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Sunday, March 17, 2002

By Rachel Smolkin, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

WASHINGTON-- Sen. Rick Santorum once derided AmeriCorps, the national service program. Now, he supports President Bush's call to expand the program and promote others like it.

Bush is urging each American to dedicate at least two years to international, national or community service. To advance that goal, he has created the USA Freedom Corps to coordinate the activities of the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Senior Corps and a new Citizen Corps, which will enlist volunteers to defend against terrorism in a sort of national neighborhood watch program.

"The president did something that's real important, and that is trying to channel the energy in this country to respond to the terrorist attack in a positive direction that's good for our country and for our communities," said Santorum, R-Pa., No. 3 in the Senate GOP leadership. "It's a great uplifting message. It's one where government can sort of pitch in."

Santorum did not always approve of AmeriCorps, which was created by former President Bill Clinton to enlist volunteers to build homes, tutor students and respond to hurricanes or other natural disasters.

When Santorum challenged then-Pennsylvania Sen. Harris Wofford in 1994, he lambasted AmeriCorps as a waste of government money that paid for a bunch of kids to "stand around a campfire holding hands and singing 'Kumbaya.'"

Santorum said he began to change his mind when Clinton placed a defeated Wofford in charge of AmeriCorps.

"As a result of the reforms that were made by Senator Wofford, I've become a supporter of the program," Santorum said last week. "Harris came in and took a program that was a government boondoggle," paying volunteers to carry out government work, and transformed it into a government support network for the nonprofit sector, he said.

Santorum claims to have some ideas of his own about how to improve AmeriCorps. He's spoken to Bush about it, he says, but he won't elaborate at the moment.