bush administration management, AmeriCorps has a $100 million deficit, and layoffs and program cuts are mounting.

The president got a lot of mileage out of the popular program in his 2002 State of the Union address. He invoked all the genuine images the program has inspired since its inception in 1993, then promised a major expansion.

Today, however, AmeriCorps is struggling to survive. The Bush administration bungled the program's finances so badly that it ran out of money in November and had to stop recruiting. Last year the 10 Boys and Girls Clubs in Clark County were assigned a scant 30 AmeriCorps workers to serve as teachers. That number has now been cut to 10. Last year the BEST Coalition of Clark County, which tackles issues facing at-risk youths, had 20 part-time AmeriCorps workers. All funding for those workers has now been withdrawn.

These kinds of reductions are happening all over the country under the Bush administration's management. Before Congress broke for its summer recess, the Senate approved $100 million to restore financial stability to AmeriCorps. The House, however, blocked the funding, leaving the program gasping for life. One word from the White House would likely have swayed the Republican-controlled House. Bush enjoys associating himself with AmeriCorps' image. But owing to his own administration's policies, that image is now more of mismanagement than service. And who suffers most in the end? The poor.