The AmeriCorps follies

The Wall Street Journal

The House adjourned for its summer break without approving a $100 million supplemental to expand AmeriCorps. Mark this down as a rare example of Congress refusing to be railroaded by a media spending campaign.

Reporters and other advocates of larger government have been pounding the Bush administration for not adequately funding this Clinton-era "volunteer" program. The idea seems to be that "compassionate conservatism" always requires more money. But conservatism, compassionate or otherwise, also means not wasting money on poorly executed good intentions.

And now an Inspector General report released Monday provides ample evidence that AmeriCorps deserves a major scrubdown before it gets an additional dime. In essence, the IG found that AmeriCorps has been recruiting more volunteers than it can afford. This is a violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act, which prohibits a federal agency from obligating more money than has been authorized by Congress.

The IG probe determined that "the violation was caused by inadequate oversight, flawed membership and financial reporting systems, job responsibilities for key personnel that were either not well-defined or adhered to, and the lack of effective communication among . . . managers." As bureaucratic incompetence goes, that's running the table.

The IG report credits Les Lenkowsky, CEO of the federal agency that runs AmeriCorps, with trying to clean this up. He implemented new procedures and demoted derelict staff members, but the problems are systemic. The ruse of hiring people in advance of funding is in fact a deliberate political effort to leverage more federal money.

Too many program applications are also rubber-stamped for approval, and few performance measures are in place to make sure that support goes to those organizations that are doing the most good. Mr. Lenkowsky tells us that until recently grants were approved without being cleared by any financial officers. It's no wonder the books haven't been balancing. "When you can't keep track, on a timely basis, of how many people are enrolling in your program, you have a big problem," he says, with some understatement.

All of this is ironic because Mr. Lenkowsky started out in this Administration as one of AmeriCorps's most fervent advocates. He tried to get us to support it too. But now, after less than two years on the job, he is returning to a teaching post at Indiana University, frustrated by what these days he calls just "another cumbersome, unpredictable government bureaucracy," and somewhat disillusioned by the whole concept of federalized volunteerism. "Even if [AmeriCorps] is well run, do we really need it?" he now asks. "That's a good question."

Our own answer is no. The entire concept of paid volunteerism is an oxymoron, all the more so when the cost to taxpayers of this altruism is $16,000 per "volunteer." Like all federal programs, the tendency of AmeriCorps is to measure its worth by inputs - spending and employees - rather than by the output of how much good it actually does.

The fact that someone as capable as Mr. Lenkowsky has given up on it confirms our worst suspicions about the imperatives of federal nonprofit outfits.

At a time of more urgent federal priorities - such as the war on terror - the concept of federally subsidized volunteerism strikes us as something the country can't afford. Millions of Americans perform countless acts of unsubsidized charity every day. If Congress lacks the nerve to kill AmeriCorps, then we're glad it at least won't throw more good money after bad.