How Will the National Service Legislation Affect You?

Serve Next asks for your stories about how the Serve America Act, if it passes, will affect you and your community.

Kim Wollner writes on the Serve Next blog:

With the most difficult tasks behind us, we now look forward to the effects the Serve America Act will have on the nation.  The legislation joins together numerous service organizations to increase their resources, numbers, and funding.  But what does that really mean?

I am in the process of collecting stories and expectations for the Serve America Act from these organizations and individuals involved in service at all levels.  These stories will explain how a piece of legislation will improve national service in the very near future.

She invites you to share your personal story, or your reaction to the Serve America Act with her, kim [at] servenext.org.

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National Service Legislation Goes Back to the House for a Final Vote

Update, April 21, 2009: President Obama signs the Serve America Act into law. To take effect October 1, 2009.

According to Voices For National Service, the House could send the National Service Bill to President Obama this week.

Monday and Tuesday of this week, the House of Representatives will consider the version of the national service legislation that was amended and passed last week by the Senate. The legislation goes by the names The GIVE Act and the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, and is also known as H.R. 1388.

If the House passes the bill, the legislation will be sent to President Obama to be signed into law.

The House is considering H.R. 1388 on the Suspension Calendar, and debate will be limited to 40 minutes. Under suspension, no one can further amend the bill, or recommit it to the House Labor and Education Committee where it originated. The bill must get a two-thirds super majority to pass.

Because the Senate’s bill is more costly than the original bill passed in the House, getting it through the House with a super majority may prove challenging.

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