Peace Corps Commemorative
The Peace Corps program was established by Executive Order 10924, which was issued by President John F. Kennedy on March 1, 1961. The program was legislatively authorized by Congress on September 21, 1961, with passage of the Peace Corps Act (Pub.L. 87–293). Between 1961 and 2013, over 215,000 Americans joined the Peace Corps. The National Peace Corps Association, a nonprofit organization for Peace Corps alumni, established the Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation to advocate for a commemorative to honor the mission of the Peace Corps and the values on which it was founded.
Joseph Blatchford
Historian Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, in her book "All You Need is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s", says that Nixon had decided to dismantle the Peace Corps. In July 1970, Nixon instructed Bob Haldeman to get Bryce Harlow on the job of getting the Peace Corps "chopped per the president's instructions" adding that "this has to be done and has to be done now...We can't do it just before the '72 elections and we have to do it after November 1970." Haldeman told subordinates to cut the budget by one-third and noted in his diary that the president wanted the budget cut "down far enough to decimate them." Two months after the November 1970 elections the plan went into action. Blatchford received the proposed federal budget for FY72 and to his surprise, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had cut the number of Peace Corps volunteers from 9,000 to 5,800 and reduced the Peace Corps' budget from $90 million to $60 million. Blatchford dashed off a memo to John Ehrlichman, special assistant to the President on domestic affairs pleading for preservation of the Peace Corps at its current budget level. "It will be quite evident to most Congressmen and to the public that the president's expansion of service opportunities has begun with a 30 percent cut over last year's request for the largest of the merged agencies," wrote Blatchford.
Congress had its own plan to cut the Peace Corps' budget. On December 17, 1971 Congress passed a continuing resolution slashing Blatchford's $82 million operating budget by $10 million. "Our whole budget doesn't amount to half the price of a submarine," said Blatchford. "Those characters over at the Defense Department are rolling in dough. They round off their cost estimates to the nearest Peace Corps budget." Blatchford ordered a temporary halt to signing up new volunteers although applications continued to be accepted. Then Blatchford ordered that plans be drawn up for the termination of half of the 8,000 volunteers in the field. The plans would be implemented if Congress failed to restore the Peace Corps' funds. "There is a point of no return when we must use the money we have to bring these people back to the United States," said one Peace Corps official.