On the recordFebruary 14, 2012
Mr. Tonko, thank you. And you really hit one of those issues directly, particularly the education issue. And we ought not jump to transportation before we deal with the investment in the human capital, that is, in the American worker. And the President did, in his budget, lay out $8 billion for community colleges to work directly with companies to educate their workforce. I can give a specific example. Again, in Davis, California, there is a biopesticide firm that actually goes out and finds microbes, or various kinds of naturally occurring materials, and uses that and makes that into a biopesticide, not a chemical but a biopesticide. They need technicians in their laboratories and in their manufacturing. They go to the community college to bring up the necessary skills and bring those workers in. So there are jobs out there, but they have to have the education behind them. So much of what the President is proposing--not only with community colleges, but with the Pell Grants and proposing $30 billion going into our K-12 schools so that those schools can be upgraded, and an additional $30 billion to bring the teachers back into the classroom.
