And despite the enthusiasm with which the legislation was initially hailed, the Senate, by a vote of 52 to 47, last month rejected a Democratic amendment to restore $435 million in funding for Americorps.

Americorps is not the only program aimed at the poor that has been cut in the Republican-controlled Congress. The Senate has also proposed axing $1.6 billion in capital spending for public housing and $340 million in homeless assistance grants.

For Harvard Students, Mixed Feelings

Though participants in Americorps-funded programs criticized the Congressional cuts, not all Harvard students disapprove of the Republican-controlled Congress' efforts to change the role that the federal government plays in community service.

Jay Dickerson '98, President of the Harvard Republican Club, said that the real issue at stake in the wrangling over funding is not community service, but the role of the federal government in local issues.

"I don't think it's an attack on community service at all," Dickerson said. "It's about government. It's Clinton trying to put the government back into the people's pocket."

Dickerson said that most of the community service programs funded by Americorps ought to exist, but that federal funding of them is inappropriate.

"If they're trying to keep the government out, that's a good thing," Dickerson said.

Cost-Effective or Costly Pork?

According to the federal accounting department, the government spends $17,000 per full-time participant in the City Year and other Americorps programs. Other governmental and private agencies contribute another $9,000 in funding for a total cost of approximately $26,000 per participant. (According to Drogin, Summerbridge participants receive $2,400 for 900 hours of service.)

But even those figures have struck some in Congress as excessively high. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), for instance, has called the program an example of "costly big government."

Virginia A. Gold, the Program Coordinator for Americorps-funded "Academics for Changing Times" (ACT) disagrees with Grassley's assessment of the President's National Service Program.

Gold said that Americorps' structure contained "practically no bureaucracy," and that there were only six staff coordinators for an 800 person organization that contains 27 different organizations.

She said that the Americorps requires that programs funded under its auspices find at least 15 percent of their funding from non-federal sources. These sources often come from within the communities themselves and were resources that otherwise would not have been leveraged, Gold said.

"The debate really gets bogged down in the money question and the real question is what are the needs and what are the really creative ways that we can address those needs," Gold said.