At the Presidents' Summit for America's Future, chaired by former military leader Colin Powell, President Clinton repeatedly extolled the AmeriCorps program as a spirited volunteer effort much in the American tradition of charity and resourcefulness. But a 1995 General Accounting Office audit of the $400 million program showed that the average cost per AmeriCorps member, who are in fact paid real wages, was $26,000 to $32,000—nearly double the initially projected cost. One AmeriCorps project, the Casa Verde Builders, cost more than $100,000 per "volunteer" who completed the program. The GAO also compiled much evidence to suggest that "volunteers" regarded their work as a job like any other. Also, the independent accounting firm Arthur Andersen twice has examined AmeriCorps books, finding them to be unauditable and incomplete—grounds for criminal prosecution in the private sector. A follow-up study concluded that the program could not account for $38 million in federal funding.

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