Posted by JM Ashby
The Republicans have crammed so much anti-American crap into their new "budget" I'm beginning to lose track. I suppose that's what happens when you open up the floor to over 400 amendments. I think they should rename it from "Fiscal 2012 Budget" to "Repeal the Obama-Administration Act." If a budget is a moral document, then the Republicans clearly don't give a fuck about you or the person standing next to you unless that person happens to be worth a million dollars or more.
Of course this "budget" as they are calling it will never see the light of day, but now finding itself on the chopping block is the Serve America Act and Americorps. Yes, two things which have "America" in their name are on the GOP chopping block. Serving America is clearly a waste of time in their view.
This week, House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) proposed not just cutting national service programs, but eliminating them entirely. This proposal comes less than two years after Congress overwhelmingly passed the Serve America Act with tremendous bipartisan support in both the Senate (79-19) and the House (279-149). The Serve America Act authorized the expansion of AmeriCorps from 75,000 corps members annually to 250,000 in order to fight our country's most pressing societal challenges in the areas of education, the environment, and public health, and to serve our veterans when they return home from war.
Conservative Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain (R-AZ) co-sponsored the legislation. Sen. Hatch, making the case for national service to his Republican colleagues, argues "an important aspect of fiscal discipline is investing in ideas that work...75,000 national service participants leverage an additional 2.2 million volunteers every year -- volunteers that aren't subsidized by the government in any way." After 9/11, President George W. Bush expanded AmeriCorps from 50,000 to 75,000 corps members, building on the work of his father, President George H.W. Bush, who created the Office of National Service in the White House.
Yes, that is how far right the GOP has gone. They are attempting to repeal a bill which was co-sponsored by Orrin Hatch and John McCain, expanded by George W Bush, and created by George HW Bush. Senator Hatch (R-UT) called it an "important aspect of fiscal discipline," and pointed out that the volunteers are in no way subsidized by the federal government. You can't make this shit up.
Mr. Boehner where are the jobs?