Reintroduction of Peace Corps Reauthorization Act of 2023

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, today on National Peace Corps Day, I reintroduce the ``Peace Corps Reauthorization Act of 2023''. Sixty-two years ago today, on March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps, and this legislation will enable the Peace Corps to continue their legacy. As the co-chair of the Congressional Peace Corps Caucus and the only returned Peace Corps volunteer serving in Congress, I know that this critical legislation will invigorate the Peace Corps and ensure that its essential work can continue to shape and inspire people around the world for years to come. I thank my colleagues Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (NY-05), Congressman Garret Graves (LA-6), and Delegate Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen (R-AS) for being the bill's original cosponsors. I also appreciate Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Robert Menendez and Ranking Member Jim Risch for their leadership on the Senate companion bill in the 117th Congress and look forward to continuing this partnership.

President John F. Kennedy signed the Peace Corps Act into law to ``permit our people to exercise more fully their responsibilities in the great common cause of world peace''. He set out three goals: unpack your bag, live with and help meet the needs of your new community; in your new community work to create a better understanding of America by being the real face of America; and bring an understanding of the World back home.

My wife, Patti, and I answered JFK's call to service, beginning our careers in public service when we joined the Peace Corps as young married graduates fresh out of UC Berkeley. Our post was to a remote village in Western Ethiopia. We taught the 7th and 8th grades and engaged in community development.

Over 60 years since the first volunteer arrived in Liberia, more than 240,000 Americans have served in 142 countries. Over the years, volunteers advanced agriculture production, taught, provided medication education and health services, created cooperative road building, and brought every conceivable skill that every nation needed.

My bill, the bipartisan ``Peace Corps Reauthorization Act of 2023'', builds upon the Sam Farr and Nick Castle Peace Corps Reform Act of 2018 and the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act of 2011; making critical reforms to the agency to support current and returned volunteers. It strengthens the protection of volunteers against reprisals or retaliations for reporting wrongdoing and increases the federal workers' compensation rate for all Peace Corps volunteers injured or disabled during their service.

In total, this bill would provide the necessary federal resources to better support international programs, and current, returning, and former Peace Corps volunteers. JFK gave the call to service, ``ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country''. It is truly an honor to reintroduce this legislation on National Peace Corps Day.

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