Bachmann: “I’d Have A Very Very Difficut Time” If Child Joins Americorps; Son Joined; GOP Wants To Kill It

Michele Bachmann referred to Americorps as a “re-education camp for young people” and said it will become mandatory service (h/t Mediaite). She told an overly sympathetic radio interviewer in 2009, “As a parent, I’d have a very very difficult time seeing my children do this.” But her son, Harrison, joined the Teach for America program that helps bring educators to low-income areas.

“[It’s] under the guise of quote, volunteerism, but it’s not volunteers at all,” she said on the Sue Jeffers radio show in April. “It’s paying people to do work on behalf of government. There are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people get trained in the philosophy the government puts forward and then they have to go work in these politically correct forums.

“As a parent, I would have a very, very difficult time seeing my children do this.”

And now House Republicans, led by Appropriations Chair Hal Rogers,  are working to kill the program. It’s too bad these extreme Republicans don’t even know the history of what they’re trying to kill, nor do they care about the good it does.

While associated with President Clinton, AmeriCorps is actually based on a demonstration program signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. It was enacted with bipartisan support, boldly expanded by President George W. Bush, championed by Republican Presidential nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ), and further expanded through the bi-partisan Edward M. Kennedy Act co-written by conservative Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT).

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.