Cliff Stearns: “my amendment is very simple. My amendment transfers 10 percent or $25.5 million from AmeriCorp to the TRIO educational…”

“my amendment is very simple. My amendment transfers 10 percent or $25.5 million from AmeriCorp to the TRIO educational programs and the geriatric program. I have one of these programs in my congressional district, and I have a large university, two community colleges, so I thought it would be appropriate considering lots of time we talk about the loan process for the students, and particularly for low income, first generation college students, I thought it might be appropriate to take a very small portion of AmeriCorp and give it to these two programs. I think we all know that AmeriCorp has done some good work. When we talk about volunteerism, we talk about people who go out and help people after natural disasters. We have a lot of that in Florida. We recently had a tornado in Lake County. A lot of the people in the district donated blood. They helped mentor schoolchildren. We teach English to new Americans, we teach illiterate adults how to read. We also have volunteers who go in and clean up rivers and forests. AmeriCorp is a little bit different. It does have volunteers, but these volunteers, obviously, are paid. Remuneration in exchange for choosing to contribute one's time, energy and/or money clearly undermines the word ``volunteer.'' This is a different type of volunteerism.”