Political Quotes

“Today, we are going to deal with legislation that is the culmination of 6, 7, 8 years of work, I would suppose, of a very dedicated staff and members of this committee as well as the Governors, State legislators, educators, local elected officials, State elected officials. It is a bipartisan effort to take what the General Accounting Office said are 160 job training programs from the Federal level, consolidate them into three block grants and get them back to State and local government so they can be much more effective. As most Members know, only 25 percent of our population ever graduate with a 4-year degree. Hundreds of thousands of those, of that 25 percent, are either unemployed or underemployed. At the same time, we have spent very little time dealing with the 75 percent who do not receive a 4-year college degree and yet we had hundreds of thousands of high-technology jobs waiting for those who can be trained in order to take those jobs. Unfortunately, there are those who mistakenly believe that this legislation increases the Federal role in the area of employment, training and literacy programs. There are those who say that this legislation is an intrusion into the American family. This could not be further from the truth.”