Home  »  General  »  Malkin: To GIVE And To Serve: The $6 Billion National Service Boondoggle

Malkin: To GIVE And To Serve: The $6 Billion National Service Boondoggle



Mar 25, 2009 4 Comments ›› Pat Dollard

give

Michelle Malkin:

Maybe it’s just me, but I find federal legislation titled “The GIVE Act” and “The SERVE Act” downright creepy. Even more troubling: The $6 billion price tag on these bipartisan bills to expand government-funded national service efforts. Volunteerism is a wonderful thing, which is why millions of Americans do it every day without a cent of taxpayer money. But the volunteerism packages on the Hill are less about promoting effective charity than about creating make-work, permanent bureaucracies, and left-wing slush funds.

The House passed the “Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act” – or the GIVE Act – last week. The Senate took up the companion “SERVE Act” Tuesday afternoon. According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Senate bill, S. 277, the bill would cost “$418 million in 2010 and about $5.7 billion over the 2010-2014 period.” And like most federal programs, these would be sure to grow over time. The bills reauthorize the Clinton-era Americorps boondoggle program and an older law, the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973.

The programs have already been allocated $1.1 billion for fiscal 2009, including $200 million from the porkulus package signed into law last month. In addition to recruiting up to 250,000 enrollees in AmeriCorps, the GIVE/SERVE bills would create new little armies of government volunteers, including a Clean Energy Corps, Education Corps, Healthy Futures Corps, Veterans Service Corps, and and expanded National Civilian Community Corps for disaster relief and energy conservation. And that’s not all. Spending would include new funds for:

*Foster Grandparent Program ($115 million);

*Learn and Serve America. ($97 million);

*Retired and Senior Volunteer Program ($70 million);

*Senior Companion Program ($55 million);

*$12 million for each of fiscal years 2010 through 2014 for “the Silver Scholarships and Encore Fellowships programs;”

*$10 million a year from 2010-2014 for a new “Volunteers for Prosperity” program at USAID to “award grants to fund opportunities for volunteering internationally

in coordination with eligible organizations; and

*Social Innovation Fund and Volunteer Generation Fund-$50 million in 2010; $60 million in 2011; $70 million in 2012; $80 million in 2013; and $100 million in 2014.

“Social Innovation Fund?” If that sounds familiar, it should. I reported last fall on the Democratic Party platform’s push to fund a “Social Investment Fund Network” that would reward “social entrepreneurs and leading nonprofit organizations” and “support results-oriented innovators.” It is essentially a special taxpayer-funded pipeline for radical liberal groups backed by billionaire George Soros that masquerade as public-interest do-gooders.

Especially troublesome to parents’ groups concerned about compulsory volunteerism requirements is a provision in the House version, directing Congress to explore “whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.”

Those who have watched AmeriCorps from its inception are all-too-familiar with how government voluntarism programs have been used for propaganda and political purposes. AmeriCorps “volunteers” have been put to work lobbying against the voter-approved three-strikes anti-crime initiative in California and protesting Republican political events while working for the already heavily-tax-subsidized liberal advocacy group ACORN.

Citizens Against Government Waste, the D.C. watchdog, also documented national service volunteers lobbying for rent control, expanded federal housing subsidies, and enrollment of more women in the Women, Infants, and Children welfare program. AmeriCorps volunteers have also been paid to shuffle paper at the Department of Justice, the Department of Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Legal Services Corporation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

(Now, imagine Obama’s troops being sent overseas – out of sight and unaccountable — as part of that $10 million a year USAID/”Volunteers for Prosperity” program. Egad.)

One vigilant House member, GOP Rep. Virginia Foxx, successfully attached an amendment to the GIVE Act to bar National Service recipients from engaging in political lobbying, endorsing or opposing legislation, organizing petitions, protests, boycotts, or strikes; providing or promoting abortions or referrals; or influencing union organizing.

Supporters of GIVE/SERVE are now fighting those restrictions tooth and nail, screaming censorship and demanding that the provisions be dropped. Which tells you everything you need to know about the true nature of this boondoggle: Taxpayers GIVE their money to SERVE a big government agenda under the guise of helping their fellow man. It’s charity at the point of a gun.

***

Don’t know why, but the creepy title of the Senate bill reminds me of that classic Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man.” Remember?


  • Bouke60

    IT”S A COOK BOOK!!!!!!!

    • http://none PatriotofPast(Thomas)

      Shit on a Stick!

  • http://www.okiepatriot.blogspot.com Greywolfe

    I wonder if the Nazi Youth movement had some of the same arguments made for it’s inception. Just a thought.

  • saepe expertus

    This development shouldn’t surprise anyone; anyone that was listening during the election and was not overcome by the cult of Leader Obama. He telegraphed very clearly during a videotaped speech at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs last fall, though it was later redacted from general viewing, exactly what he envisions for the future vis-a-vis an “Americorps” of publicly funded, “volunteers” as amply funded and manned (equipped?) as the United States Military to “help” him implement is agenda for “hope and change.” This public utterance should have alarmed any patriot who loves liberty but even more so the attempt to cover up and obfuscate what he clearly said by the socialistically invested media in this country.

    Let’s make no mistake. Obama is an American socialist. And like every socialist before him who has come to power he recognizes that in order to enact his vision of a “just and equal” societal omlette, “eggs are going to have to be cracked”. For an excellent introduction to this subject please purchase and read F.A. Hayek’s, Road to Serfdom before it is removed from the shelves by the thought police. Pay particular attention to the chapter entitled “Why the worst get on top.” At any rate, an egg (Obama calls a Republican form of Constitutionally limited government and its restraints on absolutist power “eggs” or “obstacles”)-to be cracked for the “collective good” presupposes a “cracker” and
    socialists have always found malleble fodder for that role in the youth of the nation targeted for subjection. Mussolini and the Blackshirts had the “National Balilla Organization” made up of Italian youth, years 8 -18. Herr Schickelgruber and the Nazis had the Hitlerjugend for both boys (and girls) in that age range, many of whom would several years later try to spread the socialist vision by force of arms to its democratic neighbors. And Chairman Mao developed the “Red Guard” made up of students and youth who went about destroying the “4 olds” in name of the “Great Leap Forward” and in the process murdering millions of “reactionaries” and sending China “back into the future.” Stalin, Pol Pot, etc..nauseatingly etc.
    Now comes Obama and his ilk with the same totalitarian utopic vision, based on the same fantastical assumptions, who intends to try it one more time. (For an understanding why socialists are so damned committed to this path please read carefully Thomas Sowell’s masterpieces, A Conflict of Visions, and Vision of the Annointed. They are central to the understanding of the murderous arrogance the socialist mindset is in thrall of.) And where, pray tell, is the most fertile ground for the fantastical, narcissitic, dionysian, political dogma that is Obamaistic brand of socialism if it is not among the millions of disaffected, immature, and uninstructed youth of our country who for one reason or another have not digested the republican principles this nation was founded on and who the Democrats have labored so long to produce. Of course there are, thank God, many millions of youth who do understand, who get it, who will “stand up and fight where we stood still”, but the “lure of the koolaid” is always there.
    How far will this go? Hard to say but all indications are that it will go much farther than the patriotic “Remnant” will tolerate. If you read your Declaration of Independence, one of the chief offences for which George III lost his American Colonies was that “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither multitudes of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”
    Our Congressional leadership must stand up legislatively while the Americorps viper is in the egg and make sure that one is never hatched open but rather crushed in its nascent stage.