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Tom Gavin, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, claimed in a brief interview that "the budget is going to significantly increase the size of the Peace Corps" for fiscal 2010.

Gavin backed away from embracing a number, but even the 10 per cent bump that's thought to be in the works for 2010 wouldn't be enough to compensate for the rising costs of putting personnel in the field, critics say.

And it's certainly too late to stave off a potential cut of 500 volunteers in October under the current budget, which boosted the Peace Corps budget from 2007's $331 million to $334 for fiscal 2009.

That's basically just bailing water, says Rajeev Goyal, a former volunteer in Nepal who is coordinating a campaign to rally more support for the Peace Corps.

Americans are lining up to live in poverty to help people in tough spots abroad, and 23 countries are pleading for volunteers, but the money isn't there to hire them, Goyal says. And it won't be, he maintains, with Obama's "significant" increase for 2010, either -- should Congress pass one.

"It costs basically $40,000 per volunteer, per year," Goyal said. "So it will cost $20 million to save those 500 volunteers. Thus, there would be just $14 million left" in the FY 2010 budget to grow Peace Corps programs, and "it costs about $10-$11 million to open one new Peace Corps program."

Indeed, today the Peace Corps is a shadow of its former self, in size, if not spirit.

In 1966, the foremost legacy of John F. Kennedy's presidency fielded 15,000 volunteers. Today, despite a renewed wave of idealism lapping at its doors, the Peace Corps has less than half that serving abroad.

Candidate Obama vowed to fix that.

At a campaign event at Cornell College, Iowa, on Dec 5, 2007, Obama called for "doubling" the size of the Peace Corps, from 7,800 volunteers to 16,000 by its 50th anniversary in 2011.

But the budget numbers tell a different story.

Lawrence Leamer, a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal in the 1960s, blasted Obama's 2009 budget of $334 million in a Huffington Post piece that provoked a volume of anguished and angry responses from fellow alums. 

Obama was "just the latest" president who had "praised the agency, vowed to expand its size or influence, and then left it largely alone, moving on to what were considered more crucial matters," Leamer raged.

Others said the struggle for the hearts and minds of the world's Muslims made the Peace Corps as vital now as it was in the Cold War to "assure the survival and the success of liberty," as Kennedy put it.

Obama's proposed budget "at best will leave the Peace Corps at its current size," Leamer said.

Give him a break, others said. The fiscal 2009 budget the new president signed last month was pretty much a legacy of the previous Congress, say Obama's defenders, some of them also ex-Peace Corps volunteers. 

And considering the financial collapse and two wars Obama inherited, he had little choice but to fight about Peace Corps funding another day, they say.

"Obama assumed the presidency as Congress was finalizing its work on the budget," said one critic of Leamer's analysis, who asked for anonymity because of the fragile nature of the budget situation.

"So while technically, he could have weighed in on various items in the budget, I think --and this is my opinion, not a fact -- if he had weighed in hard in his first 50 days on Peace Corps funding or other things, chances are much, much greater that the end result would have been that Peace Corps would have gotten less money than it ended up with, not more."

But that's past. Even $367 million (a 10 percent increase for FY 2010) won't be nearly close to enough to breathe significant new life into the Peace Corps, almost everyone agrees. It may not even be enough to prevent a cut of some 500 volunteers in the fall.

It's positive effect would be only slim, down the road, says my CQ colleague, Jessica Benton Cooney, a Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador from 2004 to 2006.
 
"As a former volunteer I do believe 10 percent will at least send a few hundred more volunteers into the field, or help support host-country staff, vehicles, supplies, and in country training," Cooney said.

But the "returned volunteers," as they often call themselves, have an alternative. They are supporting a House bill that would boost the Peace Corps budget by almost 50 percent.

The Peace Corps Expansion Act 2009 (HR 1066), introduced in February by Rep. Sam Farr , D-Calif., would pump up the budget to $450 million.

"It calls for a $110 million increase that would allow us to respond to the current 13,000 applicants to the Peace Corps and the 23 countries ready for new programs," says Rajeev Goyal. "We are making a huge mistake as a country if we don't do this now.  I'm getting a lot of calls saying we should march to Washington."

Indeed, Obama's proposals may provoke a protest rally in Washington led by graying Boomers, Leamer said.

"A slew of former volunteers are getting ready including some who go back to the protest movements of the Sixties," he said in an e-mail.  "Unless something happens, it looks like the first major protest against the administration may be some of his most loyal supporters."

Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.