When a conservative and right-winger like Senator Bond of Missouri states that the Peace Corps is “Smart Power” and “one of the best examples of our nation’s smart power,” and then go onto say “Peace Corps Volunteers have fostered lasting, positive relationships between the United States and nations across the globe through grassroots efforts” we have to start asking, “What’s in the water on Capital Hill?

Here a statement by Sen Kit Bond that I picked up off Newsmax.com at 8:06 PM this Monday evening, June 29. (Maybe the More or Bold Peace Corps campaign is really working.)

By: Sen. Kit Bond

In less-developed nations around the world too many people are suffering from governments that don’t work; too little food to feed their families; lack of clean water and other basic necessities like shelter and clothes; and little hope for a better life.

These people, whether they live in Africa, Southeast Asia or the Middle East, are vulnerable to ideologies that promise a better life. One such insidious ideology is extremist violent Islam. Their goal: to destroy Western nations and convert the world to their ideology. Their tactic: terrorism.

These extremists have been attacking our nation for over two decades: from the bombing of our Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 to the Pan Am 103 bombing in 1988 to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. We had ample warning of the rise of extremist violent Islam, but it was not until the horrifying attacks on September 11, 2001, that the true threat was realized. Since that day, our nation has been resolved to defeating this enemy and preventing another attack on American soil. Thanks to the efforts of some incredibly talented and dedicated patriots in our military, law enforcement and intelligence community, American shores and skies have been kept safe.

But to defeat truly the threat of these bloodthirsty terrorists, we must do more than win on the battlefield; we must ultimately defeat the ideology. To do so, America needs to wise up and invest in “Smart Power” - a term I use to describe the combination of military might with diplomacy, educational exchanges, and economic development.

As the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of the Defense and State Foreign Operations Appropriations committees, I am working to ensure Congress provides the resources and policy initiatives needed to expand the use of Smart Power.

Smart Power is an effective way to fight radical ideologies like Extremist Violent Islam, recognizing that before a person can choose his politics, he has to have enough to eat, and a stable community in which to live.

One of the best examples of our nation’s smart power is the United States Peace Corps. Since the early 1960s, Peace Corps volunteers have fostered lasting, positive relationships between the United States and nations across the globe through grassroots efforts.

From helping a farmer increase food production, to teaching a child how to read, to working to build clean water infrastructure, to comforting a parent suffering from AIDS, Peace Corp volunteers are transforming communities.

Our Peace Corps volunteers are also transforming hearts and minds, which is increasingly important as anti-Americanism continues to grow throughout the world.

By supporting the important work of our Peace Corps volunteers, the American people are combating this anti-American sentiment with actions and deeds. At no other time in our nation’s history have the efforts of the Peace Corps been more necessary and relevant, which is why I am one of this agency of peace’s strongest supporters and have called for the increase of volunteers around the globe, particularly in the Muslim nations of Southeast Asia.

Over the years, I have frequently visited the countries of Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Southern Thailand and the Philippines. This region of the world is home to around one quarter of the world’s Muslims. Despite this fact, the United States too often overlooks this region.

But Southeast Asia and its large Muslim population present our nation with an opportunity we can’t afford to miss: suppress radical ideologies that aim to export terrorism by using Smart Power. Through initiatives like the Peace Corps, we can put sneakers and sandals on the ground, instead of military boots.

I cannot stress enough the importance of this task, which is why I have joined with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lew Simons in writing a book on the need to engage peaceful, mainstream Muslims in places like Southeast Asia.

While sounding the alarm over ignoring Southeast Asia, my book lays out a roadmap to improving relations with countries afflicted with dangerous Islamist terrorist groups. You guessed it; I will be underscoring the importance of the Peace Corps and other Smart Power initiatives.

For too long America ignored the threat of violent extremism and now we are ignoring the need of non-military, Smart Power investment, but it’s not too late. Already the new Administration - particularly Secretary of State Clinton - has given these initiatives an important public boost.

I look forward to partnering with the new Administration and leading the effort in Congress to make Smart Power initiatives a cornerstone in our foreign policy and in our efforts to combat extremism and terrorism around the world.

The war against extremism can only be won by winning the war of ideas and public opinion. In order to be truly successful, the United States must focus the weight of the effort on the ideological front, reaching would-be terrorists before they turn to violence.

By their powerful work fostering development and more productive and stable societies, Peace Corps volunteers are doing just that. Their hard work speaks far louder than the propaganda and self-promoting vitriol espoused by our terrorist enemies.

A local Wisconsin paper columnist Amy L. Geiger-Hemmer writes this weekend that RPCV Jim Doyle (Tunisia 1967-69) is President Obama’s pick to be the Peace Corps Director. Amy spins it this way: “Our ethically-challenged Governor, Jim Doyle, is eagerly awaiting the opportunity to sign off on the Wisconsin state budget.  This is a budget that includes huge increases in taxes and fees.  Huge increases in spending - unprecedented during times of high unemployment and a recession.  And when all is said and done, Wisconsin will still be over $2,600,000,000.00 in debt.”

The rumor in Wisconsin is that Doyle is on his way out, headed for D.C. as the new head of the agency.

At the moment Doyle’s approval ratings are in the low 30’s,  and he has little chance, according to Amy Geiger-Hemmer,  of winning another term against Republicans Scott Walker or Mark Neumann in 2010. ”

We’ll see. Remember, Republicans have been wrong before.

At least we know that this governor won’t be headed to Argentina!

 Mr. President:

I rise today to introduce the Peace Corps Improvement and Expansion Act of 2009.

For 48 years, the Peace Corps has stood as a uniquely American institution.  What other great nation would send its youth abroad, not to extend its power, not to intimidate its adversaries, not to kill and be killed, but to build, to dig, to teach, to empower - and to ask nothing in return?

And for 48 years, those young men and women - hundreds of thousands of them, myself included - have returned stronger, wiser, and inspired - prepared to live uniquely American lives of service and accomplishment.

For half a century, the Peace Corps has shaped not just these American lives, but the identity of all Americans: who we are as a people, and what we hope to achieve in the world.

Today, I rise to offer this legislation for one simple reason: I want the Peace Corps to continue playing that role for another 48 years to come.  But before we consider how the Peace Corps can grow going forward, it’s worth remembering how it became what it is today.

Like most groundbreaking ideas, the Peace Corps might not have survived a board meeting or a subcommittee hearing when it was first proposed.

It was a wild notion, so breathtakingly outrageous that it could only have been born out of idealism, youthful energy, and, perhaps the key element, too much caffeine.

The Peace Corps, you see, was born at two in the morning.

It was October 14, 1960, and Senator John F. Kennedy was running hours late for a campaign stop at the University of Michigan.

He assumed that most of the crowd would have gone home, but when he arrived at the student union, he found ten thousand students waiting outside in the frigid dark to hear him speak.

We can all sympathize with Senator Kennedy: having endured months of late nights, uncomfortable beds, and bad food, he must have been sorely tempted to offer a perfunctory thank you to the Michigan students, recite a stump speech from memory, and send them home.

But something besides a chill was in the air that night in Ann Arbor.  Floodlit and shivering, the crowd began to chant his name as he climbed the steps to the student union, and Senator Kennedy realized that this was special.  He realized he owed them more.

So he challenged them.

“How many of you,” he asked, “who are going to be doctors, are willing to spend your days in Ghana?  Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world?”

I believe that challenge is the Peace Corps’s founding document.  It didn’t begin with a white paper or a TV ad.  It began with a question.

In the days that followed the Kennedy rally at the student union, Michigan students drafted a petition, circulating it to colleges across the state and just a couple of weeks later presenting several scrolls to JFK containing thousands upon thousands of names.  Thirty thousand additional letters flooded into Kennedy headquarters.

So, it’s fair to say that the answer to that question - are you willing to serve your country by serving the world? - was an overwhelming “yes.”

Kennedy’s top advisors were already working on those issues.  After all, they decided, if we don’t start doing our part for the developing world, the Communists will.  At a time much like today, when our nation faced conflicts with people who knew as little of America as we knew of them, this case for a Peace Corps could be made not only in the lofty rhetoric of idealism, but in the cold, hard language of realpolitik.

The notion that service could be part of our foreign policy - indeed, that it could be a powerful weapon in the Cold War - was a truly radical idea.  It suggested that there could be more measures of strength than caliber or tonnage.  It argued that the world needed to see our ideals not just in ink, but incarnate in the young man or woman with dirty hands working under a hot, foreign sun.  It said that you could only hate America if you didn’t know America.

The skeptics quickly descended upon Kennedy and his bold call to action.  Richard Nixon called it “a haven for draft-dodgers.”  Former President Eisenhower called it “a juvenile experiment.” 

And even those old foreign policy hands who supported Kennedy’s plan thought it was a fine idea - as long as it was kept small.  Academic and State Department officials agreed: proceed with caution, start with just a few hundred volunteers, don’t create a fiasco, don’t let this little experiment get out of hand.  If they’d gotten their way, the Peace Could might not exist today.

But just as a late-night burst of exuberance gave birth to the Peace Corps, a similar bolt of sleepless inspiration kept it alive.

Holed up in a hotel room in downtown Washington with a few typewriters and a stack of blank paper, two Kennedy aides, Sargent Shriver and Harris Wofford - comprising the entirety of the Peace Corps staff - had been tasked with figuring out how to put this outrageous idea into practice.

The one thing they knew, Shriver later told us, was that the cautious, conventional approach currently in vogue wouldn’t work.  America would only have one chance to get it right.

So it was that Sargent Shriver happened to be at the office at three in the morning, reading a short paper by a State Department employee named Warren Wiggins.

Wiggins called his paper “The Towering Task,” a reference to JFK’s first State of the Union address, where the young President said, “The problems…are towering and unprecedented - and the response must be towering and unprecedented as well.”

Wiggins called for a towering and unprecedented Peace Corps.  He wrote: “One hundred youths engaged in agricultural work of some sort in Brazil might pass by unnoticed, except for the problems involved, but 5,000 American youths helping to build Brasilia might warrant the full attention and support of the President of Brazil himself.”  Where a handful of kids might present a nuisance to a foreign ambassador, an army of motivated young Americans could make a real difference.  And besides, wasn’t it a moment for great ambition?

At three in the morning, Sargent Shriver read Wiggins’s conclusion: The Peace Corps needed to begin with a “quantum jump,” and it needed to begin immediately, by executive order, with as many as 5,000 to 10,000 volunteers right away.

By nine that same morning, Warren Wiggins himself was sitting alongside Shriver in that hotel room, drafting a report for the President.  Within a month, President Kennedy had created the Peace Corps by executive order.  Within two years, more than 7,000 young Americans were serving abroad.  And that number had more than doubled by 1966.

One of those young Americans was a 22-year-old English major from Providence College who arrived in the small village of Monción in the Dominican Republic.  That young man spoke barely any Spanish.  He had no idea what he was doing, and he certainly didn’t have a clue that, more than 40 years later, he’d be standing on the floor of the United States Senate, explaining that the Peace Corps gave him the richest two years of his life.

I owe those two years, and the impact they had on all my years since, to John F. Kennedy’s 2 a.m. question and the Warren Wiggins paper that Sargent Shriver read at 3 a.m.

From the story of the Peace Corps, and my own story, we can learn three things.

First: the Peace Corps works.  Besides simple labor and good will, every American we send abroad brings with him or her another chance to make America known to a world that often fears and suspects us.  And every American who returns from that service comes home as a citizen who strengthens us with firsthand knowledge of the world. 

As Sargent Shriver said, “Peace Corps Volunteers come home to the USA realizing that there are billions-yes, billions-of human beings not enraptured by our pretensions, or our practices, or even our standards of conduct.”

Second: size matters.  The perils of a small, timid Peace Corps are just as clear today as they were in 1961.  Just as then, advocates of a stripped-down mission make the same arguments: sending untrained, untested students only aggravates our host countries and raises the chance of a mishap-so let’s send a few experts instead.  And just as in 1961, our response is fundamentally the same, and still fundamentally correct: of course we need volunteers of the highest quality.  But we need the highest quantities, too.

Third: size comes at a cost.  The bigger any organism grows, the slower it gets.  The Peace Corps that charted its course in a hotel room with a staff of two now enjoys a staff of over a hundred and a fine office building close to the White House.  But even the most groundbreaking ideas must all make, in good time, what the philosopher Gramsci called “the long march through the institutions.”   And where President Kennedy once predicted that, within a few decades, our nation would have more than one million returned volunteers, today fewer than 200,000 have had the opportunity to serve. 

And so, Mr. President, the legislation I offer today is designed to help the Peace Corps not only grow - and I have joined the many voices calling for it to grow dramatically - but also reform.

To those who know and love the Peace Corps, reform is an uncomfortable subject.  After all, we don’t want to destroy what has made this institution so remarkable and unique.  There wouldn’t be a Peace Corps if JFK had stuck to the script in Ann Arbor.  There wouldn’t be a Peace Corps if thousands of students, acting on their own initiative, hadn’t caught his attention with their movement.  There might not be a Peace Corps if Sargent Shriver had listened to the respectable voices of caution. 

The Peace Corps is unlike any other organ of our government because of its uniquely grassroots origin.  And we can’t treat it like any other organ of our government.

So the Peace Corps Improvement and Expansion Act of 2009 does not include a list of mandates.  It does not micromanage.

Instead, it asks those who have written this remarkable success story - from the Director to managers and country directors to current and returned volunteers - to serve once more by undertaking a thorough assessment of the Peace Corps and developing a comprehensive strategic plan for reforming and revitalizing the organization.

Just as JFK’s question to those Michigan students sparked the Peace Corps, asking questions will strengthen it.  How can volunteers be better managed?  How can they be better trained?  Can we improve recruiting?  Are we sending our volunteers to the right countries?  Why do we have volunteers in Samoa and Tonga, but not in Indonesia, Egypt, or Brazil?  Are we still achieving the broader goals of the Peace Corps and helping our country meet 21st-century challenges?

And, most of all: How can we strengthen and grow this remarkable organization without losing the spark - the ambitious sense of the possible that led JFK to stay up late dreaming with those students in Ann Arbor and Sargent Shriver to stay up even later reading Warren Wiggins’s paper?

Mr. President, Warren Wiggins died two years ago at the age of 84.  His obituary quoted Harris Wofford: “I think he embodied the watchwords that were once given to me: We must be more inventive if we’re going to do our duty.”

Inventiveness and duty: two qualities that don’t often go together.  But the Peace Corps is the result of just such a combination.  It has strengthened our nation, improved the world, and stands today as one of the signal accomplishments of the 20th century.  Nothing has meant more in my life, or in the lives of so many others.

Today, we honor that accomplishment.  Let us commit to strengthening and expanding the Peace Corps by passing this legislation.  Let us strive to inspire future generations to walk the path of service and exploration, the one that led me to the Dominican Republic and then, years later, to the U.S. Senate.  And let us never lose that spirit, that idealism, that ambition that led a young President of a young nation to ask a generation to serve.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Laurence Leamer (Nepal 1965-67) author of most recently, Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach published this essay last late night,  June 25, 2009 10:23 PM on the Huffington Post.

Early this evening Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut gave what will probably prove the most important speech in the history of the Peace Corps since that late October night in 1960 when Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy introduced the idea of a volunteers serving in the developing world. Dodd’s Senate speech introduced the Peace Corps Improvement and Expansion Act of 2009 to grow and reform the 48-year-old agency. If passed, the legislation will likely make Dodd the father of a bold new Peace Corps for the 21st century, at least double in size, and immensely larger in purpose and impact.

The bill was born not in his office in the Russell Building but in the tiny village of Moncion in the Dominican Republican more than forty years ago. It was there the young Dodd, a senator’s son and a man of privilege, served as a Peace Corps volunteer and was transformed. In his years in public office, the Senator has had many accomplishments, but this moment today on the floor of the Senate is surely one of the greatest. Whatever his legislative monuments, whatever his faults, he may well be remembered for this one act as much as for anything else in his career if this emboldened, renewed institution is created.

The Senator began by celebrating a list of giants who created the historic agency including Kennedy, Warren Wiggins, Sargent Shriver, and Harris Wofford. He spoke about brave leaders taking chances because timidity would have doomed them to failure. But what made his remarks so emotionally powerful is that he talked about his own experience with intimacy and passion. He pointed out that when he joined the Peace Corps in 1966 there were 16,000 volunteer, more than twice what there are now.

“I spoke barely any Spanish and had little idea what I was doing and certainly didn’t have a clue that more than forty years later I would be standing up here on the floor of the Senate explaining that the Peace Corps gave him the richest two years of his life,” he said his voice touched with emotion. “From the story of the Peace Corps and my own story, we learn three things. First of all, the Peace Corps works, Mr. President.. Besides simple labor and good will, every American we send overseas brings another chance to make America known to a world that often fears and suspects us and our motives. And every American who returns to our country comes home as a citizen strengthened with the knowledge of the world that he or she has just lived in.

“Second, Mr. President, the perils of a small, timid Peace Corps are just as strong today as they were in 1961. Of course, we need volunteers of the highest quality but we need the highest quantities to make a difference. Third, growth comes at a price. The Peace Corps that started with a staff of two now enjoys a staff over 100 and a fine office building not far from the White House.”

Dodd’s bill calls for the $450 million appropriation approved by the House subcommittee, $575 million in fiscal year 2011 and $700 million in 2012, enough to move vigorously toward a doubling of the volunteers.

Dodd then turned to reform and suggested that many Peace Corps supporters were uncomfortable with the idea but said that it must be faced straight on. Dodd is the only politician in America with the power and knowledge to say that and write this bill. It is the work of a man who loves the Peace Corps but understands its flaws and knows that you can not mindlessly grow the agency but must reform it from the bottom up. There could have been dozens of specific reforms in this bill but it fundamentally puts the agency on notice. It orders the new director to do a serious study of the agency and how it should be reformed and then carry the mandate out. Dodd ran through a litany of questions that must be answered and then acted upon.

It is clear that if this is not done quickly and well, the wrath of Dodd will be visited upon the agency. In the past few years, Dodd has not given the agency the oversight that he should have given it. But Dodd is not going to strut boastfully about because of the mere passage of the act. He promises to be there overseeing the agency and its new director helping to ensure that volunteers head out into the rich variety of the world, well prepared to help and to learn.

Dodd is one of the most powerful senators, and now with the illness of his dear friend Senator Edward Kennedy, he is overwhelmingly busy. Much of the work on the specifics of the bill was done by two young aides, Joshua Blumenfeld and Ben Weingrod, who were not volunteers but in their commitment well could have been. Dodd has worked with them for months, and it is extraordinary that in the midst of struggling over a health bill to insure all Americans, the senator found the time and the energy to introduce the bill.

President Obama has not kept his oft-repeated campaign pledge to double the number of volunteers by 2011. Although privately administration members admit they made a mistake, the 2010 fiscal budget contains only $373 million for the agency, enough to fund neither reform nor expansion. But there is such an extraordinary groundswell of support for a reborn Peace Corps that in the House of Representatives the entire Appropriations subcommittee chaired by Rep. Nita Lowey, including all the Republicans, voted $450 million for the fiscal year 2010 budget, enough to begin the long march toward a vastly enlarged, reformed agency.

Enter the Senate. The most serious potential adversary of a bold new Peace Corps is an unlikely one: the progressive Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. The Senator is a vociferous foe of the current Peace Corps and as the chairman of the Senator Appropriations Committee his voice matters enormously.. Most of Leahy’s criticisms are valid, and if they are not answered to his satisfaction he is going to sit on the Peace Corps, and no matter what his colleagues on the committee want, to teach the agency a lesson it will not forget. There is bound to be broad bipartisan support for a robust, energized Peace Corps led on the Republican side probably by the formidable Senator Kit Bond, a classic son of Missouri. And Leahy may find himself odd man out on his own committee, but if he feels strongly, that won’t stop him.

No one in American politics has had such a long-term commitment to the Peace Corps as Dodd, but in recent months he had appeared uncharacteristically absent. Everyone in the Senate has been asking the same question about the key player in this drama. “Where is Senator Dodd?” The answer was, “Who knows?” Even Leahy’s staff was asking the question for they knew that nothing would impress Leahy more than his friend coming forward with his much discussed bill.

Dodd was planning to wait to introduce the bill later this year when he had a break in his incredibly busy legislative schedule. He is running in a tough reelection campaign, and his staff was going to make a big deal out of this, setting up all kinds of media, making sure the speech got the attention it richly deserved. But because of the inner politics of the Senate and how important the bill is to this campaign for full funding, Dodd sacrificed the high visibility to get it out there so his colleagues in the Senate, especially Leahy, would see what he had done.

Dodd is calling for the Peace Corps to go backward and forward. It must go backward to the qualities of the bold, fearless men who created the unique institution. And it must go forward to become a lean, tough expanded organization ready to leave the foxholes of caution and match forward into the glorious unknown and unknowable.

“And most of all how can we strengthen and grow this remarkable organization without losing that ambitious spark, the ambitious sense of the possible?,” Dodd asked rhetorically. “The Peace Corps stands today as one of the singular accomplishments of the twentieth century. Let us never lose that spirit, that idealism, that ambition that led a young president of a young nation to ask a generation to serve.”

Today the public galleries were largely empty. The media gallery was quiet. There were few other Senators on the floor. But this was a great moment in American politics. As Dodd spoke, it was not a sixty-five-year old Senator rich in gravitas standing there. It was a twenty-three-year old young man in shorts, a t-short and flip-flops sitting around with a bunch of kids, laughing and joking in Spanish, probably as happy as he had ever been, and if he is like many volunteers, as happy as he ever would be.

 Step # 5 Show Us The Money!

The President’s Transition Team highlighted the fact that the Peace Corps has never fulfilled the promise of the Third Goal. This problem lies with where the Peace Corps money is situated in terms of the government bureaucracy. The Transition Team wrote, “the power of returned Volunteer cultural and linguistic skills in the new multi-cultural America; show that Peace Corps service abroad helps solve problems here at home-completing the loop for Peace Corps; and create a re-employment stream for returned Volunteers. Taxpayers will see an impact at home (as teachers, public health workers and more). Over time, this grows into more support, first for overseas mission, and then for the domestic goal.”

The Peace Corps gets its funding from the “Foreign Operations” account, called in the vernacular, the 150 Account. In Congress, the Peace Corps budget is bunched in with other foreign assistance and national security funding, and that is where the Third Goal loses out. No one wants to fund the Third Goal of the Peace Corps because it is not “foreign.” The Third Goal is domestic. The pressure always is to put as many PCVs in the field. The Third Goal is just “suppose to happen.”

There is also the personal element. When Congresswoman Nita Lowey who controls the budget meets up with fellow New Yorker Secretary of State Clinton in the power room on the Hill, who is going to get the exta $$$, the Peace Corps or State? Hello! 

The Congress influences the spending of the Peace Corps budget through the authorization and appropriations process, but seldom has the Congress been very specific in terms of how the Peace Corps spends the majority of its budget. (After the Power Room Deal.) If, however, the Peace Corps wanted to raise the readjustment allowance (God forbid!), it must seek Congress’ permission as the readjustment allowance is specified in law.

 The Peace Corps has been fortunate, over the years, to avoid too much tinkering by Congress.  That is one reason ( most people who understand the process) strongly opposed Senator Dodd’s “Volunteer Empowerment Act” (drafted by Chuck Ludlum  ((Nepal 1968-70 & Senegal 2005-07), because it tinkered unnecessarily and thus breaks a tradition that has served Peace Corps well. 

What the Peace Corps needs within the agency is to separate Third Goal money and protect it from its entire budget. In this way, the Peace Corps office of Domestic Affairs can have the opportunity and funding to make the Third Goal a reality.

Back in October 2008 Ron Tschetter (India 1966-68) announced “his vision” for a Peace Corps Foundation.  The Foundation would support Third Goal project by RPCCV. It would complete the Peace Corps cycle. It was a great idea that Ron had but alas it came about during the dying days of his Peace Corps tour as Director. He was out the door with his good friend George Bush.

The next director should latch onto Ron’s idea and establish the Foundation, increase its scope and visibility. A Peace Corps Foundation–free of government restrictions-could promote the agency, promote individual projects being done now by RPCVs across America, enlarge the vision of the agency, raise own funds outside of Congress’s oversight. It would be paid for by the contributions of other foundations, RPCVs, and projects such as a first class magazine, much like the one that the Smithsonian publishes now. It’s a great idea. And  the time has come for it to happen.

Trying to keep the changing slogans of the Peace Corps campaign straight–as well as all those  Peace Corps numbers–is a job, so I decided to do a quick ‘cheat sheet’ of numbers and facts and timing so, at least, I would know what is going on and who is doing what to whom!

First off, President Barack Obama’s 2010 budget backs off of his promise to double the Peace Corps to 16,000 volunteers by 2011. His budget today calls for 9,000 Americans enrolled in the Peace Corps by the end of FY 2012, and 11,000 by the end of FY 2016.

At that pace, Obama is out of office, his two girls are off to college, and a Republican is back in the White House, before the size of the Peace Corps is doubled. Also, let us not forget, his White House budget documents flatly contradicts his promise of 16,000 volunteers by 2010. (For the record the highest number of PCV overseas was in 1966, with 15,000 people.)

As of today: 1) Obama’s budget calls for $376 million in fiscal year 2010. 2) Legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives just increased that to $450 million when it survived an appropriations subcommittee markup on June 17, 2009. 3) It still needs to be passed out of the House and then approved by the Senate before it would land on Obama’s desk. 4) Obama could, of course, veto it!

To double the size of the Peace Corps (another ambition of the MorePeaceCorps campaign folks) Obama would have to commit (in today’s dollars) approximately $750 million. That ain’t going to happen, folks.

If you noticed the MorePeaceCorps Campaign is now the Bold Peace Corps Campaign. This was an editing job done by RPCV writer Larry Leamer (Nepal 1965-67). As a slogan and rallying point, it works better. Also, it suggests the strength of the Peace Corps rather than just numbers. You know, like Army Strong!

There are several other problems in increasing the number of PCVs overseas.

• It costs more money to maintain a PCV in the field today because of the shrinking dollar;
• Security is ‘up’ overseas. Why, they have CD living on the embassy compound in some countries;
• The costs for recruitment is up; the Peace Corps has had to close regional recruitment offices;
• Salaries of staff are up; etc.
• PCVs are receiving larger allowances and the Readjustment Amount has increased.

There are a couple other unnoticed reasons. One, is that if you are a CD overseas and you have 40 PCVs and you are at a Schedule Two GSA salary level and making a six figure salary, have a nice house and a couple servants, a bunch of nice PCVs, why would you ask for more PCVs? That would just means more work for you. Also Peace Corps/Washington  just cut your staff!  You write D.C. and tell them your country can’t take more PCVs.

In Shriver’s day you got ahead in the agency– and noticed by Shriver– by having a bigger, bolder and dynamitic program. Those days are gone forever. Today, we have a Peace Corps that is small and cozy.

The second hidden issue is health of RPCVs, especially mental health. If you can show you weren’t crazy when you went overseas, but because of your service you are crazy (and I am using that term loosely) you can get your shrink bills paid for by the government. That’s why it is such a bitch to get into the Peace Corps today. The Medical Office keeps raising all those Red Flags. They don’t want anyone who has signs of depression while in college. The costs of treating RPCVs after the Peace Corps service, for one reason or another, keeps going up and eating up the Peace Corps budget.

In passing Congresswoman Nita Lowey mentioned on Hardball the other evening the new GSA report on the Peace Corps. That is a ticking time bomb. I can guarantee you that this report will be negative to the agency. The report (and I haven’t seen it) will say that PCVs are out of touch and not doing a good job, that they lacks skills and equipment, and can be replaced by computers, FaceBook and Twitter. I see the GSA report calling for new approaches on where to assign PCVs, and demanding  Volunteers with better skills. Goodbye, B.A. Generalist.

The White House Peace Corps Transition Report that we published a month ago is a hint at what is to come, but it is a timid document. More needs to be said and done by the next administration for the Peace Corps. The new Peace Corps Director is key. She or He must be someone who has 1) close connections to the White House; 2) A former Peace Corps Volunteer who understands the role of a PCV; 3) someone with strong management experience; 4) extensive overseas experience.

One last story. The next Director needs to be like Sarge. Here’s a true story. When Warren Wiggins did a flow chart in the first days of the agency (because no one knew who to report to!) he showed it to Shriver who said, “There’s only one thing wrong with this organization chart. The Volunteer is at the bottom of it.”

Shriver turned the chart upside down and put the Peace Corps Volunteers at the top. The Volunteer overseas is the most important part of the Peace Corps. When we get back to those days, we’ll really going to have a Peace Corps again.

A few days ago we mentioned that Frank Fountain could be a possible candidate for the Director of the Peace Corps. While I don’t know him, Fountain, then as the president of the Chrysler Foundation, supported the non-profit foundation, The Peace Corps Fund, that Barbara Ferris and I started a half dozen years ago to support Third Goal projects.

Today, the  Chicago Defender, a well-respected African-American midwest newspaper, had an article about Fountain being the next director. Here’s the Chicago Defender article about the former India PCV. If selected, Frank would be the second India PCV to have the position. (And everyone thinks it is the Ethiopian RPCVs who control the Peace Corps. Not true!)

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Fountain’s candidacy for Peace Corps chief wins national approval

by Bankole Thompson

At a time when America’s image is facing immense challenge, forcing President Barack Obama to embark on a tour of goodwill and renewing ties with various nations, the next director of the Peace Corps will have a lot of ground to cover as well.

That is why political, business and civic leaders across the nation are urging the president to select Frank Fountain, the current director of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum Foundation, as the nation’s new Peace Corps director. Fountain previously served as senior vice president of External Affairs for Chrysler.

As Obama considers a list of formidable candidates, Fountain is coming highly recommended from those who understand government, public service and international relations.

A former Peace Corps volunteer himself from 1966 to 1968, Fountain’s work includes serving in Calcutta, West Bengal, India, as a site developer, and as a technical studies instructor with the Peace Corp Training Staff’s Agricultural Extension Program in Hemet, Calif.

In a May 21 letter to the president, Judge Damon Keith, senior judge of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote, “(Fountain) has had an impressive business career as an external representative of his company. In this capacity, he has demonstrated the characteristics of a person who would be ideal to lead the Peace Corps to new heights in a way that fulfills your vision and that of its founder, President John F. Kennedy. I can think of no person better equipped to represent this country across the globe and to uplift the American image than Frank Fountain.”

Another voice in support of Fountain is Badi G. Foster, president of the Phelps Stokes Fund, who wrote that “a serious revamping of the Peace Corps will require a leader who possesses a unique set of skills and abilities,” and added that Fountain “has been a champion of corporate social responsibility programs and other community outreach activities” during his time as president of the Chrysler Foundation.

Foster pointed out that Fountain’s roots are close to those living in poverty around the world.

“He grew up on a small farm in rural Alabama, living in and overcoming poverty to reach the upper echelons of the corporate world,” Foster wrote. “Frank embodies the opportunities and the diversity embedded in American democracy and the aspirations of many marginalized people around the world that the Peace Corps aims to serve.”

Carl Brooks, president and CEO of the Executive Leadership Council, a leadership development organization of the most senior African-American executives in corporate America, pointed out that throughout his career, Fountain has worked to affect change for those in poverty, “guided by his own personal narrative of overcoming poverty and obstacles through education, character and tenacity.”

Brooks also pointed out that in 2005 and 2008, Fountain received the Frank H. Williams Director’s Award for his service and support to the Corps.

Brooks said Fountain’s commitment to promoting the cause of economic and social development between the U.S. and other countries makes him an ideal candidate.

“As the current chair for Africare and as former chair of the Corporate Council on Africa, Frank has worked tirelessly to build greater strategic economic opportunities for U.S. companies and the African continent. He has also worked closely with the Rev. Leon Sullivan’s African-African American Leadership Summit and is a director of the joint U.S.- German led Wittenberg Center on Global Ethics.”

Michigan Chronicle staff writer Patrick Keating contributed to this story.

 Writing on Tuesday, June 16, 2009, on Nexsmax.com Dave Eberhart had this to say, and check out the comments that go with the article

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Before Laurence Leamer was the celebrated author of such seminal best-sellers as “King of the Night” and “The Kennedy Women,” he was a young Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal.

As he poignantly recalled in a recent speech, “I was posted in a tiny village in the eastern hills, two days from a road. And there I began to think of something other than myself. I learned to help people and reach out to the world with a helping hand, and I became a man I had never been…

“I have lived on the residue of that spirit for my entire life.”

But like about 195,000 Peace Corps volunteers who have served as American missionaries for peace and democracy since President John F. Kennedy launched the program in 1961, Leamer quickly grasps the power and influence the group has had making America stronger and the world a safer place.

This week, a House subcommittee is set to consider a move that could transform the Peace Corps into a major global force once again - and it’s getting some surprising support from Republicans.

In the Senate, Republicans Orrin Hatch of Utah, Kit Bond of Missouri, Bob Corker of Tennessee, and Dick Lugar of Indiana support the move, Leamer said, while Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois is among the GOP members backing it in the House.

The Peace Corps was one of the brightest corners of Kennedy’s vision of Camelot. It was created at the height of East-West tensions during the Cold War, and Kennedy envisioned an army of a million volunteers marching to “create a new world of understanding and hope.”

In 1966, at the top of its form, there were 15,000 volunteers in the Peace Corps. Now, just 7,600 are spread around a world that has nearly doubled in population since those heady days when the Corps enjoyed iconic status with Americans.

When President Barack Obama promised during his campaign to double the size of the Peace Corps by its 50th anniversary in 2011, Leamer and thousands of other former, present, and future volunteers sensed the dawn of a new era of greatness for the volunteer Corps.

But both the Peace Corps and the Obama administration came up short in the first tests of that new era, Leamer told Newsmax.

With the easygoing idealism of the campaign giving way to the grim pragmatics of managing a country in crisis mode, Obama trimmed his vision, electing to increase the Peace Corps budget only 10 percent - with a modest 20 percent increase in volunteers by 2012.

In all fairness, Leamer concedes, Obama may have found himself between a rock and a hard place as the Peace Corps leadership balked at doubling the volunteer corps by 2011. Leamer is working with Morepeacecorps.org and its national coordinator, Rajeev Goyal, to change all that, he said.

“Obama backed off his pledge,” Leamer told Newsmax. “What we’ve been doing in the House is to push for $450 million - not the $373 million in the administration budget that would not allow for a better, bolder, bigger Peace Corps.

“In the House Authorization Subcommittee, we put enormous pressure on Chairman [Howard] Berman, and for whatever reasons, and I think this former Vista volunteer did it for the right reasons, he came through with an amendment giving the $450 million.”

Leamer said he’s fairly certain that the Democrats on the State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee, led by Chairwoman Nita Lowey of New York, will vote the $450 millionon Wednesday.

“Tactically, they could wait and put it in at the next step in the process, but they want to do it now because they are terrified that the Republican minority will offer their own amendment for the $450 million,” Leamer said. “But this is the irony of the story - as far as I know, the Republicans may be too beaten down to figure this out.

“It’s a no-brainer,” he added. “What you have to do in this [overall] $49 billion bill is to take something out in one place if you want to put it somewhere else. There’s lots of Democratic fat in this bill. If the Democrats fail to come up with the $450 million, all the Republicans have to do is put in an amendment taking it away from some Democratic boondoggle and watch as their counterparts have a draconian choice.

“The Republicans in the House don’t understand that they are foolish to let this turn into Obama’s Peace Corps, and Obama is so smart that eventually that’s what he’ll try to do. He’ll come swooping down and embrace it,” Leamer warned.

“If the Republicans were smart, they would push for the $450 million and send it over to the Senate where that would create big problems for the Democrats.”

Leamer told Newsmax about a couple of Democratic lawmakers he suggests should be leading the way for the Peace Corps revival:

“Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, one of the lions of the Senate, has some profound questions about how the Peace Corps is being run. They not only deserve to be answered, but they must be answered or he is going to oppose an increase in money for the Peace Corps.”

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, a returned volunteer himself and a crucial player in the Senate, has appeared to be sitting on the sidelines doing nothing. “But he may have a bill combining both growth and reform that he is about to spring and that could change the whole dynamic of this struggle, bringing in all kinds of support from Republicans and Democrats.”

However, the extra cash alone is no silver bullet for what ails the Peace Corps, Leamer said. A bold new Corps needs a bold new director and deputy director.

This new blood must reform the organization from one concerned with safety and sinecures to a key player on the stage of the 21st century, he said. Case in point: There are no volunteers in the villages of Pakistan. In fact, only two Arab countries have volunteers on the ground.

Of course, the mold that intrigues everyone is that of Sargent Shriver, the original director of the Peace Corps. This energetic visionary went on to found such programs as Head Start, VISTA, Job Corps, Community Action, Upward Bound, Foster Grandparents, and the Special Olympics. He engineered President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty.

In spite of all his accomplishments, Shriver denigrated what his Peace Corps had accomplished in a November 2001 speech at Yale University.

“Our present world cries out for a new Peace Corps - a vastly improved, expanded, and profoundly deeper enterprise … I’m not defending the old Peace Corps - I’m attacking it! We didn’t go far enough! Our dreams were large, but our actions were small. We never really gave the goal of ‘World Wide Peace’ an overwhelming commitment. Nor did we establish a clear, inspiring vision for attaining it.”

Like the legendary Sargent Shriver, Leamer doesn’t want to see the Obama administration squander what he sees as a chance to do something great and meaningful and lasting.

On June 13, he joined Tim Shriver, Sargent’s son and the CEO of Special Olympics International, at a rally in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. That spring afternoon, hundreds of former Peace Corps volunteers came together to remind President Obama of his campaign pledge to build a Peace Corps of 16,000 volunteers by 2011.

The rally culminated with a march to the White House, led by Shriver, with the 22-woman Brazilian drumming group Batala providing the stepping-off beat.

Addressing the enthusiastic throng, Leamer got up-close-and-personal with other Peace Corps veterans: “For the few months that I have been working on the campaign, I have been renewed and reborn. I have regained my soul. For the second time in my life, the Peace Corps has saved me.

“Walking the halls of Congress, I have seen the miracle of our democracy, that anyone can petition our elected leaders. And if you enter those offices with the name and power of the Peace Corps behind you, you are listened to. You are respected. And you can help change history.

“We are going to get that $450 million because of your efforts, and we will double our own efforts in the Senate and we will get it there too. We will get it because we are Peace Corps. And we do not stop. We do not give up. With our united power we are unbeatable.”

Finally, he invoked the name of the first director, Sargent Shriver, who has Alzheimer’s disease and could not attend.

“I see Sarge Shriver telling us we are doing the right thing in building this bold new Peace Corps. I see the flags of the 137 Peace Corps countries. I see millions of supporters. I see America. I see the world.”

Leamer said the rally was in no way a protest against President Obama - it was more a celebration of the chief executive’s vision and understanding of just how the Peace Corps fits in the vital machinery that will see the nation through the age of terrorism.

Indeed, Leamer reminds folks frequently of some recent Obama insights.

In his commencement address at Arizona State University, the president let the graduating seniors know that the Peace Corps still is very much on his mind.

“We’ve become accustomed to the title of ‘military superpower,’ forgetting the qualities that got us there - not just the power of our weapons, but the discipline and valor and the code of conduct of our men and women in uniform,” Obama said.

“The Marshall Plan, and the Peace Corps, and all those initiatives that show our commitment to working with other nations to pursue the ideals of opportunity and equality and freedom that have made us who we are - that’s what made us a superpower.”

More Conversation with Leamer

Newsmax: So what’s the very latest news from Capitol Hill?

Leamer: We’re very close, but we’re not taking anything for granted. I just would love to see the Republicans stand up in support.

Newsmax: Even that $450 million figure seems so small. All the money that is tossed down a rat hole these days - and we are being miserly with something that can deliver more bang for the buck than all the bombs in the world.

Leamer: I’ve lived all over the world, and I’ve seen the squandering of so much foreign aid. That has to stop, and the Peace Corps has to be held to the highest standards. Rajeev [Goyal] and I are not in this for the short term. I’ve told Chairwoman Lowey and I’ve told Senator Leahy that we’re going to be just as relentless and tough on the Peace Corps once they get the funding, making sure that they are true to the vision of what the Peace Corps can be. And if they squander it, we’ll be back on the Hill next year blowing the whistle.

Newsmax: Have Peace Corps volunteers had it rough and ready over the years?

Leamer: More than a few have died and countless others have had serious illnesses. I had five kinds of worms - that should help recruitment. But life is tough and challenging, and danger is part of the equation. Take that away and what do you have? Americans love and need challenge. They’re ready.

Newsmax: You and I remember the exciting days when the Peace Corps was first formed. What has happened to take it so far from the heart and minds of younger Americans?

Leamer: What’s strange is that some people don’t even know it exists. Every president says he’s going to double the size, comes over and pats the Peace Corps on its tousled head and does nothing. Well, that blonde hair is dyed and there’s a bald spot, and the institution has to be revitalized from top to bottom. The new director has to work the Hill, and the PR people have got to get the story out - and it’s got to be a dramatic new story.

Larry Leamer (Nepal 1964–66), author of Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach among other books has the following essay posted today in the Huffingtpost.com.

Join Us, Mr. President!!

I was the next-to-the-last speaker Saturday at a rally in Washington to build a bold new Peace Corps. Rajeev Goyal, the Morepeacecorps.org national organizer, and I had decided to do this rally only nine days before. It would have been a formidable new task even if we have done nothing else. But we were already working ceaselessly to get the House of Representatives to appropriate the $450 million that would allow the Peace Corps to grow and to reform.

We were close to success in the House thanks to a relentless group of representatives and legislative aides. Our problem was not only what would happen in the Senate but President Obama. For some inexplicable reason, the most inspiring, most capable leader in generations has not followed through on his campaign promise to double the size of the Peace Corps. He is going ahead tripling the domestic volunteer corps, and his inaction makes no sense. The administration budget contains only $373 million for the fiscal 2010 budget, enough to keep things the way they are, no money for the 20 new countries clamoring for volunteers, no room for the 25,000 who this year have expressed interest in applying, 40% more than last year. There is no new director and the downtown headquarters is practically moribund, waiting for something to happen.

And so we decided to stage a rally, and we worked almost around the clock to make it happen. We had the stalwart support of Kevin Quigley, the president of the National Peace Corps Association, who mobilized his troops and whose organization funded the rally for one of its programs.

It was amazing how everything came together in Freedom Plaza two blocks from the White House. We had called Anthony Johnson, the Jamaican ambassador, the day before, and he gave a passionate, compelling speech. Former Senator Harris Wofford gave a marvelous talk, putting our movement in historical context. The wonderful musicians performed for free because they believe in a bold new Peace Corps. We stretched out a hundred-feet-long scroll in which rally goers wrote letters to the President and First Lady which we plan to deliver to the White House. Even the weather gods cooperated, holding off on threatened thunder storms. Speaker after speaker made compelling cases for an enlarged, reformed Peace Corps reaching out to the world in powerful new ways.

I felt inspired as I stood on that stage before hundreds concerned with the future of the Peace Corps. “The first person we contacted to speak was Tim Shriver, the president of Special Olympics International and the son of Sargent Shriver, the founder of the Peace Corps,” I said, standing in front of a great banner for a BOLD NEW PEACE CORPS. “Within hours he said yes. Two days ago we decided that it would be fantastic if we could march to the White House at the end of the rally led by Tim Shriver. It would be incredible. And so I called Tim and he said yes. And he said, ‘Larry, I don’t care if it’s twenty people, fifty people. I don’t care. It’s about the Peace Corps. It’s about this movement. It doesn’t matter.

HEAR US MR. PRESIDENT!!

And so I look out now on this immense plaza and I see a scene I thought I would never see. I see this great space filled to over flowing. I see 195,000 returned volunteers standing proudly in their bold new Peace Corps t-shirts. Up front laughing, jumping up and down with joy, I see Sarge Shriver telling us we are doing the right thing in building this bold new Peace Corps. I see the flags of the 139 Peace Corps countries. I see millions of supporters. I see America. I see the world.

HEAR US, MR. PRESIDENT!!

And I hear them shouting in unison in their great voices. I hear them shouting so loud, so clear, that two blocks away in the White House, the president hears the voices of the Peace Corps calling him to be true to his vision. He hears us and he acts.

HEAR US, MR. PRESIDENT!!!

HEAR US, MR. PRESIDENT!!!

“HEAR US, MR. PRESIDENT!!!”

Then Tim Shriver got up and gave a powerful extemporaneous speech that was a high point of the rally. To my mind, he is so far the best candidate to become the director that there is no second candidate. Some say he is not a great administrator. That was the same criticism that was made of his father and Sarge was the best director in the history of the Peace Corps.

After his formidable speech, Tim led us to the White House behind the flag of the Peace Corps and our banner for a bold new Peace Corps. As we walked up 14th Street, Tim led us in the chant “Mr. President” and “Bold new Peace Corps.” We were powerful in passions and belief, and strong in our voices, and we turned as one person and marched to stand in front of the White House and to shout out so loud and so strong that surely anyone inside would have heard us.

The son of the founder of the Peace Corps leading our march was one of the most powerful acts of political symbolism I have ever seen. You will read about this here but you will read about it nowhere else. Last week I called newspapers and television news desks and tried to get them out there, but except for the Washington Post, no one came. The Post did a small story today, writing “dozens rally.” That’s literally true. So is “dozens march in St. Patrick’s Day Parade.” When I stopped counting there were over 300 people in our enthusiastic crowd. Actually, the only media to contact us has been Newsmax.com, the conservative website, who are doing a piece on Republicans and the Peace Corps. It’s another indicator of the growing power of Internet journalism, keeping ahead of their newspaper rivals.

If we are able to get the righteous appropriation of $450 million through Congress and build and reform the Peace Corps, the traditional media will have missed an important, inspiring story. And if we are successful, the series of stories I have done on Huffingtpost.com will be one of the keys. Posting them on the site is just the beginning. We email the pieces to tens of thousands of our supporters who email them to their friends and lists, and it has helped to build a movement of fervent supporters.

Two weeks ago I wrote an “Open Letter to Chairman Lowey” and asked readers to send in their own open letters to Rep. Lowey who is Chairwoman of the House State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee. Lowey has the power to give the Peace Corps the full $450 million in the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill.

The response was astounding, hundreds of serious, well conceived, well written letters. We chose 67 letters and turned them into an exquisite, professionally printed book titled WE IMPLORE YOU, CHAIRWOMAN LOWEY. Last week Rajeev and I handed the first copy to Rep. Lowey in her office and told her that every member of Congress will receive a copy.

Wednesday the subcommittee is scheduled to meet and on that day we believe it will make history by giving the Peace Corps the full appropriation. But we must continue to apply the pressure with constituents calling the subcommittee members’ offices until they sound like bookie joints. For their names and contact information, go to http://www.morepeacecorps.org/subcommittee/facts. Then the struggle moves to the Senate. There our first task will be to convince Chris Dodd, a returned volunteer, and Patrick Leahy, a man of unmovable principle, that they must lead the fight for a bold new Peace Corps joined on the Republican side by their ready colleague Orrin Hatch.

But, Mr. President, we need you. We know that you heard our united voices Saturday. When we come back, we will march even stronger in number and even louder in voice. We will be shouting, “Join us, Mr. President!!!” You belong with us. You are one of us. And we know that when you finally decide to act, you will build Obama’s Peace Corps, an emboldened institution for a new age.