Plan Links Student Aid to Public Service

A panel of leading Democrats, presenting a plan for a comprehensive system of voluntary national service, called Wednesday for the elimination of existing federal student aid programs so that young people will enlist in civic job programs or the military to earn money for college.

The sweeping proposal, made by the influential Democratic Leadership Council, would radically revise the way education is financed and military requirements are fulfilled, introducing a new detour in the lives of hundreds of thousands of young Americans.

Meet Military Needs

But its effect, the council argued in a presentation here Wednesday, would be to restore civic consciousness and meet vital needs in both the civilian and military sectors.

Neither the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, nor his rival, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, has voiced support for such a comprehensive system.

Similar proposals, seeking to replicate what some New Deal programs did for civilians and the GI Bill did for soldiers, have been floated repeatedly over the years but have never received widespread backing. Such programs have been criticized as too costly and unnecessary.

Yet the Democratic Leadership Council, portraying its plan in partisan garb, suggested that the notions of “civic obligation and activism” in a national service system could be emphasized in this election year “as an alternative to the Republican Party’s politics of self-interest and social neglect.”

The leadership council, formed in 1985 by conservative-leaning Democrats, including Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn and Virginia Gov. Charles S. Robb, has become an important source of ideas in the Democratic Party, although its attempt to thrust a Southerner into the party’s nomination through creation of the Super Tuesday primaries was viewed by many with alarm.

Earning of Benefits Cited

The panel portrayed its proposal in terms indicative of the direction in which it is trying to lead the Democratic Party, calling the national service program “a departure from the politics of entitlement, because it embodies the principle that public benefits should be earned through public service.”

Under the proposed program, dubbed the Citizen Corps, young people could enlist to work at subsistence wages for one or two years in jobs ranging from day-care worker to hospital orderly to soldier.

On completion of their tours, the volunteers would receive vouchers--worth $10,000 for each year of civilian service and $12,000 for every year in the military--that could be used for education, job training or a down payment on housing.

The vouchers would replace federal grants to students for education, now worth $4.3 billion a year, and leave only national service veterans eligible for federally guaranteed student loans, which now provide $9 billion a year to students and cost the government $3 billion.

Recruitment Problem Seen

It said the desire for federal assistance would lure volunteers to fill social needs not met by the federal government or the private sector and to staff the all-volunteer military, where recruitment is expected to become more difficult as the population of young people declines.

The leadership council contends that the elimination of student aid would make its Citizen Corps affordable, although the federal government would still have to pay the estimated $5-billion cost of salaries and administration for an estimated 800,000 volunteers in the program.