For instance, President Clinton has used it to promote the idea that students have a right to a taxpayer-paid education. Obviously, the solution to the entitlement mentality is not to say that students are entitled to taxpayer aid as long as they work for the government for a year or two, but to drop all college subsidies. There are other, more practical objections to programs such as Americorps, of course. After all, it is hard for even Washington to spend hundreds of millions of dollars without achieving something. Even attractive-sounding jobs won't necessarily produce significant social benefits.
Some waste is almost inevitable.
And there have been the inevitable political abuses. It is bad enough for government to discourage real volunteerism. Even more tragically, it is government that creates many of the problems that require volunteer assistance. To the extent that it does so successfully, it will reduce the incidence of poverty and alleviate attendant social problems. Yet state intervention hobbles business in myriad ways.