Political Quotes

“I rise in support of the manager's amendment for H.R. 803, the Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills Act, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. The issue before us can no longer be ignored. Last week, we received encouraging news as the Nation's unemployment rate dropped to 7.7 percent; but the reality remains that millions of Americans are still searching for work, and too often they cannot access the support they need to compete for in-demand jobs. Each year, hardworking taxpayers spend $18 billion to fund more than 50 Federal workforce development programs administered by nine different agencies. Many of the programs overlap or are duplicative and few have ever been evaluated for efficacy. Our Nation's economy is only as strong as its workforce. Right now, the need to reform our broken workforce development system could not be more critical. As Friday's job report illustrated, 12 million Americans are still searching for full-time work; yet employers reported another month with more than 3 million unfilled job openings, in part because there aren't enough qualified workers to fill them. We know the jumbled state of today's workforce development system is unimaginable, as well as the ineffective maze of programs each of today's workers has to navigate in order to receive assistance or education to help in their job hunt. I have a chart that shows this.…”