Miller: GOP WIA Bill Puts Ideology over Practical Solutions and Evidence-Based Reforms
WASHINGTON—The following are the prepared remarks of Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the senior Democratic member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, on this morning’s debate on the House Republican’s bill to gut the nation’s workforce investment and training system, H.R. 803. Click here for more on the bill.
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Mr. Speaker, the House meets today to consider Republican legislation that reauthorizes the Workforce Investment Act.
Rewriting the Workforce Investment Act is an important task. It should be taken very seriously. It should be an opportunity to address some significant challenges in our economy, including how to educate and train a diverse workforce with the skills required to compete in a global market.
For forty years, this task was taken very seriously by Members of both parties. Job training legislation was generally bipartisan.
So I wish we were here to present a bipartisan bill to the House. I wish we were here to discuss the product of months of bipartisan negotiations. I wish we were here to consider getting something done for the American people.
But that’s not the point of today’s exercise.
Today, we are here to meet a deadline set by the Majority Leader as part of a rebranding strategy. This bill is a political product. It puts ideology over practical solutions and evidence-based reforms.
It fails to take a thoughtful approach to what our workers and businesses need.
And it decisively walks away from the program’s mission of helping our most disadvantaged workers.
This is why I oppose this bill.
First, the bill eliminates and consolidates programs for the sake of elimination and consolidation. The populations served by these programs often face daunting challenges in the job market. Youth, older workers, farm workers, workers with disabilities, English language learners, veterans, and low-income workers are among those who face the greatest barriers to employment.
Yet, programs to serve these populations are the very programs targeted by Republicans.
Even worse, the bill eliminates the directive requiring these poorest workers to be given priority of service. With limited money, hard-to-serve populations will be left out in the cold.
And we have yet to hear any credible evidence that eliminating these programs will save taxpayer money. We have yet to hear any credible evidence that these programs are duplicative. Nor have we heard credible evidence that this approach will make the system work better.
In fact, the Government Accountability Office warned this ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach may make services less accessible to many groups considered hard-to-serve.
Second, the bill restructures the workforce system in a way that locks out key stakeholders and leaves the system vulnerable to favoritism.
The legislation arbitrarily mandates that workforce boards increase business participation of the board from 51 percent to 67 percent. This will allow people in power to lock out key stakeholders including labor, community-based organizations, community colleges, or people who work with youth, or workers with disabilities.
These stakeholders know how to get training to people. And they provide a voice for the very people who need training and the very people looking for work.
The Republican bill will also allow governors to remove local control, so that local communities won’t be able to direct their own workforce systems.
Yet local communities working with local businesses, workers and other organizations know best how to respond to their economic needs.
Finally, the Republican bill essentially turns funding into a block grant and freezes authorization levels for six years. We all know this is a code word for cutting funding. This is what Republicans really want. Look at their budgets.
Democrats have a different vision.
We agree that the current system is in need significant reform. So don’t believe the other side who falsely say that we want the status quo. The system should be improved in ways that maintain our nation’s commitment to expand opportunity for all Americans.
We want to make job training programs more efficient and effective. This can be accomplished by requiring unified plans that streamline and coordinate these programs.
Democrats want to ensure real accountability so everyone knows which programs work and which programs do not work.
And, finally, we want to promote innovation in the workforce system by fully engaging community colleges. This can be done by ensuring there are resources for community colleges to effectively respond to economic challenges and meet future industry needs.
This should be Congress’s way forward to strengthen the workforce investment system. Congress should not be dismantling the system and leaving those who need help the most at the back of the line.
I am disappointed that we have reached this point on such an important topic. For months, Democrats have extended a hand to work together with the Republican majority. And for months, Republicans have ignored or rejected our requests.
Instead, the majority leadership has determined that a quick partisan bill is more useful to their rebranding effort. This bill has nothing to do with making the system work better. It’s about public relations. It will not move our economy forward.
The American people expect us to work together. They want results.
I urge my colleagues to reject this bill and reject this partisan process. It does not serve the American people.
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