Steven Holt: “I thank my friend from Colorado, and I rise in opposition to the rule and the underlying bill of the so-called SKILLS…”

“I thank my friend from Colorado, and I rise in opposition to the rule and the underlying bill of the so-called SKILLS Act. Fifteen years ago, before I was in Congress, I watched with great interest as Congress, House and Senate, Democrat and Republican, worked on worker training and produced the Workforce Investment Act. I was impressed. This was the kind of thing that Congress should be doing. It was the kind of thing that made me look forward to the prospect of maybe going to Congress some day. I remember David Broder, then the dean of Washington journalists, wrote a column saying this is exactly the kind of thing that Congress should be doing--and they were doing it in a bipartisan way. And here we are today, 15 years later, with an ideological, partisan dead end. Now, let me make it clear: workforce investment is what Congress needs to do. The government plays an important role in training and fostering a strong and capable workforce. The so-called SKILLS Act does not invest in the workforce. Rather, it seeks to combine and reduce vital programs that workers need. As a member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, I, along with others, sought to help to develop and update an efficient, fair program that would help eager workers get the right training and get the right jobs. We had some good ideas to contribute. Some of them had been tested in my home State of New Jersey.…”