Jeff Duncan: “today we will pass the Labor-HHS appropriations bill, which contains many good things. It also contains a 1 percent…”

“today we will pass the Labor-HHS appropriations bill, which contains many good things. It also contains a 1 percent across-the-board cut, which I support, because we have to do that unless we want to dip into the Social Security funds for other purposes. But this bill also contains $1.4 billion for a program that I hope at least some people will begin to question. It is one of the most wasteful programs in the entire Federal Government, and yet, because it theoretically is for children, nobody will question it. That is the Job Corps program. Today we are spending over $26,000 per year per Job Corps student. We could take each one of those students and give them a $1,000 month allowance, send them to some expensive private school, and still save some. The GAO says hardly any of those students are ending up in jobs for which they were trained. That program is benefiting only the bureaucrats and the fat cat government contractors. Mr. Speaker, we need to question that program. It is harming children by taking money away from their parents to send instead to bureaucrats and fat cat government contractors.”