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*****************************************************
DLCMail
*****************************************************
An E-Mail Service of the Democratic Leadership Council
THE DLC UPDATE Tue, Mar 19, 1996
************** ****************
Welcome to "The DLC Update," the weekly chronicle of
the noteworthy New Democrat happenings.
Highlights Include:
-------------------
- New Horizons for AmeriCorps
- New Releases this Week
- - Blueprint for Reducing Teen Pregnancy
- - Answering the Conservative Challenge: Ideas for a New
Progressive Majority
****************************************************
Have you ordered your 1996 DLC Idea Book#the most comprehensive
compilation of New Democrat thinking around? Contact 800/546 0027
(202/544 6172 in the DC area) or info@dlcppi.org to have your Idea Book
shipped today.
****************************************************
New Horizons for AmeriCorps
-------------------------------------
A cornerstone DLC idea and one of President Clinton#s signature domestic
initiatives received a much needed boost last week. Senator Charles Grassley
(R IA), a vocal critic of the Corporation for National Service (CNS) and
CNS Director Harris Wofford reached agreement last week (3/13), to forge
ahead with reforms that will likely improve bipartisan support for
AmeriCorps#the infant domestic program that offers young people a
chance to address the country#s most compelling social problems in
exchange for college scholarships. Moreover, Grassley and fellow Senators
Mikulski (D MD) and Bond (R MO), helped push through an amendment
late Thursday evening (3/14) that restores AmeriCorps funding to nearly 81
percent of its FY 1995 level.
This sudden shift of support allows AmeriCorps to emerge from survival
mode and begin to define national service as it was intended to be.
In 1987, the DLC set forth a plan for voluntary national service called "the
Citizen Corps." Intended to become the chief way young Americans earned
college aid, we hoped to revive the compact of mutual obligation
exemplified by the GI Bill.
The spirit of the DLC's Citizen Corps was embodied in the bipartisan
national service initiative passed in 1993#of which AmeriCorps was a
product. Resistance from both the left and the right, however, turned a
signature New Democrat idea into what many critics deemed just another
bureaucratic program. Paralyzed at its original startup level of 20,000
members and thus virtually invisible to the nation, AmeriCorps quickly
became an easy target for Republicans looking to cut billions from the
President#s social agenda.
In the March/April issue of The New Democrat, we took a hard look at how
this infant program could be perfected to embody the key principles of
progressive governance. While we continue to call for national service as a
condition to receive college aid, we urged the Administration to ask
Congress to take the following short term steps during program
reauthorization this year:
Limiting service to a few critically needed, universally understood,
functions. Currently, AmeriCorps members serve dozens of functions.
Channeling participants into one form of critically needed service, such as
care for senior citizen, would help to better identify the program with one
particular cause.
Concentrating AmeriCorps# firepower. AmeriCorps funds are spread as
widely as possible and thus there effects are only ripples in a sea of social
programs. Rather than trying to solve problems everywhere, AmeriCorps
should concentrate its funds on a limited number of geographic areas, thus
capturing the public imagination by achieving tangible public purposes.
Untangling the cost sharing arrangement for AmeriCorps to focus the
federal contribution on the post service educational benefit. Today, not
enough money reaches the hands of participants in the form of post service
education vouchers. By encouraging local sponsors to pay their own
program costs and a higher proportion of member stipends, the federal
government#s role could be more clearly established as rewarding more
community based service.
We#re happy to report that the ten point plan reached between Wofford
and Grassley, embodies many of these reforms, including organizing
AmeriCorps members in larger projects involving the nation's leading
private nonprofit social agencies (e.g., Habitat for Humanity); requiring
local Ameri Corps sponsors to put up a higher percentage of the program
costs; and identifying preexisting service programs which the federal
government could endow with post service educational benefits. It also
moves to cut per member costs, increase state autonomy, and decrease the
reliance on federal funding.
To learn more or to get involved with the national service initiatives in
your area, point you Web browser to http://www.cns.org/pro-dir.htm or call
202/606 5000. For a copy of the most recent issue of The New Democrat,
contact the DLC Publications Desk at the numbers listed below. We also
encourage you to write, call, or e mail your member of Congress and tell
them how AmeriCorps has made a difference in your community.
Released this Week:
------------------------
--------------------Blueprint for Reducing Teen Pregnancy
Legislators and policymakers! The DLC Blueprint for Change: Reducing
Teen Pregnancy, your handbook for action and guide to resources, arrives
this week. It includes our seven part strategy for reducing teen pregnancy
and detailed information on current state initiatives. Available for only
$6.00. Order your copy today!
Answering the Conservative Challenge: Ideas for a New Progressive
Majority
Taken from the policy presentations made at the DLC#s 1995 Annual
Conference, Answering the Conservative Challenge: Ideas for a New
Progressive Majority is a primer on the "third way" approach PPI takes to
public policy#an approach that constitutes a genuinely progressive
alternative to the exhausted left-right debate. This pamphlet contains seven
examples that we think are emblematic of how to govern in view of a new
economic and political age. Available for $5.00
To order any of the publications seen in this Update or any other DLC/PPI
publication, please contact the DLC/PPI Publications Desk at 800/546 0027
(202/544 6172 in the DC metro area) or info@dlcppi.org or visit the
DLC/PPI Web site at http://www.dlcppi.org/.
--------------------------------------------------
This Update is broadcast to thousands of public
officials, citizen activists, and supporters
in the DLC network nationwide.
"The DLC Update," Democratic Leadership Council,
518 C Street NE, Washington, DC 20002
P:202-546-0007 F:202-546-0628
E-MAIL:dlcfax@dlcppi.org
WWW: http://www.dlcppi.org/
--------------------------------------------------
The DLC is a national network of elected
officials, academics, and citizen activists that
is reshaping American politics and setting an
agenda for progressive government that moves
beyond the old left-right political debate. Its
affiliated think tank, PPI, works to fashion a
public policy for the 21st century by adapting
America's progressive tradition of individual
liberty, equal opportunity, and civic obligation
to the challenges of the Information Age.