Kevin Brady: “there's no question, we need to do a better job of helping people who are laid off from their jobs. Even though only 3…”

“there's no question, we need to do a better job of helping people who are laid off from their jobs. Even though only 3 percent of this country's jobs are affected by trade, if it's your job, it's an important one. But when workers try to get help, what they find is this program is bureaucratic and inefficient and slow to respond. There's a big mismatch between the skills our workers have and the ready jobs that are available for them. But TAA does not do a good job of matching those skills and those workers. And I think there's been a good-faith effort to try to make this a better program, but, in my view, the underlying bill makes it a bigger program, not necessarily a better one. TAA is a leaky bucket, and I think we're making the bucket bigger and we're pouring more money into it. I don't think we're fixing the holes that really harm workers. For example, in the bill today we actually enhance duplication of efforts rather than streamline it. This bill prohibits a worker who's laid off for trade reasons to going to the local job training center to get help. In fact, what we require is a new State-run program that has no track record, has no proven success, and we relegate them to really a second tier training system. In Houston we have WorkSource. It's at 35 different sites around our region. It helps about 340,000 workers laid off, has put 53,000 back to work at higher than average salaries. It's a great proven product.…”