Five years after congressional report, national service recommendations face test
A bipartisan congressional commission released its recommendations to strengthen all forms of service to meet the country’s needs just as COVID shut down the country in 2020. Now, five years later, Congress received an update on progress and unfinished business. Federal News Network’s Terry Gerton spoke with Dr. Joe Heck, the former chair of the Commission on the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to get his take on how times have changed and why his recommendations still matter.
Interview transcript:
Joe Heck: The commission, the National Commission on Military National Public Service, was charted by Congress in the fiscal year 17 National Defense Authorization Act to do a comprehensive and holistic look and evaluation of all forms of service to the nation to include military service, national service, things like Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, and public service, those that work in the government sector, in order to look at what were the obstacles to individual serving. What could we do to expand opportunities to serve and to then make recommendations back to Congress on how to adopt these changes?
Terry Gerton: So how did you gather the input for this? How did you do your research? You had three years of the commission before you issued the report.
Joe Heck: Right. It was three years of a lot of fact-finding that we toured the nation, 22 states, all nine census districts, a lot public meetings. We solicited comments through the Federal Register and received over 3,000 comments through the Federal Register notice in talking to the American public, to those who served and those who don’t serve, about their views on service and why they felt called to serve, why they have not served, what were the difficulties they encountered in trying to serve. What would they like to see in order to encourage more individuals to enter into military, national or public service? So the first roughly 18 months was fact-finding. We issued an interim report based on what we found by traveling the country. We came up with a proposed set of recommendations and then took those back out on the road and said, ‘OK, we traveled, we listened, here’s what we heard, here is what we think, are we on the right track?’ Held a series of panel discussions with subject matter experts in each one of the fields, again, to review the proposed recommendations and then came back to our headquarters, went through all the information we gathered from the second round of public hearings and ultimately came up with a series of recommendations. In actuality, it was 164 discrete recommendations on how to increase the propensity to serve across all service lines in order to strengthen our nation.
Terry Gerton: And what surprised you most in those conversations with people across America?
Joe Heck: Well, it was interesting because we were not charged to look at the state of civic education in the nation. However, every place that we went, it seemed that individuals were telling us that one of the reasons why individuals may not be propensed or interested in serving is due to the lack of civic education across the nation. And so the commission then took it upon itself to delve into civic education, realizing that is the fundamental foundation upon which a life of service would be based. If you don’t know what it is to be an American citizen, the rights and responsibilities of being a citizen and with the rights of citizenship come responsibilities, then how can we really expect someone to serve as they get older? So the outcry really from the general public asking for more civic education was something that was surprising to myself and I believe the rest of the commission.
Terry Gerton: It’s really interesting because, I mean, civics is part of curriculum, but maybe kids just aren’t paying attention.
Joe Heck: Well, you’re right. But civics, when you look at funding through the Department of Education, civics is woefully underfunded when you compare it to other things like STEM education. And the funding levels had consistently decreased over time. And most folks would equate civic education with one semester of AP American Government in high school. And what we’re talking about is inculcating civic education from K through 12 so that it’s embedded in every subject, not just a one-semester course one time, but a building block of civic education through an entire spectrum of the educational process.
Terry Gerton: So a lot has changed over the last five years since you had all of those national conversations and since the Inspired to Serve report first came out. Two years of pandemic shutdown, a real rise in political partisanship, people aren’t exactly lining up to work for the government these days. In fact, we sort of have the opposite problem. How do you think your recommendations play in today’s environment?
Joe Heck: Well, we certainly think that the recommendations are just as valid, if not more so, and potentially more necessary and needed today than when we first issued them back in 2020, which is one of the reasons why we recently held a five-year state of the report entitled ‘Still Inspired to Serve’ in Washington, D.C. where we gathered some of the commissioners together along with our partners, stakeholders, players from Capitol Hill to talk about what had been accomplished since the report was released in 2020, where we are with the recommendations and what a blueprint for the future might look like in order to adopt more of the recommendations. Now some of those recommendations were certainly adopted. We called for an expansion of Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs in high school and there was an increase in the authorized number of programs. We called for increased opportunities to serve through AmeriCorps. And in part, thanks to the pandemic, a public health service corps was created, again, targeted at specific needs of the nation at a given time. And so that opened up opportunities for more people to participate in national service. We did see some incremental increase in civic education funding through additional appropriations. But I think what was most heartening was that there was a bipartisan effort. Actually, every year since the report was issued, there’s been a group of bipartisan members in the House that have introduced the Inspire to Serve Act, which took our legislative blueprint and basically submitted it as a stand-alone bill. And that came out of the For Country Caucus in the House, which is a group of bipartisan members, all of whom have former military service. So bipartisan effort there. In addition, there’s been bipartisan effort both in the House and the Senate in the introduction of the Unity Through Service Act, which was introduced last year, last Congress, and was just reintroduced again in both the Senate and the House, which looks at how we can expand service. So certainly at a time of increased political partisanship and divisiveness, the commission still feels that service is an opportunity to bring people together, to break down barriers, to facilitate dialogue, to move the country forward and to strengthen our nation’s resilience and foster democracy.
Terry Gerton: I’m speaking with Dr. Joe Heck, the former chair of the Commission on the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service. You mentioned the legislative agenda that came out of the report and the positive response from a bipartisan coalition in both the House and the Senate. What do you think happens next?
Joe Heck: Well, we are encouraged by the continued reintroduction of the legislation through the meeting that we just had on Capitol Hill in recognition of the five-year anniversary of the report release. I believe we have reinvigorated not just commissioners, but also our stakeholders and partners to continue to push our elected representatives to review the recommendations and trying to facilitate adoption of recommendations that make sense, right? And so whether it’s the issues that we addressed for military service, whether it was expansion of national service or how to make entry into public service more efficient, we believe that the recommendations are still necessary, still valid and are hopeful that some will be adopted. We drafted a legislative annex that basically incorporated all 164 recommendations into one bill. We know, myself having been a former member of the House, know that that bill has no chance of passing because there are things in it that people will like and there are things in it that people won’t like. Our hope is that, like with most large pieces of legislation, individuals will coalesce about things that have unanimous support and pull those items out and put those things into law so that we can continue to foster a greater ethos of service across the nation.
Terry Gerton: So you mentioned this giant bill, but I think there are really three key recommendations that I know you highlighted when you were up on the Hill last week. The civics education in K-12 schools developing and expecting a year of national service and expanded service opportunities for adults of any age. Given how challenging it is to get a big bill passed these days, might you expect that local communities or even states would take this up as an agenda in their school districts or in their education processes or in their service opportunities?
Joe Heck: Certainly, yeah, that is a hope and some states have done that. In fact, one of the models that we used for our civic education portion of the report was based on the state of Florida, where they passed the Sandra Day O’Connor Act, the former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who was a big proponent of civic education. And so that’s already being done in some states at the state level. Likewise, visionary governors, Gov. Cox in Utah, Gov. Moore in Maryland, have through state means instituted service year fellowships. And so there is the opportunity at the state and local level for elected officials to call out recommendations that they believe would best serve their local constituencies and adopt and implement those recommendations.
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