James is 5 years old and lives in Boston and his favorite book is “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” by Judith Viorst. A fine book, I can attest. James’s mother was in jail when he was a baby and she doesn’t have much time for reading, so the book is read to him–endlessly, as any conscientious parent knows–by Shavon Lynch, a bright 21-year-old junior at UMass, Boston. James barely spoke when Shavon met him, but he is making great progress in getting prepared for first grade.
Shavon takes part in an AmeriCorps-backed work-study program called Jumpstart where she pays off student loans by tutoring 10 hours a week–two without pay–instead of washing dishes in the cafeteria. Shavon, who also works part time as a waitress and a sales clerk, told me she was disturbed to learn that poor, inner-city kids like James come to school with about a quarter of the vocabulary of middle-class kids in the suburbs, and that this gap ends up socking society with huge special-ed and other expenses down the road. But she was pleased to receive a letter recently from Laura Bush praising her and other tutors for making a difference. Shavon says she won’t give up on James even after she loses her job and her $1,000 grant.
It’s still hard for me to imagine that George and Laura Bush don’t care about what happens to the programs they’ve been trumpeting all over the country. But Ari Fleischer was noncommittal about restoring AmeriCorps to its current size with a measly $185 million supplemental appropriation (about one half of 1 percent of the latest tax cut). Actually expanding AmeriCorps from 50,000 to 75,000 corps members to fulfill Bush’s promise seems unlikely. Under pressure last week, Congress–with the backing of the president–passed a stopgap bill that straightens out a confusing accounting squabble but still leaves AmeriCorps with a 58 percent cut and tens of thousands fewer participants. That’s a lot of idealistic young people who have already signed up for this fall and will now be told they can’t serve their country.
All of this might be more understandable if these were squishy Big Government programs that don’t work. But AmeriCorps, administered locally, is hugely popular with governors of both parties; the departing chairman of the Republican Party, Marc Racicot, is on the steering committee and a big fan. By stressing early-childhood intervention and constant assessment, programs like Jumpstart are perfectly aligned with what the president claims he wants. So are after-school programs. And for all of the arguing over whether the GAO or OMB accounting numbers are more accurate, no one charges that the local nonprofits funded by AmeriCorps are being mismanaged.
“People say, ‘We’ll get more next year’,” says Alan Khazei, whose phenomenal City Year program will be slashed. “But young people get discouraged, private-sector partners pull out and infrastructure takes a huge hit.” Hundreds of successful programs without the resources of City Year will close altogether.
Who’s to blame? Radical Republicans in the House and a president who doesn’t get down deep enough into the messy details of policymaking to follow through. That’s the generous interpretation. The more cynical view is that Bush is a lip-service president who makes “compassionate conservative” promises and even signs bills in the Rose Garden with great flourish–then walks away. Exhibit A is the landmark No Child Left Behind Act, which imposes a series of costly accountability mandates on the education system (many of them commendable) without providing the resources to implement them. The congressional appropriation is $8 billion short of what Bush asked for.
But this president is such a strong leader in his own party that he can’t claim to be stymied by Congress. We know that if he cares about something, he generally gets it done. Speaking of which… Shavon gets zero from the Bush tax cut. By 2005, three quarters of all taxpayers will get $100 or less. “I don’t know who to blame for this–I’m not too political,” Shavon says. “And I can get by without the ed grant. But I’m worried about the money to keep Jumpstart going, because I planned my life around it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Does George W. Bush care whether James and other children have not just a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day” but the same kind of life? We’re still waiting to find out.
