Job training bill sets up another Hill clash with White House
Washington (CNN) – Setting up another potential showdown with the White House, House Republicans plan a vote Friday on a bill focused on consolidating job training programs despite opposition from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
The House is scheduled to take up the new bill, the Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills, or SKILLS act, Thursday.
At an event promoting the bill at Northern Virginia Community College, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor spoke in support. "We're trying to streamline things and to make it so that people that are out of work, desirous of changing a career, wanting to access some of these jobs that need technical training with them can do so and that's plain and simple."
Introduced originally by Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-North Carolina, the bill is aimed at assisting some twenty million unemployed and underemployed Americans hoping to change their careers. Backers say it will streamline current overlapping job training programs, which, according to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, cost the U.S. $18 billion every year.
"The suits in Washington don't have all the answers to what are the needs at the local level and what the SKILLS Act does is give a great deal more autonomy at the local level," Foxx said during the press conference Thursday at Northern Virginia Community College. "The president recognized it. He even mentioned it in his State of the Union Address in 2012."
President Barack Obama did talk about the topic in that speech, saying "I want to cut through the maze of confusing training programs so that from now on people...have one program, one website, and one place to go for all the information and help that they need. It is time to turn our unemployment system into a re-employment system that puts people to work."
However the Obama Administration put out a statement Wednesday opposing the SKILLS Act, saying it would "eliminate, or allow the consolidation of, many targeted programs, without providing the critical assistance needed by vulnerable populations such as veterans, low income adults...adults with literacy and English language needs [and] people with disabilities."
But the chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Rep. John Kline, R-Minnesota, promises the bill includes help for those people. "We believe that it actually provides better service for those groups than that current maze - that they will do better under this. We do not ignore them. It's spelled out specifically."
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on H.R. 803 sometime Friday.
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""The suits in Washington don't have all the answers to what are the needs at the local level and what the SKILLS Act does is give a great deal more autonomy at the local level," "
Yawn. Just more of the GOP/Teatrolls and their constant refrain of "let the red states screw up [insert social assistance program] so the poor andminorities will have to go to and stay in the blue states that do it right."
Remove all the congress guys in 2014, please, America, if you care for USA. Even Senate guys too. Term-limits are the dire need in here. Voter reform–Obama signs. Stocks are up–nation in good stead.
The House Republicans have misread the will of the people. I just wish the people would learn to read the wills of the Republicans.
What sense does it make to cut job training and other programs that help create jobs, just to redirect the money to tax cuts for coorporations that are making record profits? It makes a lot of sense if you're working for those corporations.
"Backers say it will streamline current overlapping job training programs, which, according to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, cost the U.S. $18 billion every year."
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In other words, let's replace $18 billion worth of programs that targets everyone, including major suburbs and inner cities, with a much smaller $1.8 billion dollar program that spends the money where it will determine at a later date.
Eliminating massive federal government redundancy and bureacracy. Who in their right would would oppose such a thing? Oh yeah, Democrats who think you don't own your paycheck, they do. And can take endless amounts to build massive duplicated programs to hire their union supporters. Meanwhile, your family struggles to get ahead as the government takes more and more and more.
no way!!! people will starve in the streets, babies will die, grandma will throw herself off the cliff, the sky will fall just like obama said it would. our government must protect all spending at all costs. it is impossible to cut back without causing the entire country to implode. democrats say it is so.
Holy, ****,
Anyone worth his salt has already gotten an Education in the regular way. Another program(s) that needs to be sent to the dumpster. Does anyone have any ambition anymore ??
If its a good bill, pass it ,if not don't !!!!!
Donna
Eliminating massive federal government redundancy and bureacracy. Who in their right would would oppose such a thing?
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Who said that there was redundancy in the programs? Oh, I get it. A computer training program NYC is redundant because there's one just like it in LA. People should move to LA if they want to participate in the computer training program.
Seriously, there is far more redundancy dollars to be found within the defense department, medicare, and medicaid that could be tackled.
How effective are these programs? Is ANYBODY evaluating them to see if people going through them actually are getting jobs? Or are they extended government paid vacation plans, masquarading as job training, that yield little to no results?
"Eliminating massive federal government redundancy and bureacracy. Who in their right would would oppose such a thing? "
People who don't buy the GOP/Teatrolls' thin argument that it's actually redundant. You swallowed it hook, line and sinker, so you're starting from the premise that they're actually correct about the claimed redundancy, etc. Given their track record over the past 15 years, I find that somewhat gullible. A closer look at this reveals it's largely another ploy for the GOP/Teatrolls to attack prorgams that they believe keep certain "undesireable" populations growing in the red states...and they desperately want those populations to get out of town so that the traditioanlly red state doesn't turn purple (like TX has haha).
That's just another of the never ending squanderous spending proposals that accomplishes NOTHING!