Clinton Calls for ‘Season of Service’

WASHINGTON —  Trying to generate “a new season of service,” President Clinton designated a National Service Week and said Saturday that he hoped more than 1 million Americans would participate at food banks, shelters and playgrounds.

“As I’ve said many times, the era of big government may be over, but the era of big challenges for our nation is surely not,” Clinton said in his weekly radio address.

“It is the very American idea that we can meet our challenges, not through heavy-handed government or as isolated individuals, but as members of a true community--all of us working together.”

Surrounded by AmeriCorps and Peace Corps volunteers in the Oval Office, the president announced that he was setting aside April 13-19 to promote volunteerism.

About 3,000 community service projects involving more than 1 million Americans were being planned for that week, intended to create excitement for the presidential summit on national service set to begin April 29 in Philadelphia.

“Every person can make a difference, and every person must try,” Clinton said. “Our mission is nothing less than to spark a renewed national sense of obligation, a new sense of duty, a new season of service.”

In the GOP’s response to Clinton’s address, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania said the president should ignore misleading “stories” spread by abortion-rights supporters and back legislation to ban certain late-term abortions.

“America, if we sanction the brutal destruction of those who are not perfect, who are not chosen or not convenient, who are unseen or undefended, who among us would be spared?” Santorum said in his prerecorded address.

Clinton last year vetoed a measure that would ban a procedure referred to by the bill’s backers as a “partial-birth abortion.” He argued that it improperly allowed no exceptions for the health of the mother.

The legislation has returned, winning House approval last month, 295-136, greater than the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto. A similar Senate bill last year fell eight votes short of being veto-proof.