The “The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education” (GIVE) act passed the House yesterday by a depressingly lopsided margin, and has passed cloture in the Senate.

The bill, promoted by the Obama administration as a means of encouraging America’s youth to participate in voluntary community service, has received little scrutiny from Congress or the public.

Innocuous enough?  Sure.

The Obama is in the details (emphasis added):

Yet, a version of the bill in the House proposes to establish a Congressional Commission on Civil Service tasked with determining whether a mandatory service requirement for all young people in America could be developed and implemented, though it is not clear that provision will survive a conference committee.

Moreover, an amendment to the bill introduced by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., one of the bill’s 37 co-sponsors in the House, appears to severely restrict the First Amendment by prohibiting the youth participating in the program from attempting to influence legislation, organize or engage in protests, petitions, boycotts or strikes.

While this isn’t quite to the point of the Administration’s overaching proposal to create a new “Civilian Conservation Corps”, conscripted and in uniform and living in barracks in the countryside working on “shovel-ready” projects (the”Mandatory Volunteerism” provisions – Orwell alert! – have been stripped out) it’s a necessary step to get there.

Oh, and the First Amendment restriction would be irrelevant; the government bodies for whom the draftees would be working would do all their political thinking for them, thankewverymuch:

Funds under the bill are designated to be distributed through AmeriCorps, even though AmeriCorps volunteers have a history of being recruited and employed by community programs with an ideological purpose supported by Democratic Party politicians, including Planned Parenthood.

Under terms of the legislation, volunteers recruited into AmeriCorps through the GIVE Act could end up counseling Planned Parenthood clients to recommend and arrange abortions.

It is uncertain whether restrictions will survive into the final legislation that would prohibit GIVE Act participants from being recruited under the program to work in ACORN, a radical community organizing group facing criminal charges in several states for voter fraud.

Look, I have teenagers; there are times I’d welcome the draft starting at age, oh, 16 or so.  But could there be a less cost-effective way to get work done, unless the “work” is to “shred decent paying jobs for adult workers”, in which case the plan sounds marvelous?

Look – there’s a case to be made for national military service (provided that it’s genuine National Service, as in Israel, Switzerland or Finland, as opposed to a selective draft that leaves the children of the “elites” cooling their heels in college while the rest of their age group carries backpacks around South Carolina); it makes the nation’s military policy more conservative, for better or worse.

But National Civil Service lumps three bad ideas – compulsory labor, bigger government, indoctrination of youth into the Big Government way of life – into a perfect storm of self-perpetuating stupid.