What's the world coming to?

It's a sad day in Mudville. President Bush cut AmeriCorps money for the next year. As a result of this, David Eisner decided to cut the NCCC program. We are officially the last AmeriCorps NCCC class. I don't know how we can justify taking away something that has helped so many young people, not to mention everyone affected by the work we do, so much. We bring the people here hope that the government still cares about them. The sad thing is this is probably just one more thing that Bush does that goes virtually unnoticed. 2,210,000 hours of service will be completed by this class of NCCC members in just 10 months. My team has been working on a high school, that, as of yet, has received no money from FEMA. We have been helping them clean out the post-flood classrooms filled with ruined desks, books and computers. Two schools have to be torn down due the extent of the damage. The children are in overcrowded trailers and their grades have taken a drastic drop due to the stress of the disaster and the inability for the teachers to have a decent lesson with 60 kids in one room. My team has been attending a 3 hour after school program where actual "teachers" overview the lessons and homework of the day and the children receive what might be the only meal they'll get all day. Last week we helped a man, who virtually can't walk, rebuild his home with tools and materials donated by the Methodist Church. We took the only surviving material, a roof, off of a 73 year-old woman's house because she wants to rebuild but only received 14,000 dollars from her insurance and cannot afford a new roof, more or less the labor. We're the only federal employees I've seen doing hurricane relief in these small, devastated towns. A bunch of kids who get paid $75 dollars a week and still manage to work their asses off and pour their hearts into every nail, board and piece of tin handed to them, a bunch of kids that become compassionate hard working men and women because of the experience of participating in such a wonderful program. It seems to me that it would be something not that our country couldn't afford, but that it could not afford to lose.

I would hope anyone reading this would be compelled to write either thier congressman, or David Eisner himself a letter. In fact, I'll make it easy for you.
David Eisner
1201 New York Ave. NW Rm. 10201
Washington, DC 20525
202-606-6737


Message on Fiscal Year 2007 Budget from David Eisner, CEO, Corporation for National and Community Service:
The President is committed to national service; he is also committed to controlling spending and reducing the deficit. That entails some hard choices for discretionary spending. The budget proposes elimination or significant reduction of 141 programs across the government, including the AmeriCorps*NCCC program within the Corporation for National and Community Service. In the FY 2007 budget, the Corporation has a reduction of 5.4 percent, which adds up to $48.5 million. More than half of that reduction comes from the proposed shut down of AmeriCorps*NCCC.
For AmeriCorps*NCCC, this budget requests only $4.9 million, which is intended to cover the cost of closing our campuses. This is a difficult decision, given the popularity of the program with our participants and partners, particularly in disaster response. However, the NCCC is costly compared to other AmeriCorps programs and was rated poorly in a recent Federal management assessment. The Corporation is committed to building up the rapid and flexible disaster recovery capacity of the NCCC within the rest of the national service portfolio.