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By Tina Grazier
I don’t mind when leaders inspire others to make a personal contribution to society. John Kennedy did just that when he spoke to the American people and said, “Ask not what your country can do for you but ask what you can do for your country”. This is the roll of leadership, to inspire and encourage others to give all they can to the challenges at hand. But I’m very weary when our leaders instead seek to manage semi-compulsory programs that eat up tax dollars to the tune of trillions of dollars year after year. The latest good idea to expand the size and scope of government was introduced by the First Lady when she recently announced a new mentoring project:
“And that’s why today, I am thrilled to announce that the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) has teamed up with several major companies to establish a Corporate Mentoring Challenge,” Obama said at a summit held by CNCS and the National Mentoring Partnership MENTOR at the Library of Congress.
“This is a program calling on businesses of all sizes to allow their employees to mentor for short periods during the work day, giving kids positive role models and offering employees a way to give back,” Obama said. “And they’ve already received new commitments from leading companies who have agreed to harness their resources and help us make a difference on a very large scale.
“We want to do things big,” Obama said, but did not spell out details about the challenge.
BIG THINGS COST BIG BUCKS
This program sounds very nice. Who would be against mentoring young people? But how much will the program cost? What result is expected from the program? The article indicates that the budget for CNCS was $927.1 million in 2005, increased to $1.149 billion in 2010, and is set to increase in 2011 to $1.365 billion. I have to ask…is this expenditure necessary? No details were given nor were projections made of expectations for success or indeed, how to measure success.
This vague announcement brings up other questions of significance. How are we failing in our society that we need business people to take time out from work to mentor young people? Isn’t it a sign that we have failed when young people are not learning what they need to learn to become successful citizens capable of entering the workforce? This “neediness” could be a sign of significant failures at the level of family, education, and religion. Our culture has become too enamored with pop culture so that even older young adults (25-35) are often not equipped to navigate in the business world. I contend that this mentoring program will make little, if any, significant difference.
Mentoring is not a new idea. Our society has, without management from on high, created mentoring programs at the local, school and business levels. Many corporate heads have stepped forward to involve themselves in schools. Teachers have reached out to the business community to request speakers for their classrooms. Local organizations have reached out to young people. I’m sure the men and women who have given young people their attention have done some very good things. But these efforts cannot get at the root problems that plague the young in terms of their preparation for adulthood.
This is the type of work that can be done individually and would best be done locally. it certainly isn’t the best use of the federal government. Expanding the CNCS budget and purview will not make the slightest bit of difference but it will cost the US taxpayer dearly for years to come. Budgets just keep growing. I say we should get rid of this agency altogether. It would save the taxpayers over a billion dollars every year….and that’s before interest on all of our debt.
This is off topic but I remember one of your articles talking about the unrest in Tunisia and Egypt and you were spot on. You were one of the first news sources to carry this story and I can’t figure out how a little blog does that because its not the first you did it? You must have some high placed connections or something because you people are always coming up with stuff that makes the regular news days later. How do you do it? You’re amazing.Why is this not a regular internet site?
News Junkie you have really made my day. Thank you for the compliment but more importantly thank you for taking the time to participate here on Post Scripts. The thing that keeps our interest is hearing from those who read our blog and then take the time to hold forth, so to speak.
I’m not sure how to answer your questions. As a fellow “news junkie” all I can tell you is that we read a lot and in the course of our reading stumble upon stories we find interesting. It’s a challenge to find things that will inspire comment…we don’t always succeed.
Thanks again for those kind words…hope you stick around and become one of our regulars. You enjoy the news, I’ll bet you have something to say.
News Junkie, we have been talking about PS become a stand alone internet site, but we’re not there yet. That’s a big step for us. Thanks for the compliments.
As someone who served as an AmeriCorps*VISTA for a year, I can personally attest to the profound positive impact that the Corporation for National and Community Service and many of its programs have, both on the people who volunteer, and on the communities they serve. I can say without a doubt that my experience with AmeriCorps*VISTA shaped who I am as a person and inspired me to give back to youth in a variety of ways since then, including becoming a high school history teacher, and leading countless workshops on hip hop, spoken word, and positive decision-making with youth. If it weren’t for my AmeriCorps experience, I doubt I would be half as connected to my community, or interested in supporting young people in the ways I currently do.
I agree with you that we as a society are failing our young people, but the answer is not to cut beneficial programs that help young people and hope that individual people and local programs will plug the gap. Mentoring programs such as these do have profound impacts on the young people who receive mentors, many of whom don’t have existing positive role models in their lives. Now you can blame their families for that if you like, you can blame society, you can even blame pop culture. But you can’t blame the kids themselves. These kids deserve support from programs such as AmeriCorps. And involvement in community service also helps people in all sorts of professions connect with their local communities. Sometimes it takes that extra effort to inspire someone to become a mentor, to give back to their community, and sometimes dollars have to be spent to facilitate those opportunities. But the long-term rewards far outweigh those short term costs. And the long term costs of allowing programs such as AmeriCorps to become defunded would be disastrous for our country and for so many people in it who need a helping hand.
Americorps Alum thank you for taking the time to respond to this post and thank you for your service to the community. You’re right, young people today need all the help we can give them. We disagree about the need for a big government bureaucracy.
You claim that “it takes that extra effort to inspire someone to become a mentor, to give back to their community, and sometimes dollars have to be spent to facilitate those opportunities.”
I don’t know how old you are so you may not remember when people in America depended more on themselves and less on government but we did. Every community has service organizations, some of them are nationally affiliated. there isn’t any reason people interested in mentoring young people and teens could do it through these local service organizations.
We’ve become a nation that depends too heavily on government to inspire our efforts and it is costing us dearly. It has allowed the creation of multiple federal agencies doing the same work at an inflated cost just to pay for the bureaucracy. The demand for more money in Washington removes private sector investment where all of the wealth is created along with jobs. The unemployment rate for young people has been high for many years and it’s higher for minorities.
We Americans have been riding on a dream of endless dependency and financing through our government but we have come to the end of the road and it’s time to pay the piper. A lot of cuts will have to be made to save us from financial destruction.
I can’t imagine that if this program were to be cut that you would suddenly become uninterested and unmotivated. Wouldn’t you look for ways to work within your own community to continue to mentor young people? I’ll bet you would and I’ll bet you would succeed…without the bureaucracy that takes 25 to 75 cents on every dollar for the oversight. You’re more capable, and so are others in your community, than you give yourself credit. While you’re at it try to instill in those young people a passion for depending on themselves, for being the authors of their own lives, and for finding ways to contribute, work, and live within their own neighborhoods. There is nothing better than neighbors working with and helping neighbors.
I am sorry to see that you feel the Corporation for National Service should be ended. Perhaps you don’t realize the huge positive impact it has on our country.
It is true that people can volunteer without the Corporation, but the fact is that in the Senior Corps portion of the Corporation alone, there are over 425,000 elderly volunteers.
You see volunteering is one thing, being effective is another. The Corporation trains people, does research and makes certain that our volunteers have the maximum impact on their communities.
I work with the Senior Companion program. Senior Companions visit their elderly neighbors five days a week, four hours a day to help them stay independent. If it was as simple as having a volunteer help a senior get their shopping get done that would be one thing but it’s not.
In my city there are neighborhood offices with volunteers to help the elderly. Those offices call on our Companions to make weekly visits to their clients. Why? Because they can’t find volunteers who are willing to do that.
Yes some are willing to take someone shopping every once in awhile, but every once in a while isn’t good enough. These folks need help every week. And they need friendship, they need someone to escort them on a walk, help with household chores, encourage them to exercise, go on an outing to a Senior Center etc.
Our goal is to keep our seniors independent. Every person we help to keep out of a nursing home, saves the taxpayers about $100,000 a year. If we help just four people to stay in their homes, we’ve saved the taxpayers more than our budget. Last year we helped 402 homebound seniors.
And yes they are at risk for institutionalization. Over 60% of our clients say they can’t leave their homes by themselves. Over 70% need an aid to walk (walker, wheelchair, scooter, cane)
Their families are either unable or unwilling to help. In fact many don’t have family members in town anymore. There are no income requirements for those we help. That’s because you can’t buy a friend.
Last year, over 95% of our clients avoided going to a nursing home. This saved the taxpayers almost 40 million. At a cost of $429,000. Furthermore our Seniors were able to live better and live with dignity in their own homes and apartments.
And it wouldn’t have been possible without Senior Corps, which is part of the Corporation for National Service. I hope you will reconsider your position.
Senior Companions is just one example of why eliminating the Corporation for National Service would be penny wise and pound foolish.
Nat’l Service Supporter, thank you for weighing in with your opinion. You make a good point about volunteers being effective and I wouldn’t argue otherwise. I didn’t write the article you criticize, but I do have some thoughts about how government is supposed to work. If you would indulge me now. . .
Prior to the existence of the Corp for National Service we got along pretty well and the reason we did was because American’s are a generous people. When we see a need we try to fill it. Our churches once served a valuable purpose in caring for the poor, today not so much, because it’s done for us by government. No volunteer group can compete against the government who seeks to do their job. Now that being said, the role of government was never intended to be a replacement for private volunteerism. Government as originally designed had a fairly limited role in our daily lives and this was set in law, but only after due consideration by some very wise men, our foundering fathers.
The buzz word today is “mission creep”, but our founders knew of those dangers long before we coined the phrase. This is not about being against the Corp for National Service, it is about protecting an ideology that helped us build this nation.
We are keenly aware that over the course of our history government has exceeded its bounds on every front and created new agencies, commissions, committees, rules, laws and regulations to serve each new entity. This has resulted in an encroachment on our freedom and in order to redress this wrong it requires government to surrender many of its functions back to the private sector. This is right on a moral basis, but it is necessary on an economic basis too! Government’s insatiable appetite has exceeded our ability to feed it. We feel we have no choice now, but to restrain government from overspending and curtail those entities not specifically covered by the Constitution.
This is where we are right now. The two great questions before us are: Do we save the nation from bankruptcy and in so doing protect preserve our freedom and idealism? Or do we continue on our current path, letting government do so many things for us at greater and greater cost and risk until the burden is so heavy it must eventually implode?
National Service Employer, I join Jack in thanking you for expressing your views on this important subject. I agree with you in spirit that care for the elderly (and young people through mentoring) is very important. Like Jack, I completely disagree that this should be a federally funded government program.
Jacks response covers anything I might have written but I do what to address one thing. You claim the following:
This is absurd. It assumes that local people are not only heartless but also incapable unless directed by a powerful central agency on high. While people do seek and need leadership there isn’t any reason that leadership can’t come from within local populations and programs can then be designed specifically to address and meet local requirements.
It’s also important, from my perspective, that families begin to take care of their own as they once did in America. When government steps in, families that could provide for their elderly members step back, reliquishijng the responsibility. One of the core building blocks of the nation, family, is thus weakened.
I applaud you for your service but I disagree that this program is necessary to accomplish the important goals you describe.
It’s all well and good to talk about the past, but the reality is that these problems have always existed. They just weren’t discussed.
We don’t compete with other groups. Our volunteers have to commit to 16 volunteer hours a week. Our biggest source of clients are those church groups and other senior groups who can’t find volunteers willing to put in four hours a week, let alone four hours a day. Let alone find volunteers who are as highly trained, closely watched and as dedicated as ours are.
It would be nice if families would take care of things themselves, but they don’t and often they can’t. People work and can’t take off to drive Mom to the doctor.
Today I got a call from a man whose wife has Alzheimer’s. He can’t afford to keep taking off work to get her to her doctor’s appointments. The folks at his church are stretched and can’t help as often as they are needed. Their kids live out of state and can’t help.
The point is that we help seniors ONLY when there’s no alternative. And we have a waiting list of people who need and want our help.
If there were programs out there to help these seniors, that wouldn’t be the case. The point is that ideology always sounds great, but the practical applications of that ideology doesn’t yield the desired results.
I am going to have to respectfully disagree with this post. I believe the CNCS is in fact important in its role in managing national programs. It is true that community service on local levels can be effective, however the fact of the matter is that many non-profit and local initiatives are not as effective as they could be. Without professional management, and project evaluation too many programs that are inefficient and waste money continue to exist. The CNCS promotes and continues proven practices that are known to provide proven results.
Furthermore if the CNCS ceases to exist, the local programs that may or may not take its place will likely be less effective. An example of this is Teach For America. TFA has been proven to provide improved learning opportunities for students in low-performing schools. Part of the reason that TFA is so successful is that it is a very competitive program to be admitted to (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124061253951954349.html). With more funding, and less bureaucratic resistance TFA could have an even greater impact on students in need. TFA is partially funded through Americorps, a program of CNCS. One of the perks that draws such high level talent to TFA is the promise of $10,000 of federal college loans being forgiven at the end of the program (This is a small price to pay considering TFA saves the government $20,000 on training cost for each of its participants). With the cut of CNCS, this perk will be eliminated, an example of how cutting CNCS will make it harder for community service programs to recruit skilled and educated workers.
If there is no monetary or career based incentive for talented individuals to go into a service based profession, the quality of service provided will then drop, something that this nation can not afford to happen. I fear that by cutting the CNCS, America will have to learn the hard way the importance of the service it provides. I understand that the country is in an extremely difficult financial situation, and that cuts need to be made somewhere, however cutting job training programs, education programs, health programs etc. will only lead to higher unemployment, less skilled workers and higher health insurance costs. In the long run this could potentially hurt our economy more than help it. I just hope that there is in fact another way to settle the budget without eliminating the programs that are in fact the ones that work, and have positive cost-benefit results.
DG 22 thank you for joining in our discussion. This is a topic that deserves consideration as we look for ways to cut the size of government.
The WSJ link you provided indicates that TFA is a privately funded program:
We at Post Scripts are all for programs like these that are supported with private funding. I think we should all encourage this kind of investment in the service community.
National Service Supporter, I thank you too for contributing and appreciate your concern.
I believe TFA receives both private and public funding. My point was without the loan forgiveness incentive, TFA will become less attractive to potential applicants. TFA’s competitive application process is one of the reasons that it is so successful, without top-notch college graduates, it could very well become less effective.
As for the funding, the statement beneath is taken directly from TFA’s website (http://www.teachforamerica.org/admissions/faqs/finances/), so while it may be privately funded, TFA members are considered Americorps members and therefore receive benefits that would disappear if CNCS (subsequently Americorps as well) was eliminated
“Because Teach For America is currently a member of AmeriCorps, our corps members who (1) have not served previously as AmeriCorps members and (2) are U.S. citizens, permanent residents, or nationals are eligible for the following AmeriCorps benefits:
– Loan forbearance (a period of time during the repayment period in which the borrower is permitted to temporarily postpone making regular monthly payments)and interest payments on qualified student loans during their two years of service.
– An education award of $5,350 at the end of each year of service (a total of $10,700 over the two years), which may be used toward future educational expenses or to repay qualified student loans.”
Problem. Our government has promised more than it can deliver. We are headed for a cliff and unless we eliminate many government programs and cut back on others we will find ourselves in default and high inflation will result. Are you ready for bread lines…looting….murder and mayhem.
Do some reading. We are in big trouble. The First lady wants to do something BIG…she should consider the private sector.
I agree that our government needs to cut back on spending. I don’t think that the “bread lines…looting…murder and mayhem” that you describe are really that close to occurring, but I understand the point that you are trying to make in that we do not want to start down that path. My point is that cutting back on the CNCS will have negative effects on American society, and that it should be a last resort to eliminate CNCS.
When you say we should consider the private sector for these programs, I would be all for having these programs privately funded, the problem is that the private sector can not support these programs. These programs are not businesses that generate self-sustaining revenue. If there were more philanthropic money available, these programs could be supported privately and not publicly. If this were possible then the burden would be taken off of the government. If programs that were evaluated and deemed ineffective were slashed, this could save some money and take some of the burden off of the government.
Another way to take the burden off of the government would be to turn to the private sector for the money. In 2008 13,480 families had incomes over $10 million (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/business/economy/24charts.html?_r=1). If these families donated 1% of their income to the types of programs CNCS runs, then it could more than take some of the burden off of the government. That would be over $1.348 billion of financial burden taken off of the government. Not to say that these specific individuals are obligated to provide this money, I am just showing that the money to support these important programs exist. If the government can not support these programs I hope that somebody finds the money to support them.
The private sector DOES support these programs. Money provided by CNS is leveraged to get private foundation grants.
Unfortunately, those grants AND the CNS funds aren’t enough to meet the need. Furthermore, foundations even the corporate ones want an exit strategy. They don’t want to commit to providing program support indefinitely.
I believe that Washington is broken, but that doesn’t mean that every part of Washington and government is no good. In this case the Corporation for National Service, saves billions of dollars by providing cost effective services that prevent more expensive outlays later on.
For example, help a Senior stay in their home at minimal cost or pay for them to stay in a nursing home at a cost of 8 to 12,000 a month. Help a student in a struggling school learn how to read so he is employable or pay for his stay in prison later on.
I really appreciate this discussion and the civility of it. It’s totally unlike other forums I’ve seen with all the name calling and hyperbole. (on both sides)
It’s nice to know that there still are opportunities to agree to disagree in a civil manner.
DG 22 and Bill I think both of you sell individuals, and the private sector, short. Government takes a dollar from me in taxes, spends half to three quarters of it on bureaucracy and the “charitable program gets whats left. That isn’t an efficient use of money. If these programs were run privately, and less money was taken out of the private sector there would be more private money available.
The issue isn’t whether we should care for needs of the elderly, young people, or any other needy group by how. I favor a more personal, close to home solution than a bureaucratic one. Since we have tried the big government model and found ourselves deeply in debt it may be time to try the things our ancestors did. More of them took care of family themselves. More of them helped neighbors in need. Many of them volunteered, as you do, but for private charities.
Perhaps one, or more, of you would be just the person to run such an enterprise.
Thanks for the compliment Bill. We get a little rough ariound the edges at times around here but we do make an effort to keep it civil.
Bill you are right, many of the programs funded by the CNCS receive private funding as well, upon rereading my post I can see that I made it sound like they were fully publicly funded. I myself work for a non-profit, and most of the funding we receive is from private organizations, with the supplement of some public funding.
I also agree with BIll on the cost-effectiveness of these programs. Research and program evaluation have proven that programs that promote education and employment skills can save government money in public assistance and correctional costs.
Tina I admire your optimism towards the goodness of others, if I thought that volunteers and private charitable organizations could support these programs then I would be all for it. Unfortunately I don’t believe that that alone will do. I can’t realistically imagine that private organizations and volunteers could successfully fill the void of the government.
It is true that the way the government has been operating has put the country in debt. I however believe that the best solution would be to operate these programs more efficiently, and focus more on programs whose effects would save the government money (as Bill discussed). This potentially would allow the CNCS to continue to exist while lightening the government’s financial burden.
Lastly I also appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation in a civil manner, it is unfortunately becoming rare to be able to do so in such a politically polarized day in age.
DG22 finding ways to eliminte waste and fraud in government programs is something that should always be done…but there isn’t a lot of incentive to do that. Government programs will always be more expensive in terms of overhead (the bureaucracy) than private charitable organizations. For one thing there is little accountability in government and budgets just keep going up. Since government can print money we have gotten away with this “more is better” model. Padding the budget report in order to get more funding next year is pretty standard. A private charity has to guard every penny and find ways to make the best possible use of funding since there are no guarantees that more money will be forthcoming.
The idea that we “need” government intervention because people, left to their own devices, wouldn’t step up and meet the needs of family and neighbors doesn’t really hold up under investigation. Americans give very generously to charity, both in time and in money. But your theory is partly born out simply because leaving these things to the government has become an acceptable norm. Americans were not always so inclined. Arthur C Brooks of Syracuse University discovered that in European countries that rely on government intervetion charitable giving is considerably less than in America where self-reliance has been a stronger value. So it would seem that government intervention only begets more need for government intervention and less inclination toward personal charitable giving.
You might enjoy reading from the following websites:
http://notyourdaddy.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/most-generous-nation/
http://www.samaritanguide.com/resources/articles/sevenprinciples/
My own purpose in promoting private works as opposed to government is to encourage self reliance and generous personal giving. I think both of these values would help to create a much stronger and healthier society. I believe that bigger government and greater dependence on government will lead very quickly to our ruin.
Understanding that I am pretty late to this little party, however the point needs to be made that HR 1 as originally written and passed in the house, for all intents and purposes, eliminates the 1.4 billion dollar funding for the Corporation for National and Community Service. This same piece of legislation gives one billion for Afghanistan rebuilding and 400 million to train Afghanistan security forces. One segment of the CNCS budget, the Foster Grandparent Program, can be funded for nearly three years on what the Department of Defense spends on military bands.
Martin, late to the party is never a problem here; thanks for posting a comment. And thanks for the information.
I posted this article based on the remarks made by the First Lady. What she was proposing is, in my opinion, a waste of taxpayer money and lies well outside the purview of the US government. A lot of what our government would be better handled at the state or local level.
The Constitution makes provision for the military and defense of our nation. We can argue whether we should be in Afghanistan and the wisdom of spending tax dollars to rebuild that country. but it is at least something the federal government is compelled to do. Social work is not something our government is compelled to do.
Tina, what do you believe constitutes “general welfare?” I have an inkling that most of the key differences between liberals and conservatives could be resolved if we simply agreed on this one term, but clearly we do not.
You have no idea what you are talking about. If the government wants to cut WASTEFUL SPENDING start by cutting the BILLIONS of dollars that go overseas to the OTHER countries, INSTEAD of cutting programs HERE at HOME!!!! The Foster Grandparent Volunteers are a great asset to the schools and to some very neglected children. You would not believe the stories that I have personally been told about how these volunteers have helped children to get up to reading level, open up about the abuse that they have at home, and if it were not for the FGP volunteers some of the children would not even get any help at home. Know what you are talking about……..
Rena your post probably won’t be read by anyone, you posted to something that is over a year old. I had to approve your comments otherwise I would not have seen it. If you read more of Tina G.’s articles you will find out she knows what she’s talking about. And we do agree about the money sent overseas. Editor – Jack