Remarks to the Corporation for National and Community Service’s Board of Directors Meeting By Will Marshall

We at PPI and the DLC have been laboring in the national service vineyard for a long, long time and were “present at the creation” during the first couple of stabs at launching a national program in 1990 and 1993. As we saw the 2000 election approaching, we thought that there was both an opportunity and a challenge to move this enterprise onto bipartisan ground and to broaden the political support for it. In fact, there have been some remarkable successes here, as support has grown for national service among Republican governors as well as both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. And we’ve been working with Senator McCain and Senator Bayh on a bipartisan bill that would dramatically expand AmeriCorps.

We were delighted by President Bush’s Freedom Corps initiative two years ago. We’ve always thought that national service synthesizes conservative and liberal values in a unique