Corps-Crazy: The administration and its new, needless initiatives.

The spontaneous response of Americans to the Sept. 11 attacks should serve as a rebuke to critics who fret about an anemic civic spirit. Charities' coffers were filled, blood banks overflowed, and inventories of Old Glory were exhausted. In November, President Bush marveled that the Communities of Character initiative he had on the drawing board, "designed to spark a rebirth of citizenship and character and service," had been so abruptly overtaken: "The events of September the eleventh have caused that initiative to happen on its own, in ways we could never have imagined." But now Washington is getting into the act, with a new program -- the USA Freedom Corps -- to ensure that the federal government will have a role in mobilizing volunteers.

According to the president, "The federal government did not create this civic spirit; but we do have a responsibility to help support and encourage it where we can." So the Freedom Corps, based at the White House, will coordinate the activities of expanded current programs -- AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and the Peace Corps -- and a spanking new Citizens Corps that will focus on homeland security. Former Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith, chairman of the board of AmeriCorps' parent, the Corporation for National and Community Service, explains that it's Washington's duty "to capture the civic spirit" evidenced after Sept. 11. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Goldsmith and Leslie Lenkowsky, the Corporation's CEO, concede that "the U.S. is rich with opportunities for its citizens to volunteer," but argue that AmeriCorps and its sister programs "are among the few ways Washington can respond to the many people who want, after Sept. 11, to express their patriotism."

Because AmeriCorps can "foster good citizenship," Goldsmith and Lenkowsky expect that their fellow conservatives will join with liberals to support the expanded program. But ever since Bill Clinton created it in 1993, AmeriCorps has involved a different sort of flag- waving for its conservative critics, who saw only red at the notion of a bureaucratized paid-"volunteer" program. Under AmeriCorps, about 50,000 members a year sign on to work between 20 and 40 hours a week, for up to two years, in exchange for a $4,725 annual award to use for college costs. About half of the participants also receive a living allowance, bringing the total cost of each AmeriCorps "volunteer" to $14,025 a year, according to Goldsmith. Bush's proposal would increase the number of members by 25,000, and impose new accountability measures in response to the program's conservative critics.

But the critics are right: AmeriCorps is a wasteful boondoggle. After a few years of monitoring the program -- and armed with critical reports from the General Accounting Office -- the House Appropriations Committee eliminated the funding for AmeriCorps. (The program was spared by the Senate.) James Bovard found enough abuses in AmeriCorps to devote a whole chapter to it in his book Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years. Bovard found plenty of examples of AmeriCorps participants' wasting their time, engaging in liberal advocacy, and making wildly exaggerated claims about their accomplishments. In Buffalo, for example, members ran a program that paid children $5 for each toy gun turned in; and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center's AmeriCorps program tackles "society's last 'acceptable' prejudice: anti-gay bias." About half of AmeriCorps members are involved in tutoring and mentoring programs, and Clinton praised participants for having "taught millions of children to read"; but this homage is dubious, given the lack of evidence that a single child is now literate ...