Steve Buyer: “I think the President gets himself in this oxymoron about paid volunteers. He ought to get away from the word…”

“I think the President gets himself in this oxymoron about paid volunteers. He ought to get away from the word ``volunteers'' in the AmeriCorps program and just sign up and said, yes, he believes in service and we want to pay these individuals for these efforts and service which have normally gone to volunteers, and he should get himself away from this oxymoron and the attacks on the program. I really do not care for the particular program. In response to the comments of the gentleman about the type of program and all the good which it has done, I also have to think about from 1993 to 1994 it was reported that 1,200 of the paid AmeriCorps ``volunteers'' worked at the Department of Agriculture, 525 worked in the Department of Interior, 210 worked in the Department of Justice, 135 in EPA, 60 at the National Endowment of the Arts; a total of 2,800 were working at Federal entities. So that was pretty stunning to me when I discovered that.”