[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 111 (Tuesday, July 11, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H6817]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                VALUE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE PEACE CORPS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Farr] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FARR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with my colleagues who will be on 
the floor a little bit later tonight to discuss the value and the 
importance of the Peace Corps and how the corps is affected by this 
year's budget.
  As with most other Federal programs, the Peace Corps is facing cuts. 
The current budget for the Peace Corps is $231 million. Let me repeat 
that. The current budget for the Peace Corps is $231 million. That is a 
very little amount of money in light of what we have been discussing 
here today in relevance to the history that the Peace Corps has played 
for this country.
  But today the House only appropriated $224 million, a cut of $7 
million from the current budget. This cut is going to have a profound 
effect on the Peace Corps operations. It will cut at least 500 
volunteers who could be serving, who would be sent overseas next year. 
There are approximately 6,500 currently serving this country in 
countries all over the world. Given the enormous contributions just a 
few of the volunteers can provide, this means major loss of aid for 
thousands of needy people.
  I am a former Peace Corps volunteer, now serving in Congress. There 
are six of us in this House, and we are very proud of that service. We 
remember the vital programs that served the countries that we were 
invited by those countries to serve in, Programs will be ended entirely 
in many countries, several countries, in addition to the programs in 
Nigeria and the Cook Islands, which are already scheduled to be closed.
  What my colleagues and I are here to discuss today is the valuable 
and effective Peace Corps experience, that experience that is shown 
everywhere around the world, and how we will need to guarantee a stable 
budget for the Peace Corps in the future, not to go on a roller coaster 
road that this Congress is starting on.
  Let me give you just a few examples of what makes the Peace Corps so 
unique and effective. Then I will yield time to my colleagues who have 
also served in the Peace Corps.
  In Lesotho, wells and rain catchment systems built by volunteers 
provide drinking water for 32,000 people. In Benin, volunteers trained 
400 people from 1,700 villages in parasite eradication, and worm cases 
in those areas fell by some 64 percent. In Ghana, volunteers created 
locally staffed vaccination clinics in 20 villages, which today serve 
nearly 50,000 people.
  Now, I would like to remind the viewers and my other colleagues who 
will be here in a minute, and particularly Mr. Shays, who served in the 
Peace Corps in Fiji and has been a strong supporter of the Peace Corps, 
and Mr. Ward, who served in Gambia as a Peace Corps volunteer.
  Cuts in the Peace Corps are going to hurt States with large 
populations, and I represent one of those, California, with 32 million 
people. Our State has more volunteers serving than any other State in 
the Union, 827 this year alone. A recent study by the University of 
Maryland found that 85 percent of the public support maintaining or 
increasing Peace Corps's budget.
  The Peace Corps consumes only $1.50 of every $10,000 spent by the 
Federal Government. These dollars are well and cost-effectively spent. 
In
 Kazakhstan, volunteers are teaching English to 3,000 primary, 
secondary, and university students; in Armenia the first independent 
radio station in the country was established with help from the 
volunteers; in Cameroon, volunteers helped to develop a textbook for 
teaching AIDS prevention. The result is there are 5,000 students 
learning how to prevent AIDS. In Ghana, over 1 million seedlings are 
planted each year to help volunteers helping in the prevention of 
erosion.

  Mr. Speaker, let me conclude by just saying that the Peace Corps has 
had over 30 years of bipartisan support. It has earned this support 
because everyone knows that the Peace Corps works. Just ask the 
villager who learned how to irrigate his farm, or the hundreds of 
people who did not die from parasites because their doctors were taught 
how to prevent them, or the thousands of students around the world that 
now speak English because of the Peace Corps teaching them English.
  We need to continue this valuable and cost-effective program. Let us 
not let our budget cutting frenzy cut merely for the sake of cutting. 
The Peace Corps is probably one of America's proudest symbols of how 
we, living in this affluent country, can reach out and help countries 
around the world. I cannot think of a more cost-effective program in 
the Federal Government. I would urge my colleagues to reconsider the 
cuts that were made.

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