Political Quotes

“Madam President, I thank my colleague from Wyoming for allowing me to jump in for about 5 minutes. This became an issue as we faced the greatest recession we have ever had and, at the same time, we had GAO looking at how we are spending our money. For just a little history so everybody will know, when GAO did their first report we had 47 separate job training programs run by nine different agencies, and that year they looked at we spent $18.5 billion. What we found is only two had metrics on them, and we weren't even paying attention to the metrics to use them. I applaud the work of the HELP Committee, Senator Enzi, Senator Isakson, Senator Alexander, Senator Murray, and Senator Harkin, for bringing the bill to the floor. It is an improvement over what we are doing, but I wish to offer a couple of points I think the American people ought to know. We are not going anywhere far enough, not anywhere close to where we need to go. The SKILLS Act coming out of the House markedly changed job training in this country. Now, this is a big modification to the SKILLS Act, but the SKILLS Act actually paid attention to the Government Accountability Office. What they did is consolidate a lot of programs and put real metrics and real competition into job training. There are two critical flaws in this bill that I think are a mistake--and I know this bill is going to pass, so it is moving the ball down the road. No.…”