Tom Haughey

SAN JUAN, April 11- I've spent the last couple of hours reading through the final version of the community service expansion bill which has been sent to the President for his signature. 

I'm not quite sure of its name since the Senate added Ted Kennedy's name to it to recognize it as an expansion of JFK's original vision and since the House dubbed it the GIVE Act. Neither am I quite sure what it does. Public service organizations like Habitat and AARP have hailed it as a breakthrough. Some conservative organizations see it as Hitler Jungen revisited. Part of the problem is that it's dreadfully long (big surprise!) and makes so many references to word changes to existing pieces of legislation that it reads like a telephone book on steroids.

In broad outline the bill creates public/private partnerships for service, teaches children from 6th to 12th grade to serve the community as part of their lifestyle, creates in-service education which gives money and credit for such supervised community service during summer months, and is paid for by government money and community or corporate matching funds (where the latter are available). It also gives service opportunity within the AmeriCorps structure for retired people to serve the community, mentor, and teach students. (Students, who themselves may be mentors to lower grades, would be involved in improving health care, improving the environment, helping in disaster preparation and in disasters, etc.) AmeriCorps would be expanded to include an Education Corps, a Healthy Futures Corps (to provide preventive medicine), a Clean Energy Service Corps (to weatherize houses, build energy-efficient homes, and rehabilitate local, state, and national parks), a Veterans Corps (to provide opportunities for veterans), and an Opportunity Corps (to improve economic opportunities). Twenty five colleges would be designated as service colleges and would also receive some work/study funding. 

It all sounds so good. How could anybody be against good health, expanding opportunity, improving education, or providing clean energy to communities? No wonder only half of Senate Republicans voted against the bill. Wait a minute. Why did nearly half the Republicans vote against such a marvelous bill? There must be something wrong with them or. . .  Just maybe the bill isn't quite as wonderful as it sounds. The devil, as usual, is in the details.

We all want good health, but what does it mean when these paid “volunteers” are “assisting in health promotion interventions that improve health status, and helping people adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles and habits to improve health status?” Are these zealous young people going to be yanking cigarettes out of smokers' mouths and breaking liquor bottles? How will they be “helping” people adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles without infringing on their liberty or invading their privacy?

What does the bill mean when it requires citizenship training be given to “recipients of assistance under the national service laws, that are consistent with the principles on which citizenship programs administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are based, relating to the promotion of citizenship and civic engagement among participants in approved national service positions and approved summer of service positions, and appropriate to the age, education, and experience of the participants?” Does this amount to indoctrination or to inducing non-citizens to seek citizenship? Does it exclude people who won't or can't participate in such citizenship training (Jehovah's Witnesses, for example)? Does it mean that illegal aliens will be included in the help programs?

Another section specifically prohibits certain activities and the participation by certain organizations. The section disqualifying organizations convicted of crimes doesn't seem particularly controversial. The section prohibiting duplication of work already being done in a community (especially by union members) is about what one would expect since few people would wish to lose their jobs to underpaid volunteers. Conservatives would also applaud the statement that “An approved national service position under this subtitle may not be used for the following activities: Attempting to influence legislation, organizing or engaging in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes, assisting, promoting, or deterring union organizing, impairing existing contracts for services or collective bargaining agreements, engaging in partisan political activities, or other activities designed to influence the outcome of an election to federal office or the outcome of an election to a state or local public office, participating in or endorsing, events or activities that are likely to include advocacy for or against political parties, political platforms, political candidates, proposed legislation, or elected officials.” There's also a provision banning direct benefit to a for-profit business, labor union, partisan political organization, or a nonprofit that steps over the political line. There are a couple of prohibitions, however, which are controversial in the extreme.

The bill states that an approved national service position may not be used for “engaging in religious instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of proselytization, consistent with section 132. It also prohibits direct benefit to any "organization engaged in the religious activities described, unless the position is not used to support those religious activities.” At the very least those provisions knock out the Salvation Army and Alcoholics Anonymous from receiving any funds. With that we see an end to any meaningful interventions with alcoholics and the deranged homeless. The bill would technically allow these organizations, I suppose, to accept federal moneys if that money wasn't used for religious purposes, but that forces an unrealistic separation between faith and the activities of faith. Faith based organizations do because of who they are. 

The government certainly wouldn't see the drunk praying to receive Christ as savior as non-religious, even though the organization would view that as the means for delivering the alcoholic from his addiction. The wording of this section is also troubling since the volunteers aren't paid by the hour and receive stipends after what may (in the case of students) be an entire summer of service. When does the volunteer (student or graduate) go off the clock? Does he break federal law if he continues teaching his Sunday school class? What does the phrase the "position may not be used for" mean? 

Beyond that, one of the primary purposes for the whole bill, as stated near its beginning, is to teach citizenship as contained within the Pledge of Allegiance. The last I heard, the words “under God” were still in the Pledge. Does the volunteer break federal law if he doesn't stop teaching the Pledge after the word “under” and before the word “God?” I also seem to recall that the Bill of Rights prohibits the government from infringing on either an individual's freedom of speech or his religion. Does paying a below-minimum-wage salary to a supposed "volunteer" give the federal government the right to straight jacket the person's soul? Some Christians are extremely upset about this provision, and I can't say I blame them (even if for-profit employers have been held by the courts to have the right to restrict employee speech and activities during business hours). There is no concept of “business hours” in this bill, and the Bill of Rights restrictions are specifically placed on the federal government. What's more, the federal government pays chaplains, so no phony “separation of church and state” argument applies.

The Ted Kennedy Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act contain components strangely reminiscent of the educational “reforms” Mr. Obama teamed up with Bill Ayers to promote in Chicago. Those, in turn, would seem to echo both the work release classes offered to low performing students by some American high schools and the Cuban government's policy of requiring students to suspend studies to work in the fields harvesting government sugar cane. Obama and Ayers both see community service as such an important component of life that they believe the federal government is justified in stepping in to indoctrinate sixth graders on the need for them to work to help their communities. No doubt that will provide cheap workers for a number of government agencies, but that doesn't mean it is the best thing for the students or that it isn't a cheap trick used by the government to circumvent minimum wage and child labor laws. If work is really so noble, why doesn't the government relax its many restrictions on children working for a decent wage? That way the children who wanted could get work experience in the private sector on their own. 

At least the final compromise bill cut out the mandatory student volunteer work requirement that was in the House version. I personally believe the House of Representatives has gone insane. A couple of weeks ago they were all for enacting Bills of Attainder and Ex Post Facto laws. Now they want to reinstitute involuntary servitude (SLAVERY) on the backs of our children. Perhaps that's because they realize those children will have to work like slaves to pay the interest on the debt that the lawmakers are piling up.

The federal government can always justify what it wants to do. There are some things, therefore, that it shouldn't be allowed to do (no matter how good they sound). As a matter of fact, the Tenth Amendment sets those limitations. States are responsible for all functions that aren't specifically granted to the feds or prohibited to the states. States are responsible for education. This bill serves as a warning. Too much power is being concentrated in Washington. The feds now want to step in and teach your children how to be good servants of the state. I'm sorry. Washington has things backwards. Under our system the government is your servant. From time to time our national leaders need to be reminded of that. It's time to abolish the Department of Education to prevent our children's minds from being warped to suit the needs of big government. 

Thomas Haughey is executive director of the Hidalgo County Republican Party and executive director of the Texas Republican County Chairmen's Association. His columns appear weekly in the Guardian.

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