Why Conservatives Should Love AmeriCorps, Not Kill It

By Shirley Sagawa | February 14, 2011

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House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers’ (R-KY) proposal to eliminate funding for AmeriCorps is no surprise, but wrongheaded—even for conservatives.

Despite the bipartisan majorities that created AmeriCorps in 1993, saved it a decade later when it was last at serious risk, and enacted the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act less than two years ago, radical conservatives still can’t get past the program’s association with Bill Clinton. Or the fact that AmeriCorps members receive poverty-level living allowances and modest college scholarships in exchange for their year of service. (We get it—they are not volunteers; they are people willing to work for a year in some of the most dire circumstances for practically nothing.)

Read more here.

This article was originally published in The Huffington Post.