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My suggestion: AmeriCorps is proof that if “we maintain arms and consider … we are able to change something we wish to change,” President Bill Clinton declared in 1999. However after greater than 30 years of fraud, false claims and political racketeering, AmeriCorps – the federal paid volunteer oxymoron – simply acquired hit by a DOGE torpedo.
“AmeriCorps has failed eight consecutive audits and is entrusted with over $1 billion in taxpayer {dollars} yearly,” White Home spokeswoman Anna Kelly declared. The company’s Workplace of Inspector Basic condemned it in 2014 for “stunning waste of taxpayer funds, lax oversight, unauthorized contractual commitments and widespread noncompliance with guidelines, rules and sound contracting practices.”
Issues have solely gotten worse since then. DOGE froze $400 million in grants to greater than a thousand organizations, terminating greater than 30,000 AmeriCorps members. Most AmeriCorps staffers have both stop or had been positioned on paid go away.
TRUMP ADMIN GUTS AMERICORPS, CLINTON-ERA VOLUNTEER AGENCY THAT FAILED 8 CONSECUTIVE AUDITS
AmeriCorps is a ripe DOGE goal as a result of its motto appears to be: “Go away No Boondoggle Behind.” In Missouri, AmeriCorps members launched 70 blue balloons outdoors a county courthouse to attract consideration to the plight of abused youngsters.
Former President Invoice Clinton with AmeriCorps youth throughout occasion on the College of Maryland. (Picture by Dirck Halstead/Getty Pictures)
Lots of of Playworks AmeriCorps members served as elementary college “recess referees,” bringing “protected and inclusive play to all college students.” AmeriCorps members within the Florida “Ladies in Misery” program organized a poetry studying on the evils of home violence.
Federal agencies are prohibited from bankrolling political advocacy, however that doesn’t cease AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps aided and abetted ACORN, the Welfare Rights Organizing Coalition, the Political Asylum Mission of Austin, the Nationwide Affiliation of HUD Tenants and Deliberate Parenthood. AmeriCorps members have busied themselves passing out free condoms and offering escort companies for ladies going to abortion clinics.
I’ve chronicled AmeriCorps’ debacles over the many years in The Wall Street Journal, USA Immediately, Playboy, and American Spectator. After Clinton bragged that AmeriCorps members had taught tens of millions of children find out how to learn, I visited one in every of their premier literacy applications in West Virginia. AmeriCorps members emphatically denied teaching kids how to read – as an alternative, they mentioned they had been merely exposing youngsters to books.
In Mississippi, I attended the opening of an AmeriCorps assistant instructor coaching program the place recruits had been solely required to learn at an eighth grade stage. (This system’s grant utility was chock-full of grammar and spelling errors.)
Based on AmeriCorps, “nationwide service returns as much as $17 for each federal greenback invested” in AmeriCorps. The system occasion counts the stipends paid to AmeriCorps recruits – as if they’d in any other case by no means get a paying job elsewhere. The tortured assumptions used to gin up the $17/$1 multiplier can’t be squared with having no clear concept the place federal funds truly go.
I noticed this first-hand in 1999 after I visited a premier AmeriCorps program which obtained $600,000 to recruit individuals for meals stamps. After the manager director of that Mississippi program evaded my questions, I alerted the Inspector Basic. Seems that AmeriCorps cash was spent on 14 ghost workers (together with a neighborhood mayor) who did nothing for this system. The chief of that native company was convicted and sentenced to 41 months in jail.
AmeriCorps nonetheless struggles to differentiate between actual and imaginary “service.” Through the first Trump administration, the Inspector Basic warned of pervasive fraud involving “teleservice” — AmeriCorps members phoning in claims of the nice deeds they supposedly did. Many grantees made no effort to confirm the purported hours served. AmeriCorps administration responded by recommending “fast contact between the member and people to whom companies are rendered.”
That is AmeriCorps’ definition of “shut sufficient for presidency work” altruism. The Authorities Accountability Workplace slammed AmeriCorps for failing to “exhibit outcomes” and ignoring “the standard of service offered” by its members.
In Mississippi, I attended the opening of an AmeriCorps assistant instructor coaching program the place recruits had been solely required to learn at an eighth grade stage.
AmeriCorps apologists perpetually painting AmeriCorps recruits as monetary martyrs. Pennsylvania Democrat Rep. Chrissy Houlahan boasts of her time with AmeriCorps, declaring, “It’s a selfless act to serve, however you’re gaining expertise, and you’ll be able to parlay that into alternatives within the civilian financial system.” However she was a part of the Educate for America program whose AmeriCorps recruits had been paid as much as $80,000 a yr plus advantages.
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Most AmeriCorps members obtain far much less, however the general bundle of stipends, fringe advantages and training awards exceed the wages collected by tens of millions of People on the backside of the pay scale. Being an AmeriCorps member is simpler than making fries at McDonald’s.
Olga Rodriguez lamented on the Huffington Submit that serving in AmeriCorps was destroying her work ethic. AmeriCorps member Nicole Patterson, who obtained a Congressional Bronze Medal for Neighborhood Service, vented: “I spent six weeks taking part in Scrabble and kickball for America. I spent one other two months sitting in a instrument shed for America.”
Former President Joe Biden and First Woman Jill Biden pose with members of AmeriCorps on arrival at Joint Base Charleston in North Charleston, South Carolina, on January 19, 2025. (Picture by ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP by way of Getty Pictures)
Democrats and liberals are looking for to ignite panic over the demise of AmeriCorps, however did these apologists fail arithmetic way back? AmeriCorps had roughly 75,000 paid members earlier than the DOGE purge. Based on the Census Bureau, 75 million People formally volunteer with organizations annually. AmeriCorps quantities to barely one tenth of 1 % of the entire variety of volunteers on this nation.
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Greater than 20 states filed a lawsuit on April 29, difficult the Trump administration’s AmeriCorps cutbacks. Based on Fox News, “AmeriCorps is predicted to stay in existence, however basically might be restarted from scratch.” However there isn’t a option to redeem a program that boasts of its balloon launches, poetry readings and condom giveaways.
Congress and the Trump administration ought to admit that AmeriCorps won’t ever be greater than social work tinged with messianic delusions. There are a thousand instances as many non-public volunteers who will guarantee that AmeriCorps members won’t be missed. Taxpayers can now not afford AmeriCorps’ countless advantage signaling.
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