Political Quotes

“Thank you very much, Congresswoman Lois Capps. I'm so fond of you and the service you give in your wonderful district, the Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo County coastlines. Yes, I was with Congresswoman Capps last week when we hosted, in Surabaya, dinner with Peace Corps volunteers. And what struck me is, one, some of their assignments were much tougher than the one I had in a barrio in Medellin, Colombia, back in the 1960s, that women live with Muslim families because Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world. They teach in schools. Very interesting how, and essentially progressive even, those Muslim schools were, allowing the American women not to have to be covered and to essentially be themselves and represent this country, and how fond the students are of their teachers and the faculty of the teachers. So Peace Corps was there. And it's interesting that, as we pay tribute on the 50th anniversary, there's no age limit to joining the Peace Corps. We're in, I think, 77 countries now. We're about half our full size. We once were 15,000 volunteers. We're down to 7,000. Growing. Congressman Garamendi and myself and others have been working to try to increase the Peace Corps budget because it's the only thing that's standing in the way between more volunteers being overseas. There's 20 countries that want Peace Corps. There's 20,000 people that apply to the Peace Corps. And there's only, every year, about half of 7,000, so about 4,000, 3,500 jobs available.…”