House Passes National Service Bill, Cuts Stipend

The House Wednesday approved President Clinton’s plan to put tens of thousands of Americans to work in a domestic Peace Corps-type program to help reinvigorate the country--but not before slightly reducing the education stipend that participants would receive.

“By approving my national service plan today with overwhelming support, the House proved that the government can work--without partisan rancor--in a spirit of community and for the common good,” Clinton said after the 275-152 vote.

“The House Republicans put service ahead of politics. I urge Senate Republicans to do the same,” he said. Two hundred forty-eight Democrats, 26 Republicans and 1 independent supported the plan.

Clinton said that the program “embodies principles that Americans from every political viewpoint share: community, responsibility and opportunity.” Participants would be engaged in activities designed to improve communities, such as tutoring disadvantaged children and renovating poor neighborhoods.

The program, which would pay participants low wages in addition to an education bonus, has yet to be approved by the Senate, where Republicans have used a filibuster to force Democrats to scale back the plan.

House lawmakers decided to decrease the amount of the education stipend from $5,000 to $4,720 a year because some Republicans opposed the idea that national service participants would receive a larger sum than military service personnel who qualify under the GI Bill.

“Who is going to go and lay his life on the line when you can stay home and get $10,000?” asked Rep. Bob Stump (R-Ariz.), who offered the amendment that cut the benefit. “I think it would have been devastating to (military) recruitment.”

The biggest challenge to the President’s national service program lies ahead in the Senate, where Republicans have argued that national service is a good idea but that the program as proposed by the Administration is too costly.

The House version leaves the Administration’s program, which provides about $400 million for 25,000 participants in 1994 and allows for significant increases over the next four years, largely intact. Senate leaders from both parties were struggling to reach a compromise late Wednesday, and it appeared certain that the Senate version would not give the Administration all it would like.

“I hope the Senate won’t do too much to change the guts of the program,” said Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), who helped shape the legislation.

Senate Democrats charged that their Republican colleagues are blocking the bill because they do not want to give Clinton a victory while his budget inches nearer to passage, not because they disagree with the program.

National service has been heralded by Democrats as an example of how government can be reinvented to work with and for people and as a step toward making Clinton’s campaign slogan of “putting people first” a reality.

“It sends a message to Americans that you have a new Peace Corps, a Peace Corps here at home to help people help themselves,” Becerra said.

Clinton mentioned national service as one of his top priorities during the campaign. His descriptions of a program that would help young people pay for college while they were learning the value of serving their fellow Americans was seen by many as proof that he was a new-style Democrat who would help the middle class and not just the poor.

But as the program made its way through Congress, it was refocused to give priority to projects and participants in economically disadvantaged areas.

The education stipend that program participants would receive could be used not only for college--as was envisioned in the original plan--but also toward getting a high school equivalency diploma or for non-college training. The program was also broadened to include older people, although it is expected that the vast majority of participants will be those in their late teens and young adults.