Bill Clinton: “Let me give you my side of it. The reason I got the idea of doing AmeriCorps was, basically, I thought we ought to have…”

“Let me give you my side of it. The reason I got the idea of doing AmeriCorps was, basically, I thought we ought to have more scholarship money available for young people that wanted to further their education or for even not so young people who wanted to do it. And I thought we needed to promote the idea of service here in this country among young people, at least in a symbolic way. If I could fund it all, if the Speaker would support me, I'd get up to a couple hundred thousand people in AmeriCorps in no time. But I wanted to do it especially as we bring down the size of the military, because a lot of young people who otherwise would have gone into the military and gotten wonderful training and served their country in invaluable ways and changed their whole lives forever now won't be able to do it because we just have--we don't have a need for the same size military. And this idea intrigued me. It was promoted by a lot of other people. I didn't come up with it; I just thought we ought to do it. And it is not organized--even though it's funded by Washington and there's a general policy group in Washington or a board--Governor Merrill can tell you from what they have here in New Hampshire--it is very--there is very little bureaucracy. People competed for the money. If your project got the money, you just kept it. There's almost--very few reporting requirements and no rules and regulations from the Federal Government. But with 20,000 people in AmeriCorps, which is what we had this year, we have more people doing that than were ever in the Peace Corps in any given year. And the other day I was down in Dallas, just for example, where a retired African-American general supervises our AmeriCorps program. And I saw four volunteers: two girls who were teenage mothers and on welfare, who got themselves off welfare, got a high school equivalency, and were working to help other people get off and earning money for college; a woman who was retired from the Navy, believe it or not, who said, ``I don't even know if I'll ever use this credit, I just wanted to serve my country again working in the neighborhoods''; and a young woman who had a degree from the University of Florida, whose mother was on welfare when she was born, and she had always done very well and she just wanted to go back and give something, try to change that neighborhood. I think it's important for us to find some ways for people of different racial and income backgrounds and regional backgrounds to work together for the common good in a nonbureaucratic way. So I think it's a tiny cost for a big gain. And that's our difference. Questions? Lou Gendron. Mr. President, Mr. Speaker----”