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Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act
The Obama Administration is committed to working with Congress to expand high-quality service opportunities to promote a spirit of civic participation and service across the country. The national service authorizing committees in the U.S. House of Representative and Senate have taken early bipartisan action in the 111th Congress to reauthorize national service laws and expand opportunities for Americans all ages to serve their communities.
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In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the National and Community Service Trust Act, which established the Corporation for National and Community Service and brought the full range of domestic community service programs under the umbrella of one central organization.
This legislation built on the first National Service Act signed by President H.W. Bush in 1990. It also formally launched AmeriCorps, a network of national service programs that engage Americans in intensive service to meet the nation’s critical needs in education, public safety, health, and the environment.
The newly created AmeriCorps incorporated two existing national service programs: the longstanding VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) program, created by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC).
View legislation governing the Corporation for National and Community Service and its programs:
"Service is a spark to rekindle the spirit of democracy in an age of uncertainty. When it is all said and done, it comes down to three simple questions: What is right? What is wrong? And what are we going to do about it?"
— President Bill Clinton, upon swearing in the first class of AmeriCorps members
In September 1994, the first class of AmeriCorps members—20,000 strong—began serving in more than 1,000 communities. On July 3, 2003, President Bush signed the Strengthen AmeriCorps Program Act, which nearly doubled the number of AmeriCorps members. By establishing new accounting guidelines for making Segal AmeriCorps Education Awards from the National Service Trust, the Corporation can now authorize approximately twice as many AmeriCorps positions in all categories. The legislation was the product of extensive, cooperative discussions with the Administration and a sign of the strong bipartisan support for AmeriCorps.
AmeriCorps and its programs are among the most recent chapters in our country's long history of encouraging and supporting civic engagement. Highlights of that history are shown on the National and Community Service Timeline.
Budget
Information on the Corporation for National and Community Service's budget can be found at http://www.nationalservice.gov/about/role_impact/budget.asp.
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