Political Quotes

Joe Cunningham: “But I want to tell the gentlewoman, I never said AmeriCorps volunteers got $30,000. As a matter of fact, I said they do…”

On the recordJuly 25, 2003
But I want to tell the gentlewoman, I never said AmeriCorps volunteers got $30,000. As a matter of fact, I said they do not individually get that amount. But my colleagues, we want to increase AmeriCorps $100 million. Look at the money we have already put in AmeriCorps last year, I think $260 million. If we look at this, to me a volunteer at a church, they get coffee and doughnuts. If we take all of the hundreds of millions of dollars that we put into AmeriCorps each year and want to put another $100 million in this year, if you take 50,000 workers into that, that is over $30,000 per person cost. Now, a lot of that goes into administration. But when we define volunteer, let us make sure that volunteer is volunteer, not paid worker. That was my point.
Said by
Joe Cunningham
South Carolina

Editor's note · Context

Addressing a misunderstanding about AmeriCorps funding and the definition of volunteers.

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