A wise use of taxpayer money
An April 23rd Toledo Blade editorial praised the recent passing by Congress and signing by the president of the new “National Service Bill.” I am so glad our elected leaders are making such responsible use of our tax money. We are really getting a bargain here. For the measly sum of just $5.7 billion we will see an additional 175,000 “volunteers” a year for 8 whole years. Please do the math. These new “volunteer” members of AmeriCorps will only cost the American TaxPayers a little over $4 million dollars each. I wonder where all that money is going. The “volunteers” sure aren’t getting paid that much. The “volunteers are doing things like mentoring children, cleaning up parks and weatherizing the homes of the poor. There should not be a whole lot of overhead in these programs. I wonder how many new “civil servant” government jobs this program is going to create to oversee the “volunteers”, decide on what projects are appropriate, do the paper work generated by the program, interface with other volunteer organizations and state and local governments and the many other tasks needed for the government to make sure the program is run according to the rules. These civil servant employees will make much more than the volunteers along with the benefits of governmental employment. This is a perfect example of an effective government program.
