One of my YV colleagues, Joseph Lucco, has an interesting perspective to share on the national budget discussion in the news:
See I’ma tell you, like you told me
Cash rules everything around me
Singin’ dollar dollar bill y’all (dollar, dollar bill y’all)
Singin’ dollar dollar bill y’all (dollar, dollar bill y’all)
It may be that truer words were never spoken (or sung), especially when it comes to the epic federal budget showdown that is only just beginning in Washington, DC. On February 14th, President Obama released his proposed Federal Budget for Fiscal Year 2012. An incredibly detailed and complex 216 pages. One section in particular caught my eye: national service programs.
President Obama scaled back his original plans to expand national service programs in this budget by proposing less money for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) than he did last year.
Even the most casual political observer can see that President Obama is forced to curtail government spending not only because the federal deficit is sizeable, but also because of the current political climate. Only about one-third of the federal budget is made up of discretionary funding, so anything that falls into the discretionary category (especially national service programs) is on the chopping block.
The need to cut spending is completely justified- after all, “cash rules everything around me” and the deficit is downright scary. But the ultimate goal of reducing the deficit can be lost and oversimplified. In this “what have you done for me lately” world, one might simply see that the national service budget has been cut several million dollars, so a penny saved is a penny earned and yay us! Progress! That might work in a year-to-year budget view - but if real end-goal is reducing the deficit, then we need a more holistic, long-term view.
So, AmeriCorps membership will not increase by 20,000 members as President Obama once hoped - instead it will increase by only 5,000 members. However, with Republican leaders recently calling AmeriCorps “obnoxious and asinine” and even calling for the program’s elimination, that small increase may not even occur.
How would having fewer AmeriCorps members impact the deficit and the country? The answer goes deeper than the “a penny saved is a penny earned” mentality. AmeriCorps members serve underprivileged regions of the country in issue areas such as education, health care, and business development. Taking away AmeriCorps members could increase costs to the Department of Education or other government programs – ultimately increasing (not decreasing!) overall spending, and thereby, the deficit.
Moreover, what are the social costs? The social costs fall not just to the individuals and communities who would have been served, but also to the people who would have served in AmeriCorps, not to mention society as a whole.
Much like Youth Venture, AmeriCorps is a program that makes people actively engage in service. It teaches leadership skills, critical thinking skills, how to work with people who have different life experiences than your own, and most importantly- it teaches (and instills) empathy. The best thing of all? It’s all “on the job training.” One learns by doing. AmeriCorps, again like Youth Venture, values changemaking and young people being changemakers. In many ways, AmeriCorps is working to create an Everyone a Changemaker™ world.
I have served as an AmeriCorps VISTA for over a year and a half at Youth Venture. For me, the experience has been transformational. It has altered my life path for the better. Being a college senior when Barack Obama was elected President, I have attempted (often clumsily) to answer his call to service. If the impact AmeriCorps has had on me could be felt by 20,000 more AmeriCorps members, as President Obama once hoped, the economic cost could be outweighed by the social benefit of grooming a new generation of empathetic changemakers. Leaders who will “Win the Future.” All this in addition to the social benefit of the services these AmeriCorps members provide to those they serve. That’s a whole lotta social benefit!
Of course, a budget conversation must circle back to hard numbers. The phrase popularized by Facebook - “It’s Complicated” - definitely applies here (albeit for a different reason!) Instead of having “cash rule everything around me,” let’s step back, assess, and ask more thoughtful questions while viewing “cost” as more than just dollars and cents. Cutting millions now for AmeriCorps might cost us millions more later in “hard money,” but it will undoubtedly cost us immensely on the social benefit side of the ledger. It needs further thoughtful (and economic) analysis, but a program like AmeriCorps may just be one that, taken from a big picture view, sets our country on a surer path and saves us “dollar dollar bills y’all.”
The opinions expressed above are solely the author's (Joseph Lucco), and do not speak for Youth Venture or AmeriCorps.
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