I look around this room and see that everyone here is deeply committed to the mission of giving everyone in this country a fair shot at achieving the American Dream.

Few people can afford the time or money to dedicate weeks or months to a pre-apprenticeship program without income to support themselves and their families.

There was a United States senator once from Illinois named Barack Obama who got into the SAFETEA-LU Bill that you could use a half a percent of your SAFETEA-LU money to build the road construction work force of the future, women, people of color, poor people.

I would hope that given the Trump administration's Stated interest in growing apprenticeships, it will embrace the opportunity to meaningfully scale up Registered Apprenticeships systems through this bill.

We want to give that conversation a fresh look and acknowledge that we need to do a better job of ensuring that people... understand the many pathways they have to accessing the high-quality lifelong learning opportunities that apprenticeships provide.

the Registered Apprenticeship system has a proven potential to reach hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of American workers.

I wanted to go to a local issue in the San Diego community.

I wanted to mention that one of my constituents asked why the GPO doesn't produce a Congressional Directory until about three-quarters of the way through Congress when it would be more useful to have it sooner.

I had asked General Milley about the cut to the Virginia-class submarine.

But what--could you tell us what funds are you planning on transferring to the wall in 2021 so that we can find a better use for those dollars now?

If they--if they were not requested and if they are not important, if they are not a high priority, why are they there? And aren't there many, many more uses that we have for those dollars?