OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Americorps Funding

Floor Speech

Date: Dec. 1, 2021
Location: Washington, DC

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, we could talk forever about this Build Back Better bill, but I am going to shine a light on an underpublicized provision in there.

I believe in the last month, for the first time, we hit $29 trillion in debt. So one would figure on any spending bill that goes through this House, we should be really conservative when it comes to spending more money.

AmeriCorps is a program that right now we spend about $1 billion a year on. In this bill, we are going from $1 billion a year to $4 billion a year. We are quadrupling the amount of money spent on a program that is fraught with fraud, people taking large amounts of money out of the program. Also, people are falsifying timesheets to get benefits they aren't entitled to. Meanwhile, the inspector general cannot do an appropriate job of investigating fraud because they aren't even turning over records from the past.

If there is one program that ought to be looked at carefully, it would be this. Instead of paying more attention to fraud in the program, we are quadrupling the size of the program, not to mention it is hurting people.

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