Timothy Roemer: “I just want to encourage my 2 colleagues, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh) who is a strong supporter of the…”

“I just want to encourage my 2 colleagues, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh) who is a strong supporter of the AmeriCorps program, and I know the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan) is a strong supporter, to make sure that while this program is completely eliminated, not a penny for AmeriCorps in this bill on the House floor, that we restore this money in conference with the Senate. We have a crisis in our schools with teacher shortages and with school safety. The AmeriCorps program currently mentors and tutors 2.6 million schoolchildren, and they help 564,000 at-risk children in after-school programs. Now we can either approach this by appropriating more money in education bills that the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Porter) does not have for these problems or we can continue a program that is working with these AmeriCorps volunteers at places like the University of Notre Dame and help our schools do a better job and help our neighborhood schools with at-risk after-school programs. So I would like to encourage the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh) who has been a very strong supporter of this program to continue to work with us in conference.”