The introduction last October of a comprehensive, bipartisan "Call to Service" bill by Sens. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), followed by the president's call for a major expansion of civilian service opportunities in his 2002 State of the Union Address, have together created the best atmosphere in nearly a decade for a quantum leap toward a system of voluntary national service. But while support for national service in Washington is becoming quite broad, it is not yet deep. Entrenched forces on the political left and right and their friends in Congress are unlikely to launch a serious effort to defeat action on national service this year, but they can and will attempt to water down the legislation so that it represents a diffuse showering of money on existing volunteerism efforts rather than a robust commitment to serious and sustained civilian and military service. Indeed, that's the very tactic that was employed by critics of national service in 1993, when President Clinton's AmeriCorps proposal was significantly diminished in Congress from its original thrust as a full-tilt commitment to full-time service to the country.
The odds of another quiet counter-revolution against national service have been materially increased by President Bush's apparent decision to adopt a passive approach to legislative action, letting Republicans in the House and the HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) Committee in the Senate take the lead. Already there are reports that GOP leaders would prefer a smaller, more diffuse commitment to service than the president has called for, while HELP staffers have put out the word that the college work study provisions endorsed both by the president and by Sens. Bayh and McCain are "dead on arrival" at the behest of higher education lobbyists.
The House Subcommittee on Select Education, chaired by Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), will soon take up a national service bill that embodies the principles on national service outlined by the White House. GOP strategists plan to use this bill to demonstrate broad Republican support for the White House plan while shifting momentum away from potential Democratic alternatives. Reports suggest that the Senate HELP committee, chaired by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), will begin work on a bill of its own as the details of the House bill are revealed.
Since virtually everyone involved in legislative action will claim to be supporting national service, it's important that national service advocates lay down clear benchmarks on the elements that must be included in any meaningful Congressional initiative. This issue brief offers five such benchmarks: 1) a significant expansion of the scale of national service, 2) a commitment to preserving the "national" characteristics of national service, 3) a focus on both military and civilian service, 4) a restoration of the original community service purpose of the work study program, and 5) an effort to connect homeland security to the existing national service infrastructure.
Citizenship is founded on rights as well as responsibilities. National service is one important way in which Americans can give something back to their country and their fellow citizens. However, in order for national service to be a truly transformative force in American civic life, this call to service must be matched with programs of sufficient size and scale to provide all Americans who want to serve with the opportunity to do so. When President Clinton signed the bill that created AmeriCorps, he rightly described it as a down payment in the effort to make national service a rite of passage in American life. The Bayh-McCain bill makes good on this down payment by quintupling the size of the AmeriCorps program from the current 50,000 members to 250,000 members by 2010. Half of this increase is dedicated to meeting the needs currently being tackled by AmeriCorps members -- tutoring students, constructing houses, vaccinating children, providing disaster relief -- while the other half is dedicated to meeting the new challenges of homeland security. The president's proposal to increase AmeriCorps by 50 percent to 75,000 members by 2003 is an important first step in this effort to significantly expand full-time service opportunities and should be the minimum that progressives are willing to accept in this year's national service legislation.
National service is distinct from part-time, unpaid volunteerism. As the political base of support for national service is expanded to include former opponents, it is important that the programs themselves retain their focus on full-time service members tackling critical problems on a national scale. Although fewer congressional Republicans now call for the outright elimination of AmeriCorps, conservative skeptics are pushing two restrictions that reduce the national characteristics of national service and risk transforming AmeriCorps into a vehicle for the "thousand points of light" vision of part-time volunteerism.
First, while the original 1993 legislation specifies that 67 percent of the AmeriCorps funds are to be distributed through the states and 33 percent are to be distributed directly to national nonprofit service organizations by the Corporation for National and Community Service, for the last five years Republicans in Congress have capped funding for national direct grants at 17 percent. This cap has resulted in an increase in the cost of operating nationwide service organizations since expansion to new states has required the establishment of a new funding stream for each state. For example, the national service organization Public Allies estimates the additional time and expense of managing six separate state commission grants resulted last year in an extra $150,000 in administrative costs. City Year, one of the oldest and most widely praised AmeriCorps programs, reports similar administrative burdens as the cap in federal funds has forced it to manage 10 separate state commission grants. This capping of national direct grants restricts the growth of the nationwide service programs like City Year, Teach for America, Public Allies, and Habitat for Humanity that have proven the most successful in creating meaningful service opportunities, and therefore undermines the effort to expand the scale of national service. Progressives should support efforts to boost the amount of funds distributed directly to national service organizations by the Corporation for National and Community Service.
Second, this year Republicans in Congress have sought to further restrict funding for national service by arguing that the average cost per service member, now under the control of the Corporation for National and Community Service, should be set in legislative stone at $12,400. In addition, this cost per member would be applied to every program regardless of the cost of living in the area in which it operates and the degree of training required for its specific activities, in contrast to the flexibility allowed under the current rules. It is important to note that this $12,400 cap is already significantly below, for example, City Year's per member costs for training and living expenses. This statutory cap would put the Corporation in a legislative straightjacket that prevents it from choosing between programs based on the value of the services provided instead of simply the cost per member. As a result, PPI believes this cap would reduce the quality of the training and supervision given to AmeriCorps members and encourage programs to use a greater percentage of less-costly, part-time AmeriCorps members. While creating a more cost effective AmeriCorps program is a worthy goal, this goal would be better served if Congress focused on measuring the value of the service provided per dollar by the organizations instead of fixing their expenses per member at a uniform minimum rate.
The primary value promoted through national service is reciprocal responsibility: the idea that Americans should share equally in both the rights and responsibilities of active citizenship. Since no form of service is more fundamental to citizenship than that of preserving our free institutions, PPI believes that we must make every effort possible to assure that our military recruitment policies encourage service from young Americans of all backgrounds. This requires that military service be understood for what it is -- the most fundamental form of national service and the heart of any comprehensive national service initiative. While Bayh-McCain views military and civilian service as coequal pillars of national service; the White House proposal sees no such connection.
At the heart of the military provisions of the Bayh-McCain proposal is a new short-term enlistment track in the Armed Forces designed for young Americans who want to serve their country in the military without choosing a military career. According to Northwestern University Prof. Charles Moskos, the country's pre-eminent military sociologist, this short-term enlistment track would remove one of the most important barriers to military service for college graduates: the three to five year terms of service, which are perceived as obstacles to their larger career goals. For example, findings from a survey of American college students conducted by Prof. Moskos for the U.S. Army shows that on average the shorter the enlistment term, the greater the percentage of students who say their enlistment in the military is very likely or possible. This pattern was strongest among the young Americans currently least likely to enlist: students from upper-tier universities.
While President Bush remains silent on how military service is connected to his national service initiative, progressives have been working behind the scenes to overcome the traditional skepticism of the Department of Defense in linking military service and national service through a short-term enlistment policy. This effort cleared a major hurdle in Congress recently with the Personnel Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee voting 11-0 to include a modified version of the Bayh-McCain proposal for a short-term enlistment option and increased access for military recruiters in the 2003 Defense Authorization bill (the entire bill was later approved 17-8 by the full committee).
The original short-term enlistment plan contained in Bayh-McCain allowed recruits to serve 18 months on Active Duty, followed by 18 months in the Reserves, in exchange for $18,000 in bonus pay or as an education scholarship. The modified version of the plan approved by the committee allows recruits to serve for 15 months of active duty following initial boot camp training (which is about two and one-half to three months across the services) followed by either six years in the select reserves (SELRES), six years in the inactive reserves (IRR), two years in the Peace Corps, or one year in AmeriCorps. Following their active duty service, members could choose from one of four benefits: 1) $18,000 in loan repayments, 2) two-thirds of the 2-year Montgomery GI Bill educational stipend (about $433 per month for three years), 3) a full year of the Montgomery GI Bill educational stipend (about $23,400) if the 15 months of active duty is followed by a select reserve commitment, or 4) a $5,000 severance bonus.
In addition, the committee also included in the Defense Authorization bill the Bayh-McCain provision to increase the presence of military recruitment on college campuses by closing loopholes in current recruiting statutes that allow schools to avoid providing military recruiters with both the information and physical facilities required for an effective recruiting program.
PPI believes that the short-term enlistment option and increased access for military recruiters will help relieve the military's chronic recruiting headaches by expanding the pool of highly qualified applicants and drawing into the military a more representative swath of the nation's youth. Strengthened by this important victory in the Senate Armed Services Committee, progressives should insist that both of these critical provisions are part of the final legislation sent to the president this year.
Increasing the number of college students engaged in service in their communities has a long history in the national service movement. In fact, as former Sen. Harris Wofford (D-Pa.) -- now chairman of America's Promise -- has noted, the Federal Work Study program, currently employing one million students at a cost of $1 billion a year, was originally designed to serve two purposes: 1) to provide low to middle income students with additional money to pay for college, and 2) to increase the number of students participating in community service activities. In this way the students, their schools, and the surrounding communities would all benefit from the virtuous cycle of opportunity, responsibility, and community that is at the heart of citizenship in America. However, as the work study program has grown in size over the years, college administrators have subordinated these goals to their own desired end: an almost unlimited source of cheap labor.
Both the Bayh-McCain and the White House proposals seek to increase service in college by restoring the original community service component of the work study program. In an effort to provide more students with the opportunity to serve their community while working their way through college, Bayh-McCain would increase work study funds specifically targeted for work in community service organizations from the 7 percent currently required in the Higher Education Act to 25 percent by 2010. This change would result in an additional 125,000 students serving in community service organizations per year, at virtually no cost to taxpayers. Taking the Bayh-McCain approach even further, the White House proposal increases the percentage of work study funds specifically targeted for work in community service organizations to 50 percent by 2010, which, according to Wofford, was the percentage originally envisioned by the authors of the work study legislation. This change would mean an additional 250,000 students serving in community service organizations per year.
With agreement between the two major plans on how to increase opportunities for service in college, the passage of these changes in the work study program would be likely if not for the stiff opposition from the higher education lobby, which claims a shift from campus-based to community service in work study would cause tuition increases and/or would unduly burden students. Backed by findings from a recent survey conducted by UCLA showing that community service activities, far from being a burden on college students, are connected with a number of positive outcomes including better performance in the classroom, national service advocates should insist that Congress not wait another year to begin the process of restoring the original community service component of the work study program. While the 50 percent target set by President Bush would maximize the benefits to the students, their schools, and their communities, we should insist on at least an increase to 25 percent by 2010 to assure that 150,000 more college students have the opportunity to work their way through college by serving their communities.
One of the most compelling immediate rationales for increasing national service is to meet the pressing needs America now faces in homeland security, which has both civilian and military dimensions. The Bayh-McCain and White House proposals offer two distinct models for meeting the challenge of homeland security through an expansion of civilian service.
Building on the existing AmeriCorps disaster preparedness, crime prevention, and crisis response programs, Bayh-McCain would scale up this service infrastructure to match the new challenges America faces in homeland security. Under Bayh-McCain, the Corporation for National Service is charged with working with the Director of Homeland Security to determine the most effective ways of using these national service members in homeland security. In contrast to the Bayh-McCain approach of using the existing national service infrastructure, the White House plan, called Citizen Corps, devotes half of the increase in funds for national service in 2003 to the development of a new service infrastructure outside of the Corporation for National and Community Service. The White House plan calls for the creation of Citizen Corps Councils that are charged with appropriating these new funds and recruiting the necessary volunteers. Under the White House plan, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is charged with coordinating these homeland security volunteers.
PPI believes that the Bayh-McCain approach to homeland security is superior to the White House approach for three reasons. First, FEMA has no experience managing national service projects, while the Corporation for National and Community Service has built up considerable experience managing national service projects over the last eight years. Two, a proven model for integrating national service and disaster response activities already exists in AmeriCorps*National Civilian Community Corps programs where the Corporation manages the projects and FEMA assists in the training of service members. Three, building a FEMA-based system of service from scratch would take considerable time and would result in a costly duplication of the existing national service infrastructure. Given the pressing needs of homeland security and the proven ability of the Corporation for National and Community Service to manage effective service projects, progressives should insist that the majority of funds for civilian homeland security efforts go to projects within the existing service infrastructure as advocated under Bayh-McCain.
The events of Sept. 11 have shoved to the forefront questions about what all Americans can do to help their country. We have to seize the opportunity created by this renewed interest in shared sacrifice and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship to reenergize America's national service initiatives. PPI believes that by insisting this year's national service legislation meet the five benchmarks presented in this backgrounder, progressives can ensure that this historic opportunity is matched with an equally historic leap toward a nationwide system of robust, voluntary national service.
