Clinton Stands Firm On National Service Program Republicans Pushing For Elimination Of Americorps To Pay For Tax Cut

President Clinton on Monday mounted a defense of his $500 million program that encourages young people to take part in national service, an idea that congressional Republicans have in their budget-cutting sights.

The program, known as Americorps, now includes 20,000 young people who work full or part time at minimum wage in one of 300 different programs in communities around the country, in return for government help in repaying their college loans. In an address here on Monday, the president proclaimed that its establishment had been perhaps his proudest achievement.

But the new Republican leaders in Congress have suggested that the program be eliminated to help finance a new tax cut. Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia was quoted in Newsweek magazine as saying that he was “totally, unequivocally opposed” to the Clinton program, which he labeled “coerced voluntarism” and “gimmickry.”

In a careful response on Monday, Clinton took pains to insist that the national service program was “not a bureaucracy.” He said the program should be spared from the spending cuts that the White House has vowed to work with Republicans to bring about because the program is already “changing the way that government works.”

“The purpose of all this is not to wreck the government, not to give us a meanspirited government, but to give us a lean government that will work with us to solve all our problems,” the president said.

After two months in which the White House has embraced substantial parts of the Republican agenda, Monday’s defense served notice that the national service program would be among the features of Clinton’s program for which he remained determined to fight.

As the president began a two-day Western trip here by commemorating the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. before flying to California to pay tribute to the state’s latest efforts to contend with natural disaster, aides said he had already planned to encourage community service as a proper way to honor the slain civil rights leader.

But after presidential aides learned over the weekend about Gingrich’s remarks, the White House moved quickly on Monday morning to “draw the line” around the national service program and to portray its critics as wrongheaded.

The president himself did not mention Gingrich by name in his speech to a vast crowd in Denver’s outdoor downtown amphitheater to commemorate King’s birthday.