Peace Corps to Pare Ranks of Volunteers Despite Bush's Goal of Doubling Program's Size, Tight Budget Forces Cuts
By: Christopher Lee
Washington Post
Washington, D.C.
The Peace Corps, the popular service program that President Bush once promised to double in size, is preparing to cut back on new volunteers and consolidate recruiting offices as it pares other costs amid an increasingly tight budget, according to agency officials.
The program, which has a budget of $330.8 million, is facing an anticipated shortfall of about $18 million this fiscal year and next, officials say. Much of the gap can be attributed to the declining value of the dollar overseas and the rising cost of energy and other commodities, officials said. That inflates expenses for overseas leases, volunteer living costs and salaries for staff abroad, most of whom are paid in local currencies.
Those factors "have materially reduced our available resources and spending power," Peace Corps Director Ronald A. Tschetter wrote in a July 22 letter to Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), a member of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the program. "Tough budgetary decisions must be made now in order to ensure a financially healthy agency next fiscal year," he added.
The agency estimates its foreign- currency-related losses at $9.2 million for fiscal 2008 alone, spokeswoman Amanda Beck said yesterday.
In part, the program is caught in the political standoff between lawmakers and the president over the federal budget. If, as seems likely, Democrats delay final passage of the spending bills that fund the government until after Bush leaves office next year, programs such as the Peace Corps could be forced to operate at current funding levels indefinitely, administration officials said.
Beck said the agency could experience another $9 million in losses in fiscal 2009 in a "worst-case scenario" in which the agency has to operate under a year-long continuing resolution.
But that scenario is very unlikely, McCollum said yesterday, noting that her subcommittee has signed off on the agency's $343.5 million budget request and its Senate counterpart has approved $337 million.
"It's only going to be a short amount of time before a new budget gets through, and the Congress is committed to moving Peace Corps in an upward direction," she said, adding that the agency should ask for short-term supplemental funding if it needs it.
Beck said the "best course of action" would be for Congress to approve the president's full budget request. In a July 21 letter to Tschetter, McCollum wrote that she had "serious doubts" about the agency's plan to close regional recruiting offices in Minneapolis and Denver by Jan. 1.
"It is my goal to see a growing number of highly qualified, diverse and determined Americans of all ages committing themselves to serve our country as Peace Corps volunteers," she wrote. "Achieving this goal will require . . . a strong nationwide recruiting presence."
Tschetter described the closures as "mergers" with other offices in Chicago and Dallas that are part of a move toward a "field-based recruiting model" expected to save $1.5 million. Thirteen people will be reassigned to other jobs in the agency, officials said.
The tight fiscal climate also means an anticipated scaling back in new volunteers next year by 400, wiping out planned growth and leaving the overall number of volunteers at about 8,000, according to Tschetter. Volunteers serve for 27 months and are paid a stipend of about $2,500 annually.
Managers at Peace Corps headquarters in Washington have been asked to cut their budgets by 15.5 percent. The agency even plans to stop providing copies of Newsweek magazine to volunteers in the field, something it has done since the 1980s. (Newsweek is owned by The Washington Post Co., parent company of The Washington Post.)
"It just seemed like an extravagance," Beck said. "Everything is under consideration, including the director's travel."
Kevin Quigley, president of the National Peace Corps Association, a nonprofit group of former volunteers, said, "I worry about what the [budgetary] implications are for the next president, who we anticipate will have plans to expand Peace Corps."
Established in 1961 by President Kennedy, the Peace Corps provides skilled volunteers to other countries while promoting mutual understanding between Americans and people of other nations. About 190,000 volunteers have served in 139 countries since its inception.
The 8,079 volunteers today number the most in 37 years but are far fewer than the goal of 14,000 by fiscal 2007 that Bush set in his 2002 State of the Union speech.
Expanding the program remains a popular idea. Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has pledged to double the size of the Peace Corps by 2011. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), his Republican counterpart, has praised national service and said there should have been a stronger national push to encourage people to join the Peace Corps and other volunteer organizations after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
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August 6, 2008
Troops in Mauritania have overthrown the country's first freely-elected leader and say they have formed a state council to rule the country.
(courtesy of BBC News; website http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7544834.stm)
President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi was held after he tried to dismiss the military's top commanders.
Troops are out on the streets of the capital, Nouakchott, where tear gas was fired at about 50 protesters.
President Abdallahi came to power in free and fair polls last year, taking over from a military junta.
Troops rounded up the president - along with his Prime Minister Yahia Ould Ahmed El-Waqef - apparently without needing to use force on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, the president tried to dismiss four senior army officers, including the head of the presidential guard, Gen Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz, who responded by launching the coup.
The country has been in the grip of a political crisis since a vote of no confidence in the cabinet two weeks ago.
"They arrested [President Abdallahi] and took him to the battalion base. It's a textbook coup d'etat"
Amal Mint Cheikh AbdallahiPresident's daughter
What next for coup leaders?
On Monday, 48 MPs walked out of the ruling party.
Reports suggest some of the generals orchestrated the mass resignation, our correspondent James Copnall says.
Nouakchott airport has been closed, security sources told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.
A journalist based in Nouakchott, Hamdi Ould Mohamed el-Hacen, told the BBC people had gathered on street corners to discuss the coup - in particular the fate of the president and prime minister.
Unusual movements
Culture Minister Abdellahi Salem Ould El-Mouallah read a statement on TV on behalf of the coup leaders announcing the presidential decree sacking the top army officers had been "annulled legally and practically".
(An army statement said the president was no longer in charge)
The first indications of a military coup came as state radio and television were taken off the air amid reports of unusual troop movements in Nouakchott.
The president's daughter, Amal Mint Cheikh Abdallahi, said soldiers seized her father at his house at 0920 local time (0920 GMT).
She raised the alarm in a phone call to a French radio station.
"They came here to find him," she told Radio France International. "They arrested him here and took him to the battalion base. It's a textbook coup d'etat."
Political instability
The African Union condemned the coup, demanded a return to constitutional government and said it was sending an envoy to Nouakchott immediately.
The governments of South Africa and Nigeria - both major players in the African Union - also criticised the military takeover.
The US state department and the European Commission also decried the coup, with the commission warning it would suspend aid to Mauritania.
Mauritania has a long history of coups, with the military involved in nearly every government since its independence from France in 1960.
Presidential elections held in 2007 ended a two-year period of military rule - the product of a military coup in 2005.
The elections were deemed to have been free and fair and appeared to herald a new era of democracy.
Earlier this year, however, the president dismissed the government amid protests over soaring food prices.
The cabinet that replaced it has been dogged by instability, lacking the support of a moderate Islamist party and a major opposition group that were in the former government.
Mauritania is one of the world's poorest nations as well as its newest oil producer.
The desert nation, a former French colony of more than three million people, has been looking to oil revenues to boost its economy.
Your comments:
I have had no trouble walking around the streets of Nouakchott this morning and as I type, cavalcades of cars are driving around the capital sounding their horns in celebration of the coup d'etat. This being the tribal members of the General and those White Maure with little to do. At night it will be an entirely different matter and I expect the local population will remain indoors as the soldiers here in Mauritania are none too professional. I'm a creature of habit and will be taking my coffee at Cafe Tunis as normal. Ibrahim, Nouakchott Mauritania
The Islamic Republic of Mauritania will never be free and democratic until the Black majority are in full control. It is a time bomb which, if not well organised, may pass through what the Sudan has already passed through. Ahmed Kateregga Musaazi, Kampala, Uganda
I'm a Mauritanian. This putsch is such a pity. We are in the third millennium and this kind of things cannot be acceptable. We have better to improve our economy and not to fight each other. Mohamed Oumar, Kagoshima Japan
Things have been quiet on our side of town but shops are closed for the day. In the slums where we live, people are happy for any kind of change and hope for a better life. The cost of living has increased greatly the past 12 months and people are suffering because salaries have not increased and jobs are few and hard to attain. EZ, Nouakchott, Mauritania
In the south of the country everything is calm at the moment. But a big repatriation operation is going on with the UNHCR, and now the returnees are afraid that the new government won't keep the promises that all people who have been deported in 89 can come back. Laila al amine, Kaedi, Mauritania
With the leadership here in Mauritania, we all knew it was going to happen (the coup), it was just a matter of when. Christian, Nouakchott
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