America isn’t losing just family-wage jobs by the thousands.
America is also losing thousands of below-minimum-wage positions held by volunteers earning modest stipends and scholarships in AmeriCorps.
Congress this week refused to pony up $100 million to maintain the program’s full strength of 50,000.
The 10-year-old program, part of the USA Freedom Corps and administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, will have to make do with 30,000 part- and full-time workers until next July.
That means 2,500 national and local organizations providing education, public safety and homeland security will take substantial personnel hits.
So much for the Freedom Corps, Dubya’s initiative to “foster a culture of citizenship, service and responsibility.”
Freedom Corps should be renamed the “Thousand Points of Blight.” (21 SEPTEMBER 2003)
