It’s the first rule of congressional lawmaking: Never miss an opportunity to grab everything you can for your constituents, even if it comes at the expense of everyone else.

That’s certainly been the case in the Senate’s health care reform bill, where it wasn’t just the moderate holdouts who successfully secured enormous earmarks for their states.

Here’s the emerging list:

(1) Ben Nelson, D-Neb.: Making a joke of the earlier claim that his vote is “not for sale,” the Nebraska Democrat won three huge concessions for his state in the Senate bill: $100 million in extra Medicaid funds; an annual fee exemption for some Nebraska-based insurance companies; and another carve-out exempting some physician-owned hospitals in the state from new restrictions.

(2) Mary Landrieu, D-La.: Senate leaders secured her support with $300 million in new Medicaid funding for Louisiana.

(3) Max Baucus, D-Mont.: The Finance Committee chairman has long fought for federal funding surrounding an asbestos mine in Libby, Mont., The New York Times pointed out over the weekend. The health reform bill, most of which Baucus and his staff wrote, fulfilled his wish, including a provision to expand Medicare coverage to victims living near the mine.

(4) Bill Nelson, D-Fla.: Representing a state chock-full of seniors, the Florida Democrat has been concerned about the proposed cuts to the Medicare Advantage program, under which the government pays private insurers to cover Medicare beneficiaries. The result? Three counties in south Florida are exempt from the cuts.

(5) Chris Dodd, D-Conn.: Many senators have been scratching their heads in recent days trying to figure out who would benefit from a $100 million provision to build a new university-affiliated hospital. Turns out that Dodd, who ushered the health reform bill through the Senate HELP Committee in the absence of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., is eyeing the funding for UConn.

(6) Bernie Sanders, D-Vt.: The Vermont Independent had threatened to oppose the bill if it lacked a strong public insurance option. Instead, Senate leaders agreed to Sanders’ request for additional money for community health centers ($10 billion more, to be exact). Vermont was also among the handful of states to win extra federal Medicaid funding.

This, of course, is nothing new. As David Axlerod told CNN’s “State of the Union” over the weekend, “Every senator uses whatever leverage they have to help their states. That’s the way it has been. That’s the way it will always be.”

Mike Lillis covers Congress for The Washington Independent, a Center for Independent Media site. ]]> http://iowaindependent.com/24294/health-care-reform-earmark-edition/feed 1 http://iowaindependent.com/22741/grassley-goes-after-proposed-high-income-payroll-tax-increase http://iowaindependent.com/22741/grassley-goes-after-proposed-high-income-payroll-tax-increase#comments Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:58:34 +0000 Mike Lillis http://iowaindependent.com/?p=22741 It was inevitable that conservatives would attack the Senate health care reform legislation over the proposed 0.5 percent hike in Medicare’s payroll tax for the country’s highest earners. Now they’re drilling down into the specifics.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has asked the Joint Committee on Taxation to analyze the future effects of the Democrats’ tax increase. Specifically, Grassley is wondering why the proposed hike isn’t indexed to inflation, leaving more and more Americans to fall subject to the increase each year.

“The unintended consequences could be significant,” Grassley warned.

If that scenario sounds familiar, it’s because the Alternative Minimum Tax — designed decades ago to target just a tiny sliver of high-income households — was similarly not indexed to inflation. As incomes have risen over the years, more and more upper-middle-class families have fallen into the bracket under which they have to pay the AMT. Some liberals don’t see a problem with that. But Congress, fearing a backlash at the polls, has stepped in each year with the so-called AMT patch, providing billions of (borrowed) dollars to prevent the tax from hitting those families.

The Democrats’ motivations are easy to surmise: Had they indexed the tax to inflation they would have generated much less revenue to pay for their health-care reform bill. And the proposed payroll tax increase is much less than the AMT. Still, it’s not too far a stretch to imagine that the lawmakers of the 2030s, also wanting to appease the voters, would also find it tempting to come up with the Medicare-payroll patch.

Mike Lillis covers congress for The Washington Independent, a Center for Independent Media site.

I won’t pretend to know for certain whether any of those claims are false. Borlaug clearly made more of an impact on the world than almost any of his contemporaries in any field of study. But it also seems important to remember that he had critics, and their arguments weren’t always wrong.

Nick Cullather, an Indiana University historian who is currently writing a history of the green revolution, points out that Borlaug’s legacy is inextricably linked to theories about overpopulation that were popular in the 1960s but have been largely debunked since.

Borlaug believed the process of high-yield agriculture would change the mentality of farmers. The dwarf wheats required cultivators to precisely regulate water and chemicals, to set aside beliefs in nature and custom and put trust in technology. It made peasants into scientists. He expected this new attitude to affect their relations with their leaders, each other, and their families. They would follow the profit motive, and he hoped, have fewer children. The link between the new seeds and state birth control and sterilization programs was so plain that in many countries it was rumored that the seeds caused impotence. “If only that were true,” Borlaug sighed. “We would really merit the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Cullather also says that Borlaug’s goals were as much about geopolitics and preventing the spread of communism as they were about biology or agronomy:

Seen from Washington in the 1960s, rural Asia was the most dangerous place on earth. Guerrilla wars in Southeast Asia and separatist movements in India and Pakistan drew strength from the fierce anger of peasants, whose sudden restlessness mystified American leaders. The spike in the birth rate of the domino nations after 1945 foreshadowed bigger crises to come. Aid programs, land reforms, the Peace Corps, counterinsurgency teams, and village development all aimed to transform this traditional rural world into stable, urbanized, modern societies, but there was little to show for the millions invested until Borlaug came along.

In addition, Cullather argues that the weather pattern that we now know as “El Nino” could have contributed to the bumper crops in Asia that Borlaug’s seeds have been credited with. His whole analysis is worth reading, if only because it’s so different from what you probably read about Borlaug earlier this week. You can find it here.

Gov. Chet Culver said Friday he will veto any attempt to increase the state's fuel tax.

Culver, who has been an outspoken critic of the idea, previously stopped short of saying he would veto it. That changed today.

“I have been clear and consistent in my opposition to an increase in the gas tax, but let me leave no doubt: I will veto any increase in the gas tax,” Culver said. “We have many important issues to address this year, including creating new jobs, but raising taxes on hard-working Iowans is not one of them.”

The governor said he wanted to make his position clear so lawmakers would not spend any more time this session with the issue. Both the House and Senate Transportation committees were set to discuss an increase next week.

Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Tom Rielly, D-Oskaloosa, sponsored the bill to increase the gas tax.  He told The Des Moines Register that without the governor’s support, the bill is dead.

A broad coalition of supporters had lined up behind the gas tax, including Democratic leaders in the Legislature, Republican state Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey, the Iowa Farm Bureau and local chambers of commerce. Culver, along with Republican leadership in the state Senate, stood opposed to the measure, saying raising any tax during an economic recession is poor public policy.

Supporters of the fuel-tax increase contend that Iowa needs more money to maintain the road system and make improvements to support economic development. A 10-cent increase in fuel taxes would raise an additional $210 million annually for city, county and state road projects. Iowa’s fuel tax currently ranks 32nd nationally and hasn’t been raised since 1989.

Culver has insisted that the recently passed federal stimulus package, in conjunction with his plan to borrow nearly $750 million, is a better way to pay for road and bridge repair than raising the fuel tax.

“President Obama’s federal recovery plan provides Iowa with over $350 million for transportation,” Culver said. “And my own jobs and infrastructure proposal will include another $250 million for transportation, especially for road safety and deficient bridges. These two better options mean more than $600 million to create jobs and improve our infrastructure, without raising taxes on Iowans.”

However, some economists fear that combination of funds is a short-term fix and will leave the state looking for infrastructure funding again when it runs out.

“If you want to fix the roads, the most efficient way to fix the roads is charge a user fee and in the current environment, the most efficient user fee is some type of fuel tax,” Arne Hallam, an economist at Iowa State University, recently told a joint session of House and Senate Transportation committees.

Rielly implied to The Register that while a gas-tax increase is dead this session there is little doubt it will need to be raised in the years to come, an idea Culver said he is open to.

A partially repaired home in the Lakeview District of New Orleans. Homeowners who have returned to the area have yard signs demanding an investigation into the levee breach and renouncing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for proposed property buyouts.

Pull up the palm trees and other tropical plants, and it would be fairly easy to mistake some of the hurricane-ravaged communities scattered along the Gulf Coast for flood-weary Cedar Rapids.

Like most Iowans, I don’t like to play the game of comparative misery. People hurt, whether in Iowa or along the Gulf of Mexico, whether displaced from their homes or plodding through government red tape. But it was difficult to look across the still devastated landscape of Louisiana and Texas without wondering if I would see the same scenes years from now in Iowa.

In Houston, Texas, an area hit by Hurricane Ike in September 2008, residential areas are dotted with blue rooftops. The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) moved in shortly after the storm and helped the residents by placing blue tarps on their damaged or missing roofs. Residents of these homes tell the same stories of frustration that I hear daily in Cedar Rapids. They wait for federal assistance, for home-insurance payments or for Small Business Administration (SBA) loans to complete their disaster recovery.

As I looked upon the destruction still evident in Louisiana, the words of a woman I interviewed in the late 1980s came to me again: “We should be and can be a community that cares for its own.”

Parts of New Orleans and other towns along the Louisiana coastline still sit battered and beaten from the 2005 devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Many residents left and have never returned. The tattered remains of blue tarps can be seen draped in and around damaged properties. Landlords there, much like landlords in Cedar Rapids, simply shake their heads in dismay. They have found little help in repairing their properties, if they’re repairable at all. Most are resigned to the idea that they’ll sit and rot until razed by local authorities.

While outsiders can often identify predominantly poorer sections of a city, there is no mistaking the poverty-line boundaries in New Orleans. Neighborhoods with money have rebuilt. Poverty-stricken areas sit abandoned like ghost towns while life buzzes around them.

In the more affluent parts of Louisiana, the roads have been repaired. In the poorer sections, exit and entrance ramps to the interstate remain closed. Concrete barriers have been placed along the shoulders of bridges, serving as long-term substitutes for missing guardrails. Shanty houses, never the sturdiest of structures, have again sprung up in a landscape that resembles the aftermath of a prairie fire. Birds rest on broken tree trunks, the only remaining evidence of the area’s flora and fauna.

The Lakeview District, a working-class neighborhood next to the 17th Street Canal, was perhaps the most shocking — and the most similar to the damage I left at home. I expected this neighborhood of primarily blue-collar workers and ranch-style homes to be recovered. In short, it wasn’t. There were some renovated properties, and quite a few Realtor signs at the curbsides, but others sat like those in Cedar Rapids — gutted and abandoned.

A man I spoke with at a gas station in New Orleans told me that a recent newspaper report said many of the renovated properties have regained the value they held before the disaster, but those that sit with damage continue to decline in value. Those mostly unaffected by the storms saw a nearly immediate value hike but have now settled back into their pre-disaster values. He added that while fuel costs now hover around the national average, rents in the city have remained well above what they once were. It was a situation, he mused, that further frustrated landlords, who can’t rent abandoned properties they’ve been unable to repair.

As we exited New Orleans, I was content to bide my time in bumper-to-bumper traffic. My eyes had filled with tears and I cried not only for those who lost their lives, homes and businesses in natural disasters but, selfishly, for myself and my own community. I had been searching the Gulf Coast for hope. I wanted to carry its recovery back with me to Iowa. Instead, I found the same story of social class divisions and sadness that has already emerged back home.

People in the Midwest have said that we shouldn’t cry for those in Louisiana, that they “chose to live there” and that “New Orleans is just a bowl that filled with water.” I wondered if those back home who uttered such phrases would be shocked to know that some people there, while wishing us well with our recovery, also believe we brought the floods on ourselves by clearing land for farming and creating excess water runoff into our rivers.

Few Gulf Coast survivors are actually interested in the blame game. Those relocated to Houston and Dallas miss the lives they left behind. Like residents and business owners here, they continue to go through the motions, but it’s only half-hearted living. One woman said it is difficult to live a full life when a piece of you remains elsewhere, likely swept away in a storm by floodwaters.

Our nation has not cared for its own — not the people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, and not the people of Iowa and Illinois. Gov. Chet Culver argues that the federal government, which faced more than 30 national disasters in 2008, cannot provide for all of its citizens’ needs. Iowa will need to generate its own help, he says.

But driving along the Gulf Coast, I’m inclined to believe that if the nation had stood up for people hurt by the hurricanes years ago, we might have nurtured a stronger national conscience. Instead, we looked upon those without electricity, without shelter and without shoes and demanded they pull themselves out of the muck by their own nonexistent bootstraps. We should cry for the people of New Orleans who remain displaced and unable to repair their homes.

We should cry for them because, short of an uprising, they are us.

The Department of Defense (DOD) and the National Guard Bureau, Washington, D.C., have ordered the 1133rd and 1168th Transportation Companies to federal active duty. The mobilization is part of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Global War on Terrorism. The Soldiers will leave Iowa and report to Fort Bliss, Texas for additional preparation and training before departing for the Central Command theater of operation.

To honor the guardsmen, political dignitaries joined family and friends at the sendoff ceremonies in Audubon, Iowa City, Mason City, Perry and Marshalltown.

Audubon

Several hundred people crowded in to the Audubon High School to say goodbye to 65 members in Detachment 2 of the 1168th Transportation Company. They were joined by Gov. Chet Culver and U.S. Rep. Steve King, D-Iowa, who presided over the ceremony, the Caroll Daily-Times Herald reported.

“I’m here with a simple message,” Culver, a surprise guest, told the soldiers standing at attention in six ranks before him. “To thank the members of the Guard for your service to our country, to our state, and to join every Iowan in honoring you as you are deployed.”

“But as you depart, I want you to always remember you are not alone. We will always be here for you, and we will always be grateful for your service to the country that we love. Because our service members are Iowa’s heroes…”

King remarked that he was impressed by Thursday’s show of community support.

“I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when we came over the hill here today at Audubon,” he said, referring to the hundreds of vehicles parked outside.

“You come out, Audubon, Audubon County and the surrounding area. You come out to support our military men and women who have sent themselves up as volunteers to defend our freedom and promote freedom around the world. This is a powerful testimony to the best that America has to offer here in the heartland of America.”

Iowa City

Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, joined 25 members in Detachment 1, 1133rd Transportation Company at the Regina High gymnasium in Iowa City, commending them for being both members of a community and defenders of it, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reported.

“You are true patriots and you represent the best of America,” Loebsack said. “You make Iowa and our nation proud.”

Not everyone was excited about the upcoming deployment, including Jennifer — the pregnant wife of Sgt. Nile Watkins-Schoening, who is preparing for his second deployment in three years.

Jennifer said she “was a little irate” when she heard her husband would deploy again. He also missed Eve’s [his 2-year old daughter] birth, returning when she was already 15 months old after serving with the Iowa Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry from September 2005 to July 2007.

Marshalltown

Hundreds of well-wishers gathered at the Babe Harder Gymnasium on the Marshalltown Community College campus in Marshalltown to say goodbye to 40 members in Detachment 1, 1168th Transportation Company, the Marshalltown Times-Republican reported.

Kaleb Morrow of Centerville, who was previously deployed from 2003 to 2004 to Iraq admitted that the second deployment was going to more difficult since he is leaving behind his two young daughters, including 2-year-old Emilia and 2-month-old Alexandria, and his wife, Bernadette.

“It’s going to be very rough to say goodbye,” he said before the ceremony.

Morrow said he feels they are better equipped this time around especially when it comes to more armor.

Mason City

Hundreds of family members and friends filled the Mason City High School gymnasium to help send off 115 members of the 1133rd Transportation Company, the Mason City Globe-Gazette reported.

Lt. Gov. Patty judge spoke on behalf of Culver:

“Once before you have traveled to Iraq to protect the people of America and Iraq,” said Lt. Gov. Patty Judge. “There isn’t an Iowan who isn’t grateful for your sacrifices.”

“On behalf of Gov. Culver, myself and our families, we want you to know that we will be thinking of you, following your work and you will be in our prayers every day,” she said.

Several of the soldiers are serving their second deployment, including Staff Sgt. Scott Dunning, whose wife is expecting their first child, a boy, on Sunday.

“I’m due on Sunday,” she said. “That’s in three days.”

Looking at his wife, Dunning’s voice cracked, saying, “It makes it very, very difficult to leave.”

Perry

A sendoff ceremony was also planned for 65 members in the 1168th Transportation Company Perry High School gymnasium in Perry.

Members of the 1133rd and 1168th Transportation Companies will report immediately to their mobilization station at Fort Riley, Kan. for additional training and preparation before departing for the Afghanistan theater of operations. In Afghanistan, these soldiers will operate as a Regional Corps Advisory Group Embedded Training Team (“ETT”) to provide mentorship and advanced training to the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police.

The units are medium truck companies which transport equipment and supplies in a theater of operations and both served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.

Community send-off ceremonies have been planned for Thursday, Oct. 30 in five different communities:

Aububon– Detachment 2, 1168th Transportation Company (approximately 65 Soldiers) -sendoff at 4 p.m., Audubon High School gymnasium, 800 3rd Ave., Audubon.

Iowa City – Detachment 1, 1133rd Transportation Company (approximately 25 Soldiers) -sendoff at 4:30 p.m., Regina High School gymnasium, 2150 Rochester Ave., Iowa City.

Mason City – 1133rd Transportation Company (approximately 115 Soldiers) – sendoff at 6 p.m., Mason City High School gymnasium, 1700 4th St. SE, Mason City.

Perry – 1168th Transportation Company (approximately 65 Soldiers) – sendoff at 7:30 p.m., Perry High School gymnasium, 1200 18th St., Perry.

Marshalltown – Detachment 1, 1168th Transportation Company (approximately 40 Soldiers) – sendoff at 7:30 p.m., Marshalltown Community College gymnasium, 3700 S. Center St., Marshalltown.

The former North Carolina senator’s campaign consultant, David “Mudcat” Saunders, working “rural” people in New Hampshire, is saying the Clintons “screwed” country folk with their support of NATFA and what he called a “Wal-Mart” approach to politics.

Saunders sugggested that rural Americans have been getting “screwed” on a number of fronts in a recent provocative interview with Iowa Independent’s Dien Judge.But in New Hampshire, according to a piece today by The Boston Globe’s Scott Lehigh, Mudcat is taking on the national Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, in more direct and pointed terms.

Here is Lehigh in The Boston Globe:

Campaign consultant David “Mudcat”‘ Saunders is in full angry mode.

The official name of this campaign swing is “economic fairness for the North Country,” but he and Cooter and the boys call it the ” ‘Let’s help John Edwards screw those who screwed us tour,’ ” Mudcat says. Us being rural America.

And who would that be?

“Who screwed us?” he asks, voice rising in incredulity. “The Clintons screwed us.” And, he adds, “Anybody that says different is delusional.”

The Clintons did it with NAFTA, and the Bubbas know it, Mudcat says. Why, it’s no wonder Hillary once sat on the board of Wal-Mart.

“The slogan of Wal-Mart is the same as what the Clintons’ policy has always been for rural America: ‘Always less,’ ” he says. (Actually, Wal-Mart’s former catchphrase was “Always low prices.”

In the Iowa Independent interview, Mudcat ripped Hillary Clinton for being on the cover of Fortune Magazine. Iowa Independent carried a separate story on Hillary’s appearance in that leading financial publication.

Corporate interests have long hedged their bets, but the former first lady who was demonized as something of baton-twirler for socialized medicine, is now assembling what Fortune assesses to be the broadest CEO support of any candidate in the presidential field. This is something Mudcat loves to reference out on the hustings.

The howitzer rhetoric from Mudcat follows Edwards own strong challenges to Clinton in last week’s Democratic Presidential debate. Edwards, again apologizing for voting to authorize military action in Iraq, said he had learned his lesson, but he strongly implied that Clinton had not and challenged her vote on a non-binding measure sponsored by U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, a move some senators, like Virginia’s Jim Webb, see as setting a pretext for another war.

Obama reiterated his campaign promise to enact universal health care by the end of his first term as president. During his speech, Obama provided the audience with an overview of his health care plan and, when it came to calling out the big drug and insurance companies for their role in exacerbating the health care premium boon, Obama pulled no punches: “In the richest nation on Earth, it is simply not right that the skyrocketing profits of the drug and insurance industries are paid for by the skyrocketing premiums that come from the pockets of the American people.”

Drawing on the experiences of Amy and Lane Chicos of Decorah, Obama helped highlight the current ills of the health care system and how it fails hardworking people who play by the rules but may face bankruptcy should a medical emergency arise. In the Chicos’ case, Lane was diagnosed with cancer when he was 21. In his 17-year battle against cancer, Lane lost a lung, a leg bone and part of a hip, but managed to overcome the cancer. Today, however, in the face of bankruptcy, Lane faces the new battle of somehow paying his family’s $1,000-per-month health insurance premium. Obama acknowledged the Chicos’ plight, reaffirming that they are not alone, “Over half of all personal bankruptcies are now caused by medical bills.”No Americans are immune to the skyrocketing costs of health insurance premiums. “Health care premiums have risen nearly 90 percent in the past six years. That’s four times faster than wages have gone. Eleven million insured Americans spent more than a quarter of their salary on health care last year,” said Obama.

Obama recognized he’s not the first person to call for health care reform: “Every year, candidates offer up detailed health care plans with great fanfare and promise, only to see them crushed under Washington politics and drug and insurance industry lobbying once the campaign is over. These industries have spent more than $1 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions over the last 10 years to block the kind of reform we need.”

Additionally, Obama cites administrative costs and antiquated record-keeping as other causes for the continuous spike in health care premiums: “One out of every four dollars we spend on health care is swallowed up by administrative costs.” Again, Obama holds the drug and insurance industries responsible for the brunt of these costs. “Since President Bush took office, the single fastest-growing component of health care spending has been the administration costs and profits for insurance companies. Coming in a close second is the amount we spend on prescription drugs. In 2006, five of the biggest drug and insurance companies were among the 50 most profitable businesses in the nation. One insurance company CEO received a $125 million salary that same year and has been given stock options worth over $1 billion.”

To combat what Obama called the biggest obstacle in reforming health care, part of his plan is dedicated to breaking the stranglehold that a few of the big drug and insurance companies have on the health care market. Under Obama’s plan:

We will make generic drugs more available to consumers, and we will tell the drug companies that their days of forcing affordable prescription drugs out of the market are over.

In the last 10 years, there have been over 400 health insurance mergers. Right here in Iowa, just three companies control more than three-quarters of the health insurance market. These changes were supposed to increase efficiency in the industry. But what’s really increased is the amount of money we’re paying them.

This is wrong, and when I’m president, we’re going to make drug and insurance companies compete for their customers just like every other business in America. We’ll investigate and prosecute the monopolization of the insurance industry.

Sen. Obama shakes hands with crowd members after speech

Iowa Rep. Dave Loebsack spent his Saturday recognizing Americorps Week, visiting Iowa programs that benefit from the efforts of Americorps volunteers.

One of the stops on Loebsack's schedule was in Centerville, at the headquarters of The Abilities Fund, a non-profit organization that works to assist people with disabilities in starting their own small businesses. Americorps Vista volunteers, usually recent graduates of Iowa universities, are regularly employed by the Abilities Fund to assist clients with disabilities fulfill their dreams of becoming self-sufficient entrepreneurs.

  Abilities Fund Executive Director Patti Lind, pictured above with Loebsack, explained how important Americorps Vista volunteers are to the success of her program. "The Abilities Fund would not be here without Americorps Vista," said Lind. She thanked Loebsack and Congress in general for continuing to support funding for Americorps programs.

A freshman representative in his first year in Congress, Loebsack said he would continue to support the program. "I haven't given very many speeches yet in Congress," said Loebsack. "But I recently gave a speech on the floor of the House in support of Americorps."

Americorps was created in 1993, when President Clinton signed the National and Community Service Trust Act. As a result, a national network of service programs was created, and the pre-existing VISTA program and the National Civilian Community Corps were incorporated into the fold.

  Nationwide, these programs help get over 70,000 volunteers each year connected to programs where they can serve .  To put it simply, said Loebsack, "it's like the Peace Corps, but serving domestically in the United States."

This first-ever Americorps Week, held May 13-20, was organized as a way to recognize Americorps members for their service and to recruit more Americans into the program.  The weeklong celebration was held to provide an opportunity for Americorps members, alumni, donors and partners to raise awareness about what they've accomplished and to motivate more Americans to do community service work.

To learn more about Americorps and the opportunities it provides, check their website here.

Click this link for more information about The Abilities Fund and how it serves to help people with disabilities start their own small businesses.