September 08, 2008
Opinion: How the Presidential Candidates Can Stimulate Public Service
By Paul Light
The two presidential candidates — Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama — plan to go to New York City this week to commemorate the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks with a call to public service.
Unless the candidates get specific about removing the barriers to public service, however, they will be wasting their time. Grand campaigns for service rarely produce more than a brief bump in involvement by Americans, often followed by a slump as one-time-only volunteers drop out and government and nonprofit employees find little reason to stay motivated by their jobs.
At the same time, the demand for more people to get involved in public service is growing.
Charitable organizations cannot fill the gaps created by the economic slowdown and the nation’s growing elderly population without fresh recruits and motivated volunteers. Governments cannot faithfully execute the laws without replacing the millions of teachers, police officers, health-care professionals, and civil servants who are about to retire. Nor can they act as faithful partners with charities. Even corporations need public servants of a kind as they come under intense market pressure to be more socially responsible.
Nevertheless, the gap is growing between demand for people to perform public service and the contributions of time and effort that Americans make. People may say they want to serve, but volunteering has declined 6 percent over the past three years, and the list of hard-to-fill government jobs is growing daily. The spirit of public service may be strong, but the actual involvement of Americans is lagging as people struggle to stretch their paychecks by cutting donations and scaling back volunteer time.
The economy is not the only culprit, however. It is not enough merely to invite more Americans to serve; people must be asked to perform tasks that are inviting.
Unfortunately, too many charitable organizations do not know how to manage volunteers effectively or recruit new employees. Young Americans want the chance to make a difference and learn new skills, not work in the back office stuffing envelopes.
At the same time, many government agencies are shackled with a creaky civil service designed for 30-year careers in dense hierarchies that few Americans want. Although this disconnect would seem to deepen the labor supply for charities, government’s reputation often discourages public service in general. As for corporations, many substitute product sales for philanthropy, while using the language of social responsibility to disguise their otherwise dismal performance on the problems that charities and government are trying to solve.
In the meantime, government programs designed to promote service have fallen into disrepair.
Much as Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama promise to expand AmeriCorps, they have yet to embrace a long overdue increase in the living-expense stipends and tuition benefits that participants receive. Congress easily mustered the votes last spring to give veterans an increase in tuition benefits and stipends, but it has shown no interest in creating modest parity for AmeriCorps members. Some experts have suggested elevating the Corporation for National and Community Service to status as a member of the president’s cabinet as the solution, but while that may give the agency a better class of limousines, it will do nothing to help its programs keep pace with inflation.
Renewing AmeriCorps is just the start of making public service more inviting.
First, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama should promise to make charities whole by restoring the budget cuts that have eviscerated federal grant programs to help the needy. They should also promise that every grant the federal government provides to nonprofit groups will include enough money to cover the heat, light, technology, and training that charities need to do their jobs well. They could even promise a federal loan program to give charities the resources to support the entrepreneurship needed to solve the intractable problems the world faces today.
Second, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama should promise to help corporations contribute more to society by creating tax incentives to support paid leaves for people who want to engage full- and part-time volunteering, while continuing and expanding tax breaks that encourage businesses to give money and products. They should also keep corporations honest by asking them to prove they are making a difference to society.
At a minimum, they should support B Lab, a Pennsylvania charity that has built a vetting process for certifying corporate social responsibility. They could even give the Securities and Exchange Commission the power to audit the “double bottom lines” that publicly traded corporations use to showcase their social profits as well as their financial profits.
Third, anticipating his possible role as the nation’s public servant in chief, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama should each promise to reverse the federal government’s well-deserved reputation as a destination of last resort for young Americans. The government’s antiquated personnel system must be modernized to reward performance, not time on the job, and give new recruits the career paths to make a difference faster. Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama should also promise to hire enough federal employees to faithfully execute the laws, while holding the growing legion of contractors to the highest standards of ethical conduct and disclosure.
Absent this kind of agenda for action, this week’s call to public service can only disappoint. When Americans hear the call to public service, they should be able to say “yes.” Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama should provide the details to help them do so.
Paul C. Light is the author of A Government Ill Executed and a professor at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
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Absolutely! Short-term stints of volunteering and service are great, but they cannot substitute for careers in public service, particularly in government. The next president needs to confront this issue head-on, not only by reforming the civil service but also by creating a highly-visible national institution devoted to developing a new generation of career public servants. This institution would be on par with our military academies. There already is a movement to build a U.S. Public Service Academy. McCain and Obama should support it.
— E-Pluribus-Unum Sep 9, 07:48 AM #
I think Mr. Paul Light’s remarks are very nuanced regarding the paradox of pumped up rhetoric and the need for a Federal Law that provides a year-after-year wake up call to service, both part-time volunteerism and contracted community service along side military contracted service. The idea of linking this year or two of community service, military usually longer, with careers in government service, possibly highly technical skills required positions, is an excellent way of addressing this growing problem.
Below is my hopefully questions to both Presidential Candidates, and one that I hand gave to Senator Obama back in June 2007 in San Francisco. I hope it gets asked, and if not wonder why not?
I have also shared this at last years Independent Sector Conference in L.A., returning home to find weeks later that my 2nd visit to this professional conference again provided zero feedback. I guess if the experts in this circle of philanthropy find it hard to support a year-after-year, national and community based wake up call to each new generation of young adults, why should the Presidential Candidates and Candidates for the U.S. Congress! If the professionals can not debate this, or educate their membership, who is going to take the time, provide the means to educate the general public, so they can then reassure the political candidates that this complex issue of participatory democracy is a viable long-term solution for the many challenges our society will suffer through.
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Question:
As a 30-year advocate for replacing the Selective Service System with a National Service System I find myself in a gray zone between liberals and conservatives. I have advocated a 1979 Congressional bill that would have provided a service-learning challenge to male and female youth by having them register at 17, be encourage to debate the meaning of constructive citizenship with their friends, families, if in school, in school; and at 18 give a simple starting reply of yes, no, or maybe until age 23. This reply would start them on the path of finding a program, activity they desire to volunteer for be it in a variety of community or military contracted periods of service, and in the long-term provide a pragmatic approach towards community based participatory citizenship.
I hope all Presidential Candidates will go on record, and ask their fellow Congressional candidates to also go on record towards a robust, 100-day debate and vote on this national wake-up call!
Sorry for the complexity of the question.
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I am only one foolish military veteran that finds it hard to communicate with those humans around me, and those that claim to be leaders in our society towards the solutions this nation must consider as a viable future. I hope YOU agree, and help make this happen!
Peter P Jesella
— Peter P Jesella Sep 9, 09:21 AM #
The federal government could expand the ranks of volunteers from college (which would be a great way to get on the job training and also reap the benefit of using students fresh from academia who have at least one idea of where their career path may take them.
There should be a college graduate level “Presidential Intern Program” designed to funnel college graduates into social services, city or county government agencies, teaching, county/non-profit hospitals, and the like for two years. At the completion of two years of service, up to two years of education loans should be forgiven the participants along with a stipend they received for providing their service (just as the military are paid for their service to the country).
This program should be required of every person who completes college, public or private, in every state and U.S. territory.
There could be a program for people who also complete associates degrees, forgiving one year of school loans for one year of service.
There is a highly successful “Presidential Management Intern” program for graduate school students that takes only 200 students per year and fast tracks these students into federal management positions. It is the perfect way to introduce quality workers to government service, nonprofit organizations and complex organizations as a whole. It might be somewhat complicated, however, I believe the benefit to the country would be longrithmic over 4-10 years. I concur that both candidates need to take up this mantle quite seriously.
— Marybeth Mitts Sep 9, 09:24 AM #
Paul Light is absolutely right on this. “We need to focus on service” simply cannot be a campaign one-liner. Both candidates need to be clear about their plans to motivate young individuals to serve the public and how they intend to implement those plans. Short-term stints in service organizations are great, but our country needs well-educated, well-prepared career public servants. The U.S. Public Service Academy is just what the service-minded young people of this country are calling for. Obama and McCain should both sign on and answer our calls.
— Millennial Public Servant Sep 9, 02:15 PM #
How much was the stimulus package that the president approved earlier this year??
— John G. Sapp Sep 24, 11:17 PM #