[Pages H868-H877]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

JOB TRAINING IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2005

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 126 and rule
XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House
on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 27.

{time} 1557

In the Committee of the Whole

Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the
Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill
(H.R. 27) to enhance the workforce investment system of the Nation by
strengthening one-stop career centers, providing for more effective
governance arrangements, promoting access to a more comprehensive array
of employment, training, and related services, establishing a targeted
approach to serving youth, and improving performance accountability,
and for other purposes, with Mr. Terry in the chair.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having
been read the first time.
Under the rule, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) and the
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner).
Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, as we stand here today we continue to see significant
progress toward greater economic opportunity and prosperity across the
country. More than 2.7 million new jobs have been created over the last
17 months, and the unemployment rate has fallen to 5.2 percent, the
lowest level since September 2001. Our economy is strong and it is
getting stronger.
The backbone of a strong economy is a well-trained and highly skilled
workforce, and it is absolutely critical for workers to have the
education and skills necessary to adapt to new opportunities and to
move into higher wages.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed with this view when he
testified before the Committee on Education and the Workforce last
year. The chairman said, ``We need to increase our efforts to ensure
that as many of our citizens as possible have the opportunity to
capture the benefits of the changing economy. One critical element in
creating that opportunity is the provision of rigorous education and
ongoing training to all members of our society.''
Chairman Greenspan this morning testified before Congress and talked
about the need to do a better job with our education system and better
training and retraining of American workers.
The bill before us, the Job Training Improvement Act, would achieve
this objective by strengthening the Nation's job training system. In
1998, Congress established a system of one-stop career centers aimed at
providing one convenient central location to offer job training and
related employment services. While these reforms have been generally
successful, the Workforce Investment Act system is still hampered by
bureaucracy and duplication that prevents it from being as effective as
it could be for workers and their families.
Our bill includes a number of reforms aimed at strengthening our job
training system and better engaging the business community to improve
job training services.
Our bill includes a number of reforms. First, requiring State and
local workforce investment boards to ensure the job training programs
reflect the employment needs in local areas. Secondly, allowing
training for currently employed workers so employees can upgrade their
skills and avoid layoffs. Third, encouraging the highest caliber
providers, including community colleges, to offer training through the
one-stop system, and leveraging other public and private resources to
increase training and opportunities.
The bill also includes other important reforms. First, it
consolidates the three adult WIA training programs, giving States and
local communities greater flexibility and enabling more job seekers to
be served with no reduction in services.

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In addition, it targets 70 percent of the youth grant funds to out-
of-school youth, an underserved population that faces significant
challenges in finding meaningful employment.
The bill includes a proposal passed by the House last year introduced
by the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Porter) to create personal
reemployment accounts of up to $3,000 to help unemployed Americans
purchase job training and other employment-related services, such as
child care, transportation services and housing assistance, giving them
the flexibility they need in order to gain meaningful employment. In
addition, it includes the President's community college proposal to
strengthen the partnership between local businesses, community
colleges, and the local one-stop delivery system.
Later today, we will consider an amendment from my colleague from
Virginia to strip the faith-based provisions from this bill, an
amendment that would deny faith-based providers their rights under the
historic 1964 Civil Rights Act. When we considered this bill in
committee, we twice rejected it on a bipartisan basis, and I urge all
Members to vote against it today. The 1964 Civil Rights Act made clear
that when faith-based groups hire employees on a religious basis, it
can exercise the group's civil rights liberties and not discriminate
under Federal law. In 1987, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld this
right.
As my colleagues can see from the chart that I have next to me,
former President Bill Clinton signed four laws allowing faith-based
groups to staff on a religious basis when they receive those Federal
funds. Those four laws are the 1996 welfare reform law; the 1998
Community Services Block Grant Act; the 2000 Community Renewal Tax
Relief Act; and the 2000 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration Act, all allowing faith-based providers to preserve
their rights under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Our Nation's faith-based institutions have a proven track record in
meeting the training and counseling needs of

[[Page H869]]

our citizens. Why would we want to deny them the opportunity to help in
Federal job training efforts? President Bush repeated this call to
empower faith-based providers both during his State of the Union
address and again yesterday. I can think of no better place to start
than to protect the rights of faith-based groups who are willing to
lend a helping hand in providing job training and other critical social
services to the most needy of our citizens.
I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) for his
work in putting this bill together, a bill that is supported by a broad
and diverse coalition of groups, including the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, the National Association of Counties, the National
Association of Workforce Boards, the National Workforce Association,
the Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom and the Salvation Army,
amongst others.
We are part of a dynamic economy that is constantly creating new and
different types of jobs, so the knowledge and skills of each job seeker
is absolutely critical in determining their success or failure. If we
are going to help them succeed, then strengthening our job training
programs is essential. The bill, I believe, accomplishes that goal.
Unfortunately, the only plan that my colleagues on the other side
have put forward to address the needs of American workers is the status
quo. Their plan fails to reduce duplication and inefficiency, it fails
to give States and local communities more flexibility, and it fails to
take advantage of the positive role that faith-based institutions play
in our communities and the success they have in providing critical
social services to those most in need.
Mr. Chairman, the status quo is no plan at all. I ask my colleagues
to support the underlying bill.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this bill. This bill is
nearly identical to the WIA bill that passed this House last Congress
on a near party-line vote. It was a bad bill then, and it remains a bad
bill now.
H.R. 27 represents a missed opportunity to ensure that more, not
less, job training happens for the millions who are unemployed or
looking to upgrade their skills. This legislation fails to increase the
amount of actual training services that will be provided to unemployed,
dislocated, and underemployed workers. Instead, this legislation
focuses on moving around and changing the bureaucratic elements of WIA
without focusing on getting more resources to the consumers of these
programs.
H.R. 27 is largely the same proposal backed by the administration for
the past 2 years. Just a few weeks ago, President Bush spoke to
individuals in Omaha, Nebraska. There he met a woman in her late 50s
who is a mother of three children. She told him that presently she was
working three jobs to ensure she could provide for her family. The
President's response was the following, and I quote exactly: ``Uniquely
American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that.''
What insensitivity. Is this the attitude of this administration when
it comes to the challenges of working adults and families? I think this
quote from the President speaks for itself. It will go down in history
with Marie Antoinette's famous quote: ``Let them eat cake.''
Mr. Chairman, this bill is not going to help this mother of three or
the millions of Americans seeking job training. This bill is
objectionable for four primary reasons.
First, the bill block-grants the adult worker, dislocated worker, and
employment service program. This effectively repeals the Wagner-Peyser
Act and the employment service, the national program used to match job
seekers with employment opportunities. Termination of the employment
service will translate into higher unemployment and less jobs.
The elimination of the employment service and Wagner-Peyser marks
another example of the Republican majority terminating a New Deal
program. Wagner-Peyser was first enacted in June of 1933 in the first
term of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It is shameful that we are
eliminating a 70-year-old program that has helped so many achieve and
maintain work. In my hometown of Flint, Michigan, we had two parts of
the unemployment office, one where you applied for the unemployment
benefits and the other where you went in and were seeking a job and
they would put the unemployed and an employer together. That would be
decimated by this bill.
Second, H.R. 27 allows Governors to siphon off resources currently
providing veterans, adult learners, and individuals with disabilities
with critical services. Instead of helping vulnerable and needy
individuals, these resources would fund infrastructure costs of the
one-stop centers. Many of these individuals have nowhere else to turn
to receive help, and this bill would exacerbate this problem.
H.R. 27 requires programs which provide these critical services to
give up resources, but it also takes away any say over how they are
allocated or used. They no longer will have a voice on the local
boards. We should not be taking funds from these programs. These lost
resources will translate into disruptions and lost opportunities to
people who presently rely on these services. We should provide a
separate source of funding for these one-stop centers.
Third, the bill allows discrimination in hiring based on religion
with WIA funds. The bill turns back the clock on decades of civil
rights protections in our job training programs. This is simply wrong.
Focus Hope in Detroit, Michigan, is one of the best, if not the best,
job training program in the State of Michigan. Focus Hope was run until
his death by Father William Cunningham, a classmate of mine in the
seminary. He trained thousands of people in inner-city Detroit as a
Catholic priest assigned by his bishop there, and he did not care
whether those who were training people to run a lathe, to do
engineering or whatever it was, he did not care whether they were
Catholic, whether they were Protestant, whether they were Morman,
Muslim or had no faith at all. All he cared was they knew how to teach
what they were teaching. That was a very important and effective
program. He did not need to discriminate to carry out his duties. I
strongly urge Members to support the Scott amendment today that will be
offered later during debate to remedy this major shortcoming in this
legislation.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, H.R. 27 creates personal reemployment accounts
which voucherize the job training system and cuts individuals off from
other training services. The money they do not spend to get a job, they
can keep and use for any purpose. Workers do not need a bribe to get
back to work. Research on similar schemes have proven that PRAs are not
an effective means of providing job training.
Mr. Chairman, this bill does not respond to the needs of
underemployed and unemployed individuals. It misses an opportunity to
improve our job training system. I urge Members to join me in opposing
passage of this legislation.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the
gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), the author of the bill, the
chairman of the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness.
Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 27 and
thank the gentleman from Ohio for his leadership in bringing this bill
to the floor, the Job Training Improvement Act of 2005, which I
introduced to strengthen and reauthorize the Nation's job training
system as well as adult education and vocational rehabilitation
programs. Job training programs must be responsive to the needs of the
workforce and improving them is critical. In today's knowledge-based
economy, we need to equip Americans with the skills they need to find a
new or better job and quickly return to the workforce.
One of the hallmarks of WIA is that in order to encourage the
development of comprehensive systems that improve services to both
employers and job seekers, local services are provided through a one-
stop delivery system. The one-stop centers serve as the front line in
helping job seekers return to the workforce. At the one-stop centers,

[[Page H870]]

assistance ranges from core services such as job search and placement
assistance, access to job listings and an initial assessment of skills
and needs, to intensive services such as comprehensive assessments and
case management and, if needed, occupational skills training.
Over the last 3 years, I have met with local workforce development
leaders, businesses, the administration, researchers, and others to
examine how we can improve our Federal job training system. While the
Workforce Investment Act of 1998 made dramatic reforms to the Nation's
workforce system, I learned that further refinements were necessary to
ensure State and local officials have the flexibility they need to
effectively target resources toward the unique needs of their
communities.
The Job Training Improvement Act builds upon WIA to make it more
demand-driven and flexible while reducing unnecessary duplication and
inefficiency. H.R. 27 will help strengthen and improve the Nation's
locally driven, business-led workforce investment system to help States
and localities ensure workers get the training they need to find good
jobs.
For example, the bill streamlines the current WIA funding in order to
provide more efficient and results-oriented services and programs by
combining the adult, dislocated, and employment service funding streams
into one funding stream. This will eliminate duplication in service
delivery and administrative functions that remain in the system,
improving services for individuals.
The bill also ensures the financial contribution of the mandatory
partners in the one-stop centers while at the same time it increases
the service integration among the partner programs. This will improve
access to services through the one-stop delivery system for special
populations, such as individuals with disabilities.
In order to ensure greater responsiveness to local area needs and
strengthen the private sector's role, the bill simplifies the local and
State governance processes. One-stop partner programs will no longer be
required to have a seat on the local boards. This will provide for
greater representation and influence by local business representatives.
Currently, they are frequently frustrated that they are not able to
connect with or access resources from the local boards.
Mr. Chairman, I had a couple of my good friends, constituents in my
district, that lost their jobs in the defense industry. They came up
and thanked me for the help they received from WIA. They were able to
get vouchers. One of them went on to become a school teacher, one a
worker in the computer industry. This bill works. The new bill that we
are passing today will make it better, more efficient and help the
people to really get the services they need so we can continue to have
the job growth that we have been enjoying the last few months here in
the country. I support this strongly.
Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from
Washington (Mr. McDermott).

{time} 1615

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, the question is when is the Congress
going to stop letting American businesses and workers down? It is time
to roll up our sleeves and chart a path to economic freedom. It is time
to govern.
Today the Republicans again ask us to consider a bill with provisions
that will make its mark by missing the mark. It inflates government
bureaucracy and deflates workers' opportunity. American business needs
the best, most qualified workers on earth, but this bill does nothing
to reach that goal.
Workers, especially the working poor, need a credible realistic road
to economic freedom. This bill is a dead end. Our workforce is in
trouble. The ``L.A. Times,'' which I will enter into the Record an
article from the ``L.A. Times,'' recently reported that the volatility
of income for the working poor has doubled in recent years. Income
among the working poor now fluctuates by as much as 50 percent
annually. One cannot buy a home with a wild fluctuation like that. One
cannot plan for their children's college education with income swings
like that, and they are lucky to put food on the table.
Mr. Chairman, we need to rethink the systems we have in place to help
workers and employers maximize productivity and profitability. We
continue to pursue open trade to open our domestic market to foreign
competition, but we are not employing the same vigor toward pursuing
the means to ensure that our workforce can compete and be the best
trained and equipped in the world. This issue, investing in our
workforce, transcends social and economic status.
I represent the 7th District of Washington, Seattle, where the
economy is driven by manufacturing as well as by innovation and the
service industry. Everyone in these industries is competing for their
jobs against someone overseas. Making the proper investments and
systems to helping the working poor obtain access to job training and
education is even more important.
The so-called Personal Reemployment Accounts compel, compel,
unemployed workers to take the first job they can get and forego
current job training opportunities. Instead of economic independence,
this bill produces economic surrender. We can do better.
We ought to significantly invest in continuing education training
programs for people in industries that are challenged by global
competition. Furthermore, we ought to seriously consider wage
insurance. This would enable the working poor to move into jobs that
may begin by paying a little less but have greater opportunities for
wage growth and economic stability down the road. This bill, even
without the bad provisions such as Personal Reemployment Accounts and
the provisions that allow workplace discrimination based on religion,
does nothing to meet the new challenges that workers and businesses
that rely on them face in the new global economy.
The question again, Mr. Chairman, is when will you tell your chairman
to start taking these responsibilities seriously rather than playing
politics, as we are here today, putting the same bill before us that we
have put here before, we know it is not going anywhere, it is a waste
of time, and it does nothing for the workers? This is not even an
election year.

[From the Los Angeles Times, Dec. 12, 2004]

The Poor Have More Things Today--Including Wild Income Swings

(By Peter G. Gosselin)

``The poor are not like everyone else,'' social critic
Michael Harrington wrote in the 1962 bestseller ``The Other
America,'' which helped shape President Johnson's War on
Poverty.
``They are a different kind of people,'' he declared.
``They think and feel differently; they look upon a different
America than the middle class.''
How then to account for Elvira Rojas?
The 36-year-old Salvadoran-born dishwasher and her partner,
warehouse worker Jose Maldanado, make barely enough to stay
above the official poverty line--$18,810 last year for a
family of four. But by working two, sometimes three, jobs
between them, they are grabbing at middle-class dreams.
Rojas and Maldanado live in a two-room apartment in
Hawthorne but have china settings for 16 tucked in a wooden
hutch. Their two young daughters receive health coverage
through Medi-Cal but get many of their clothes at Robinsons-
May.
The family struggles to meet its monthly bills but has
taken on a mountain of credit card debt. They have used
plastic to buy a large-screen TV and other luxuries but have
also relied on it to cover bare necessities such as rent and
emergency-room visits.
``That's why I'm really poor even though I work so hard,''
Rojas said with a rueful laugh.
Some see circumstances like Rojas' as testament to the
economic strides that America has made over the last
generation, rather than a reflection of its failures.
``We've won the War on Poverty,'' asserted Robert Rector,
an influential analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a
conservative Washington think tank. ``We've basically
eliminated widespread material deprivation.''
But if deprivation is no longer as big a problem, that
hardly means all is well. In many ways, Rojas is the new face
of the working poor, suffering not so much from a dearth of
possessions as from a cavalcade of chaos--pay cuts and
eviction notices, car troubles and medical crises--that
rattles her finances and nudges her family toward the
economic brink.
In this way, Rojas and millions like her are not--as
Harrington described them--fundamentally different from most
other Americans; they are remarkably similar.
Indeed, today's working poor are experiencing an extreme
version of the economic turbulence that is rocking families
across the income spectrum. And the cause, no matter people's
means, is the same: a quarter-

[[Page H871]]

century-long shift of economic risk by business and
government onto working families.
Protections that Americans, especially poor ones, once
relied on to buffer them from economic setbacks--affordable
housing, stable jobs with good benefits, union membership and
the backstop of cash welfare--have shriveled or been
eliminated. These losses have been only partially offset by
an expansion of programs such as the earned-income tax credit
for the working poor and publicly provided healthcare.
For the most part, the poor have been left to cope on their
own, scrambling from one fragile employment arrangement to
the next, doubling up on housing and borrowing heavily.
``Families up and down the income distribution are bearing
more economic risk than they did 25 or 30 years ago,'' said
Johns Hopkins University economist Robert A. Moffitt. ``But
the increase has been especially dramatic among the working
poor.''
As a result, their earnings are jumping around like never
before.
During the early 1970s, the inflation-adjusted incomes of
most families in the bottom fifth of the economy bounced up
and down no more than 25% a year. By the beginning of this
decade, those annual fluctuations had doubled to as much as
50%, according to statistics generated by the Los Angeles
Times in conjunction with Moffitt and researchers at several
other major universities.
For a family with an income at the 20th percentile--or
roughly $23,000 a year in inflation-adjusted terms--that has
meant recent annual swings of as much as $12,000. Twenty-five
years ago, those swings tended to be no more than $4,300.
The Times' figures are based on the Panel Study of Income
Dynamics, a database funded by the National Science
Foundation and run by the University of Michigan. In contrast
to most economic indicators, which involve taking random
samples of different Americans at different times and
comparing the results, the panel study has followed the same
5,000 nationally representative families and their offshoots
for nearly 40 years.
In supplementing conventional statistics with the panel-
study data, the newspaper has sought to explain why Americans
in rising numbers report being less financially secure, even
as the nation has grown richer overall.
In a nutshell, The Times has found that behind the upward
march of most economic averages are increasingly frequent
instances of financial setback and hardship for a large swath
of the population. Even those in the top-10 percent bracket--
making well over $100,000 a year--have seen their incomes
grow more volatile and therefore prone to steep dives.
But for the country's 20 million working-poor families, the
findings are particularly sobering: They now run the risk of
seeing their incomes slashed by half in any given year.
That's almost double the volatility experienced by families
in the middle of the economic spectrum, the newspaper's
findings show.
``The only way to improve your life if you're poor is to be
very prudent and make very, very few mistakes like getting
fired or splurging and ending up with a lot of debt,'' said
Christopher Jencks, a Harvard University authority on
poverty. ``Most people aren't that prudent.''

Finding a Foothold

Elvira Rojas headed for the U.S. at age 21 in search of two
things that were in short supply in her native EI Salvador:
peace and prosperity.
Combatants in that country's bloody civil war engaged in
firefights outside her family's home in Acajutla, and
Maldanado had received death threats because of his role as a
former military man. In addition, Rojas discovered that the
only job she could get with her high school diploma from El
Instituto Nacional was at the local fish-packing plant.
The pair arrived in L.A. in May 1989. She quickly found
work cleaning houses with two of Maldanado's aunts. He landed
a job at a Hawthorne dry-cleaning plant. Between them, they
made about $200 a week.
But with the average rent on a one-bedroom apartment in the
city then running about $600, they could not afford a first
foothold in their new country--a place of their own to live.
``I felt bad in the beginning because I had nothing,'' Rojas
said. ``I wanted to go home.''
With nowhere else to turn, they moved in with one of
Maldanado's aunts, her five children and four cousins in a
two-bedroom house on Firmona Avenue in Hawthorne. They slept
on the kitchen floor.
As the couple began to make more money, they moved into a
succession of other apartments. Each was a little larger than
the last but still crammed with relatives.
Rojas and Maldanado had few alternatives. During their
first years, they were effectively excluded from Federal rent
subsidies or State help because they were illegal immigrants.
In 1991, the two gained legal status under a program that
allowed people fleeing war in their homelands to be counted
as refugees. But their new standing was thrown into question
in 1994, when California voters approved Proposition 187. The
initiative was designed to cut off state assistance to
undocumented immigrants, but many legal ones interpreted the
measure as a blanket ban aimed at them too.
Rojas, for one, took no chances; she never applied for
housing assistance--or almost any other kind of aid--although
it appears from her Social Security records and tax returns
that she would have qualified. ``I didn't want to be a burden
on the government,'' she explained.
It's probably just as well. By the mid-1990s, the state and
federal governments were winding down most of a six-decade-
long drive to help poor families meet their housing needs.
That effort had begun under President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
who decried the conditions gripping America. ``I see one-
third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished,'' he
said in 1937.
In the years that followed, a booming private sector
largely solved the food and clothing problems. And a
combination of financial market innovations and federal power
applied through a battery of agencies--the Veterans
Administration, the Federal Housing Administration, Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac--greatly expanded home ownership,
especially among the middle class. But that still left what
to do for poor families, most of whom could afford only to
rent.
Washington's first answer was to have the government build
and run housing projects. Some worked. But many degenerated
into vertical ghettos, victimized by disastrous design,
racial and economic segregation, drugs and crime.
In 1974, President Nixon and Congress turned to another
solution: the Section 8 program. Instead of putting up
buildings itself, the government would subsidize private
developers to construct housing and give poor families
vouchers to rent apartments in the open market. But developer
subsidies produced cost overruns and political scandals in
the 1980s and were largely phased out.
That left only the vouchers, which recently have been cut
back. In all, the amount of money that Congress and the
president have authorized to be spent on housing assistance
has plunged by nearly two-thirds in the last 25 years, from
an inflation-adjusted $82 billion in 1978 to $29 billion last
year.
Washington's latest answer has been more laissez-faire:
offer tax breaks for the creation of low-income housing but
otherwise leave it to the marketplace to decide how much gets
built. In hot housing markets such as Southern California's,
little has.
``We've produced tens of thousands of units recently, but
the well's been dry for so long we should have been producing
hundreds of thousands,'' said Jan Breidenbach, executive
director of the Southern California Assn. of Non-Profit
Housing, which represents many of the region's developers of
low-income housing.
In the absence of substantial government help--and with
housing prices soaring beyond the reach of even the middle
class--most working-poor families have been left to fend
for themselves.
By 1997, Rojas and Maldanado thought they had succeeded in
doing that. He was making $5,800 a year at the dry-cleaning
plant. She was making more than $12,000 dashing between a
part-time job at an airline linen service on Prairie Avenue
in Hawthorne and a temporary position with Kelly Services,
packing magazines, perfume and shampoo in samplers for
direct-market mailings.
In the fall of that year, the couple, with another of
Maldanado's aunts and her children, moved into a white stucco
bungalow on Burin Avenue in Inglewood, not far from Los
Angeles International Airport.
Although the house sagged in the middle and had drainage
problems, it featured two kitchens and two living rooms,
plenty of space for each family. The place cost Rojas and
Maldanado $550 a month. That was more than 30% of their
earnings, a level the government considers the outer limit of
affordable, but it was still something they could bear.
The bungalow ``felt good because there were not so many of
us,'' Rojas said. ``It was the most room I've ever had.'' The
following year, the two families celebrated Christmas by
stringing sparkling lights along the structure's faded blue
eaves and inviting neighbors for a party.

Heading West for Work

Albert Grimes arrived in Los Angeles a few years before
Elvira Rojas did, similarly hungry to start over.
He came from Cleveland, where his family was a pillar of
the African American community. His father, ``Big Joe''
Grimes, had returned home from World War II and used the GI
Bill to buy a house. He opened a barbershop, founded a youth
marching band called B.J.'s Raiders and became a kingmaker of
sorts in Cleveland politics.
Albert's uncle, Walter Dicks, ran the municipal workers
union and helped the younger Grimes find a job right out of
high school on a city sanitation truck. It paid about
$15,000, equal to about $30,000 in today's dollars.
But Albert was laid off during one of Cleveland's periodic
fiscal crises. In 1985, at the age of 29, he left home and
headed West. He had no trouble finding work with one of Los
Angeles' big employers.
For most of the postwar era, working Americans could count
on big business even more than big government to provide
safeguards against economic risk. In a reverse of the current
passion for temps, outsourcing and lean workforces, corporate
America felt it had a civic duty to offer full-time jobs with
good wages and solid benefits, even to those like Grimes with
no college education.

[[Page H872]]

``Steady, year-round employment is so right from the
standpoint of the employer, so right from the standpoint of
the workers and so right for the country as a whole . . .
that it is hard to see why we manufacturers have not made
more progress in its application,'' Procter & Gamble Co.
President Richard Deupree told a 1948 audience.
As the decades passed, Los Angeles became the hub of the
nation's aerospace industry; a second home to U.S.
automakers, after Detroit; and a major financial center.
Among the region's largest employers: Lockheed Corp.,
McDonnell Douglas Corp., General Motors Corp., Goodyear Tire
& Rubber Co., First Interstate Bank and Security Pacific
Bank.
By the late 1970s, the typical L.A. County workplace had
nearly 30% more employees than the U.S. average, according to
government statistics--a situation that translated into a
high level of economic security.
``There is a close correlation between firm size,
employment stability and generous compensation,'' said UCLA
economist Sanford Jacoby, who has written extensively about
the new risks that working people face. ``Big firms
underwrote the creation of America's--and Southern
California's--blue-collar middle class.''
As for Grimes, he found his way to Sears, Roebuck & Co.'s
massive warehouse at Olympic Boulevard and Soto Street, where
he was hired as a merchandise handler represented by the
Teamsters. He did well for himself there. His Social Security
records show that his income rose steadily--from $12,000 in
1987 to $20,000 in 1990 (or nearly $28,000 in today's terms).
On top of that, his health care was covered.
But in 1992, Sears stumbled, the result of a failed
strategy to sell everything from socks to stocks. Grimes,
then on leave with a bad back, soon found himself out of a
job.
It was a particularly bad time to be without work. The
combination of recession and steep cuts in defense spending,
brought on by the end of the Cold War, walloped Southern
California. Unremitting pressure from low-cost foreign
producers and wage competition from new immigrants such as
Rojas took a severe toll on unskilled workers like Grimes.
Any chance that he would be rehired by Sears soon
evaporated when the company's warehouse and adjacent store
were damaged in the L.A. riots. The warehouse was eventually
shuttered.
By the time the region bounced back, the nature of
employment had changed. Gone were many of the corporate
giants that had delivered a generation of blue-collar
security. In their place were tens of thousands of relatively
small employers whose job-generating capacity is now
regularly praised by the nation's leaders but whose
instability, often-low wages and meager benefits are less
remarked upon.
Government figures show that the average size of a
workplace shrank by 18% nationally between its late-1970s
peak and last year. The slide was even steeper in L.A.
County, with the average size of a workplace plunging 50% to
10 workers. This trend, according to Jacoby, ``is one of the
most important and least appreciated reasons why so many
people are having a tough time making a go of it today.''
For several years, Grimes all but vanished from the regular
economy. He, his chronically ill girlfriend and the couple's
young son lived off a mix of workers' compensation,
disability payments and her welfare checks.
In 1995, he resurfaced, this time as a security guard and--
befitting the U.S. economy's free-market transformation--a
self-employed entrepreneur. ``I set myself up as a
corporation,'' he said proudly.
With the help of a friend, Grimes persuaded a string of
businesses in a run-down neighborhood along Bixel Street near
downtown to hire him.
For three years, he watched over a dental office, a parking
garage, a liquor store and a methadone clinic. His earnings
climbed from $5,600 when he launched his venture to more than
$27,000 two years later. He bought himself a used Pontiac
Grand Am, a washer and dryer and a Rent-A-Center living room
set.
Then in 1998, he found out how risky the life of an
entrepreneur can be: The city bought up the properties along
Bixel Street to make way for the Staples Center.
The businesses that employed Grimes closed. Demolition
crews flattened the buildings and, along with them, Grimes'
income. His earnings that year went clear to zero.

High Hopes

As Grimes' world caved in on him once more, Rojas'
prospects were looking up.
She was still shuttling between her jobs at the airline
laundry service and as a packer of sundries when one of
Maldanado's cousins told her that the dishwashing department
at the Wyndham Hotel on Century Boulevard near LAX was hiring
for the 4-to-midnight shift.
The full-time position paid more than $7 an hour and,
because the workers were represented by Hotel Employees and
Restaurant Employees Local 814, it came with holidays and
family health insurance. The latter would prove particularly
important when Rojas suffered a miscarriage in 2001, and her
health plan picked up the tab for more than $5,000.
Rojas saw the job as a turning point. Until then, virtually
everything she had in her life had belonged to her in-laws.
``If we used dishes,'' she remembered, ``they were theirs. If
we watched TV, it was theirs.''
But all that would change when she went to the Wyndham. ``I
knew at that point I would have my own things,'' she said.
By 1998, as Rojas and Maldanado's income more than doubled
to $26,000 ($30,500 in today's dollars), the couple began
assembling the pieces of a middle-class life.
Rojas bought china by Royal Prestige. She purchased a hutch
from Levitz Furniture in which to display the dishes. She and
Maldanado acquired a couch, a bed and a dining table. They
shelled out for two large-screen TVs and signed up for
satellite-dish service.
They bought a 1987 Plymouth Sundance to go with their aging
blue Toyota Camry. And they traveled.
``We would go to Las Vegas and Disneyland,'' Maldanado
recalled. ``We had more money to spend.''
When the first of the couple's two daughters was born the
following year, Rojas was so eager for her to be part of the
fabric of America that she resisted entreaties to name her
Maria after five of Maldanado's aunts, and instead gave her
the name Katherine. She would make a similar choice when
their second child was born last May, rejecting Maldanado's
suggestion of Elvira in favor of Melane.
The new job let Rojas dream about owning a house where, she
said, ``my daughters can have their own rooms'' and ``maybe
one day I can take care of my grandchildren if I have some.''
Meanwhile, any thought of returning to Central America
faded away. ``Here,'' said Rojas, ``my family will go a lot
farther than in El Salvador.''
In the summer of 2000, the Wyndham's owners announced that
they were closing the hotel for renovations. Rojas remembers
hearing ominous rumblings that more would change than the
color of the lobby--something about the parking attendants'
jobs being contracted out.
But she was not worried. To tide her over during the
shutdown, Local 814 had steered her to a job at a unionized
Burger King at LAX. The fast-food outlet offered a wage-and-
benefit package almost as good as what she was making at the
Wyndham.
About a year after it had closed, the hotel on Century
Boulevard reopened. Only now, the sign outside read
``Radisson.'' The Wyndham name wasn't the only thing that was
gone either. So too was the union--part of a broader trend
sweeping corporate America for more than two decades. Unions,
which represented 17 percent of the nation's private-sector
workforce in the early 1980s, counted only 8 percent as
members by last year.
Rojas could have her dishwashing job back. But instead of
$8.89 an hour, her top wage at the Wyndham, she said, she'd
be pulling down only $7.50 at the Radisson, with no employer-
paid family health insurance. She signed on anyway and, to
make ends meet, kept her job at Burger King as well.
It was hard running between two jobs again, but the
family's income finally seemed to be stabilizing. As it
turned out, their financial roller-coaster ride had only just
begun.

Shrinking Welfare

For the poor, the most dramatic of all the safety-net cuts
that the government has engineered in the last 25 years came
in 1996.
That's when a Republican-controlled Congress passed and
President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act, overhauling the nation's
cash welfare system.
The law sought to push people off the dole and into work.
In doing so, it essentially reversed the poverty-fighting
strategy that Washington had pursued since the 1960s in which
poor Americans were promised a certain minimal standard of
living. By last year, the law had reduced the nation's
welfare rolls by 3 million families, or one-half, and had
sliced inflation--adjusted welfare spending by about $10
billion, or one-third.
These numbers, though, are about all the experts can agree
on. Advocates have hailed the measure as a spectacular
success, saying it has increased the incomes of many poor
people while triggering a steep drop in poverty among black
children. Critics have denounced it as a failure, saying that
many people are poorer today than they were before the law
was changed.
For its part, Grimes' household has remained largely
unaffected by the law's ``work first'' requirements. That's
because California has maintained relatively generous
benefits and because Grimes' domestic partner, Jacqueline
Harvey, has a chronic intestinal disease and is exempt from
work requirements. She has thus continued to collect benefits
off and on from the state's cash welfare program, CalWORKs.
She now receives $583 a month.
But Grimes, in the meantime, has been staggered by another,
lesser-known element of the 1996 act--a significant
toughening of child-support enforcement rules. This part of
the law built on other efforts undertaken since the 1970s to
go after absentee parents and compel them to help finance
their kids' upbringings.
Grimes and Harvey's son, Albert Jr., was born in 1988. Nine
years later, when the elder Grimes applied for custody of a
nephew, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office
sued him for child support for Albert Jr. The D.A. took
action even though Grimes, Harvey and their son had always
lived together and, they and several relatives say, Grimes
always helped raise the boy.
Nonetheless, Grimes declined to challenge the county, which
won a court judgment

[[Page H873]]

against him. Grimes said he thought that he had to go along
with the support order to obtain custody of his nephew and to
ensure that Harvey would continue receiving publicly funded
healthcare. It's also unclear whether counting Grimes as a
parent in the house would have jeopardized the size of
Harvey's welfare checks.
Whether a mix-up or not, the effect on Grimes' finances has
been devastating. California courts not only have imposed
high monthly support payments--often unrelated to a parent's
ability to comply--but also have added interest at a 10
percent annual clip to past-due amounts.
A recent study commissioned by the state found that past-
due child-support payments in California have soared to
almost $17 billion from $2.5 billion in the last decade. Most
of that money, moreover, is earmarked for state coffers--not
for the children who need support.
``The system was largely about welfare-cost recovery, not
helping families,'' said Curtis L. Child, who stepped down
recently as head of the state Department of Child
Support Services, which was created in 2000 to remove
enforcement power from county district attorneys and
restructure the system. ``In imposing these huge judgments
on fathers, we're confronting these men with an awful
choice: Go underground, which is just what child-support
enforcement was intended to stop, or let themselves be
financially ruined.''
In August 1997, Grimes was ordered to start sending the
county $173 a month in current payments, plus an additional
amount for past-due support totaling $4,900. When he fell
behind after his Bixel Street business collapsed in 1998, the
past-due total began to swell. It now tops $8,000.

Plastic Safety Net

In one great clap, the 9/11 terrorists brought down the
twin towers in New York, shattered Americans' sense of
security and shoved Elvira Rojas down the economic ladder.
It took her five days to reach Burger King after the police
and military sealed off the airport in the wake of the
September 2001 attacks. When she finally was allowed in,
Rojas found that her manager had cut her shift to just four
hours. Within a couple of weeks, she was laid off.
Things were little better at the nearly deserted Radisson.
Rojas' hours there were reduced to practically nothing.
Over the next 15 months, Rojas grabbed whatever hours she
could get at the hotel and worked a second job ironing
clothes at Hermosa Cleaners in Hermosa Beach. It was a tough
schedule even before she got pregnant in 2002. And still it
was not enough to keep her family's income from sliding
almost 20% from its 1998 high to less than $22,000.
So she and Maldanado turned to what has become one of the
few reliable safety nets left for many poor Americans: their
credit cards.
In May 2002, Rojas was rushed to the emergency room at
Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center in Hawthorne, where she
suffered a second miscarriage. This time, with only minimal
health insurance from the hotel, she said she had to put
$2,000 of her $4,000 medical bill onto her MasterCard.
``I didn't have the money otherwise,'' she said.
As the credit card industry emerged in the late 1950s and
'60s, some expressed concern that even well-provisioned
middle-class families would be unable to resist the lure of
instant credit. Betty Furness, President Johnson's consumer
affairs advisor, warned that credit cards were ``modern
traps'' that would turn Americans into ``hopeless addicts.''
But over the last 25 years, card issuers have not let up in
pushing their products. Instead, they have reached out for
ever more low-income households.
Federal Reserve figures show that among families in the
bottom fifth of the economy, the percentage of households
with credit cards has soared from 11% in the late 1970s
to almost 40%. Their average balance on those cards has
climbed, in inflation-adjusted terms, from about $825 to
more than $2,000.
Some analysts applaud the greater availability of credit.
Gregory Elliehausen, of the Credit Research Center at
Georgetown University, said the spread of cards and other
kinds of lending was part of a sweeping ``democratization of
finance'' that has allowed poor families to operate more
efficiently by, for example, buying decent cars to get to
work.
Economists Dirk Krueger of the University of Pennsylvania
and Fabrizio Perri, a New York University professor now on
sabbatical at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, say
families of all incomes increasingly rely on loans, rather
than on business and government safety nets, in times of
trouble. They borrow their way through the bad patches and
pay off their debts in flush periods.
The problem comes when there are no flush periods.
Some of the items purchased on Rojas' and Maldanado's
credit cards can seem frivolous or extravagant--the TVs, for
example, or a $150 set of sepia-toned studio photographs of
Katherine and her mom dressed in feather boas and gowns. But
most of the charges appear to fit the definition of safety-
net spending.
Beyond the emergency room charge, there was $130 for a new
fuel pump for Rojas' Toyota and $170 to repair the power
steering. There was $300 at the start of September to cover
rent and a $1,000 cash advance that Rojas said went to help a
brother bring his wife to the U.S. from El Salvador.
Chipping away at what's due on their cards is virtually
impossible. That's in large part because the interest the two
are charged is about double what a typical middle-class
borrower faces. By the time they cover that, there is little
left to reduce the balance.
Although the stated interest on the couple's most heavily
used cards, a pair of Direct Merchants Bank MasterCards,
ranges from 20.49% to 31.99%, a review of recent bills
indicates that they are consistently charged close to the
higher amount. (The Minnetonka, Minn., bank recently was
ordered by federal regulators to pay $3.2 million in
penalties for ``downselling''--offering low pre-approved
rates and then moving customers to higher-rate accounts
without fully disclosing the switch. It is not clear that
this happened to Rojas and Maldanado.)
Rojas and Maldanado now owe $14,592 on their four credit
cards--a burden that financial experts say is appropriate for
a household making about $100,000, but not one like theirs.

Falling Behind

In the spring of 2000, two years after Grimes' Bixel Street
business failed, he found a job as a security guard five
blocks away at Ernst & Young Plaza.
For a while after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, the
building's owners and tenants treated Grimes and his co-
workers with newfound respect. Managers listened to his
suggestions about how to improve safety at the 41-story
structure.
He was promoted to ``lobby ambassador,'' a sort of informal
emissary to the building, and then to lobby supervisor. His
annual earnings climbed back above $20,000, and he began to
imagine himself becoming a director of security.
``My goal was to have a facility of my own,'' Grimes said.
``I thought I should have a situation where I'm in control.''
But for most of the last year, Grimes has been anything but
in control.
In February, after a dispute with their landlord, he and
his family were evicted from their apartment on Fedora
Street, where they had lived for several years. All that he
was able to save from the place were three mattresses, two
chairs and a Sony PlayStation.
By April, he had run through several thousand dollars
paying for a $90-a-night motel room while he looked for a new
apartment. He and Harvey eventually rented a two-room
Hollywood walk-up for $875 a month, or more than 40% of their
combined income. Before long, he fell behind again on his
court-ordered child-support payments.
In July, things took another turn for the worse. After a
series of clashes with his boss, Grimes was ordered out of
the Ernst & Young tower and told he would be reassigned.
Instead, he quit. For the time being, he is working for the
Service Employees International Union on a campaign to
organize security guards in the city's high-rise offices.
Grimes is determined to recover from the latest round of
reverses. He dreams about what his father had--a house, a
secure job--and is convinced he'll fare as well someday.
``I'm trying,'' Grimes said, ``to get back to what he had.''

Another Eviction

A month after Grimes was forced out of the Ernst & Young
tower, Rojas and her family were evicted from the Burin
Avenue bungalow where they had lived for seven years. A
developer is preparing to raze the place and put in half-
million-dollar townhouses.
It's not clear how long they could have afforded to stay
there anyway. A week before they moved, Maldanado was laid
off from the dry-cleaning plant to make way, he said, for new
immigrants who were willing to work for less. He has since
gotten a new job, packing items at a warehouse, for minimum
wage.
The family's new apartment is so small that the bedroom is
a single mass of mattresses and cribs. The hutch and couches
fill the living room to overflowing. And the cabinets in the
kitchenette are so stuffed that Rojas must store her supply
of infant formula in her car trunk.
But the couple has plans--to turn around the slide in their
income, to look for a house, to make sure that the girls
continue all the way through school. ``I don't want them
to be struggling like us,'' Maldanado said.
Rojas is making other plans as well. Soon after arriving in
the U.S., she took out a loan to finance her future at the
Inglewood Park Cemetery. She now owns two plots at the
cemetery's Mausoleum of the Golden West, and recently signed
papers to pay $82.79 a month for the next five years to buy
two more. By the time Rojas is finished, she will have spent
more than $12,000 in total. But she's convinced it's worth
it.
``Now if I die, I won't have to worry about my funeral,''
she said. ``I won't leave my family with a financial
burden.''
The Source of the Statistics and How They Were Analyzed
The Times used the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for its
analysis of family income volatility.
The panel study has followed a nationally representative
sample of about 5,000 families and their offshoots for nearly
40 years and is the most comprehensive publicly available
income and earnings database in the world. It is run by the
University of Michigan and principally underwritten by the
National

[[Page H874]]

Science Foundation. The families' identities are kept
confidential.
The Times employed techniques for gauging income volatility
that were developed by economists Robert A. Moffitt of Johns
Hopkins University and Peter Gottschalk of Boston College.
The Times also consulted with Yale University political
scientist Jacob S. Hacker, who has conducted his own analysis
of income volatility among households in the panel study and
has published results linking it to economic risk.
The Times employed two Johns Hopkins graduate students,
Xiaoguo Hu and Anubha Dhasmana, to help generate the data.
Moffitt guided them and advised the newspaper.
The Times' analysis looked at five-year increments from
1970 to 2000 and examined the annual fluctuations in each
family's income.
For example, for a family whose income rose by $5,000 over
a five-year span, the paper examined the journey from the
lower number to the higher: Did the change occur in steady
$1,000 annual increases? Or did the family's income take a
big jump in one year and plunge in another?
The Times' basic finding is that the fluctuations in annual
income that individual families have experienced have grown
larger over the last three decades.
Based on the panel-study sample, The Times estimated the
annual income swings, up or down, for 68% of all U.S.
families--those who did not have the most extreme
fluctuations. As a result, the newspaper's conclusions don't
rest on cases outside the mainstream: the movie star whose
career dries up overnight, say, or the hourly worker who
wins the lottery.
To zero in on working families, The Times focused on men
and women 25 to 64 years old whose households had some
income. To analyze the working poor, the paper ranked
families by their average income during each five-year
period. It then concentrated on those in the bottom one-fifth
of income earners and especially those right at the 20th
percentile.
The average annual income of panel-study families at the
20th percentile is close to the government's official poverty
line for a family of four most years.
The analysis looked at pretax income of all family members
from all sources, including workplace earnings; investments;
public transfers such as jobless benefits, food stamps and
cash welfare; and private transfers such as inheritances.
All amounts were adjusted for inflation, expressed in 2003
dollars.

Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman
from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne), a member of the committee.
Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Chairman, I would like to particularly thank the
gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) and the gentleman from
California (Mr. McKeon), subcommittee chairman, for this bill.
From my perspective this is a good bill. And I think there are
several points I would like to make. First of all, it consolidates
programs and creates efficiencies. It gives State and local officials
more flexibility, which is always important. And the $3,000
reemployment accounts to purchase needed services to ensure
reemployment seem to me to be a good idea because ofttimes when a
person is trying to get back on their feet, they need to have money to
pay for child care. They need transportation. It allows them to get
reestablished, and we think this is certainly very helpful. And then it
also allows faith-based organizations to offer job training service. We
think this is important.
I would like to amplify on that just a little bit. Number one, faith-
based organizations often provide services more efficiently than State
or Federal agencies. The Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, Jewish
Federation are all extremely efficient and they are very cost
effective.
Secondly, faith-based organizations often go where others will not go
or do not go. In inner cities, and sometimes our rural areas, we find
that they are very effective. Faith-based organizations are by law
allowed to hire employees to provide services which conform to the
mission of the faith-based organization. This right was affirmed by the
1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1987 Supreme Court decision, Corporation
of the Presiding Bishop versus Amos. So we think there is ample legal
justification for this.
Number four, faith-based organization employees must often wear many
hats. For instance, a music director at a church may also work at the
job training center in the afternoon. A Sunday school superintendent
may also run a Head Start program at the faith-based organization. So
it is unreasonable and contrary to establish law to force faith-based
organizations to hire employees who do not share the faith-based
organization's mission. We think this makes perfect sense.
This is a good bill and I urge support for it.
Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New
Jersey (Mr. Andrews).
(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for
yielding me this time.
I am opposed to this bill because it reflects a misunderstanding of
the proper way to build a successful career and a gross
misinterpretation of our constitutional tradition.
With respect to its misunderstanding of the best way to build a
career, I think that these personal retraining accounts, although
clearly well intentioned, have exactly the wrong effect on an
unemployed person. The purpose of workforce investment is not to move a
person from a position of unemployment to a position of employment for
a while. The purpose of the workforce investment is to move a person
from dependency to opportunity and eventually to prosperity. The great
dividing line in the American economy is whether one has 2 years of
college or not. People with more than 2 years of college tend to have
stable jobs and high and rising incomes. This bill says to a person who
is laid off from an industrial industry or some other employer like
that take the first job that comes along.
As the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) said, they are
virtually compelled to do that. The first job is not always the best
job. But, more importantly, from the public's point of view, it may be
a temporary job. It will move the person from a period of unemployment
to a brief period of reemployment to another period of unemployment.
Our goal should not be temporary employment. Our goal should be
opportunity and prosperity in the long run.
With respect to the constitutional misinterpretation, the gentleman
from Virginia (Mr. Scott) will offer an amendment later in this debate
that needs to be adopted. We are not opposed to faith-based
organizations continuing the work they are presently doing in job
training. They do a great job and they should continue. If the
gentleman from Virginia's (Mr. Scott) amendment passes, that work will
not be discontinued. If the gentleman from Virginia's (Mr. Scott)
amendment passes, here is what will happen: We think that with Federal
money a religious organization should not be able to say we will not
hire Catholics to serve meals at a clinic. We think with Federal money,
an organization should not be able to say we do not hire Jews to do job
training. We think with Federal money, people should not be able to say
we do not want evangelical Christians or Muslims or Buddhists doing job
counseling.
This country started because we wanted to get away from religious
persecution and discrimination. It is an abrogation of our
constitutional traditions to enshrine that in the law, and that is what
this bill does. The gentleman from Virginia's (Mr. Scott) amendment
corrects that mistake and it should be adopted.
Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Ohio (Mr. Regula).
(Mr. REGULA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 27, the
Job Training Improvement Act of 2005. I would like to recognize the
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) and the gentleman from California
(Mr. McKeon) for their leadership and tireless efforts in bringing this
bill to the House floor.
Hard-working families in my district who have been laid off rely on
programs like the One-Stop workforce development system, which helps
States and communities ensure workers to get the training they need to
find good jobs. I like to call the One-Stops ``hope centers'' because
they provide hope to people seeking gainful employment.
For example, my constituent, Jeff Ring, who after 24 years of
employment as a steelworker, was laid off. He is a father of three
children, eight and younger. He came to the One-Stop and enrolled in
training to become a registered nurse. Just last week he received his
certification and will begin

[[Page H875]]

working at Aultman Hospital and will be making nearly 20 percent more
than his previous salary.
In another case, my constituent, Tiffany Birtalan, a single mother
raising a teenager, she currently works as a waitress making $2.13 an
hour plus tips. She came to the local One-Stop seeking to change
careers. Tiffany is now enrolled at a community college and is training
to be a dental hygienist. Based on current labor market information and
the high demand for this occupation, she will easily make $25 to $30
per hour.
Every day, every day, hard-working people like Jeff and Tiffany walk
through the doors of One-Stop across the country seeking assistance. We
must do all we can to streamline unnecessary bureaucracy and strengthen
allocations so that adequate resources are available to them achieve
their hopes and dreams.
Mr. Chairman, this is a good bill, and I would urge my colleagues to
support H.R. 27.
Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Texas (Mr. Hinojosa).
Mr. HINOJOSA. Mr. Chairman, I rise to engage the gentleman from Ohio
(Chairman Boehner) of the Committee on Education and the Workforce in a
colloquy.
During our full committee consideration of H.R. 27, I offered and
withdrew an amendment to ensure that data on high school-aged students
participating in adult education programs is publicly available and
reported to our committee.
We already know that 30 percent of our high school students fail to
earn diplomas with their peers. In the Hispanic community, that figure
is nearly 50 percent. Many of our adult education providers report that
high school-aged students are flooding their programs. We cannot
continue to allow our high school students to slip through the cracks.
Our first step in shining the light on this issue is to make sure that
we have accurate and regularly reported data.
At full committee, the gentleman offered to work with me to ensure
that these concerns are addressed in the reports that our committee
received from the Department of Education.
Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. HINOJOSA. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Texas
for raising this issue. Data on young adults participating in adult
education programs is important information for our committee as well
as for the adult education programs and for school districts to keep in
mind as we work to raise our high school completion rates. And it is my
understanding that this is information that the Department already
collects but has not been a focus in program reporting.
Mr. HINOJOSA. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the chairman is
correct. The Department already collects this data and would be able to
highlight this information in its annual report to Congress with very
little additional work. It is simply a matter of clearly communicating
to the Department that we would like to see focused information on high
school-aged students in adult education reported by race, ethnicity,
language proficiency, and program enrollment.
I thank the chairman for continuing to work with me and the
Department to bring this critical information to the forefront.
Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. HINOJOSA. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Chairman, again I want to thank the gentleman for
his work on this issue. I will continue to work with him and the
Department to ensure that we have the necessary information to
carefully monitor the participation of high school-aged students in
adult education programs.
Mr. HINOJOSA. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman
from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) for his comments.
Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Nevada (Mr. Porter), a member of the committee, vice chairman of the
subcommittee.
Mr. PORTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 27,
the Job Training Improvement Act of 2005, and I certainly applaud the
gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon) and the gentleman from Ohio
(Chairman Boehner) for their tireless efforts in bringing this
important legislation to the floor today.

{time} 1630

As an original cosponsor of this legislation, there are many
provisions that will increase the ability of our Nation's workers to
achieve greater stability in our ever-changing workforce. I would like
to mention one aspect of the bill which I am particularly proud of, the
inclusion of Personal Reemployment Accounts as an allowable usage of
funds under the pilot and demonstration projects of the Greater
Workforce Investment Act.
PRAs will provide American workers who are seeking employment added
flexibility to seek the customized training and support services that
they need and deserve to expand their career opportunities. As my
community of southern Nevada experienced in the wake of September 11,
our economy proved to be very vulnerable. As my community rebounded
from this blow, Nevadans sought help in adjusting to the realities of
the workforce. Those Nevadans who suffered the woes of unemployment
sought additional training and support as they sought to increase their
career opportunities.
Mr. Chairman, I know that PRAs would have provided my constituents
with a valuable option in seeking these services. In fact, many
constituents have told me they are excited to have this opportunity in
case there is another emergency at some point in time. In fact, one
young girl, Lucy, wanted to make sure that there was ample education
dollars available; and I assured her there would be.
Besides providing for an individualized approach to reemployment, the
PRAs provide an added bonus. Individuals are able to retain the
remainder of their account after they return to the workforce. These
funds can be used for continued training and support.
As Americans return to work, they continue to face hardships until
the benefits of employment become manifest. PRAs can help ease this
transition.
Mr. Chairman, I will include for the Record a letter from Deputy
Secretary of Labor Steven Law demonstrating the administration's
continued support of the PRA program.
Mr. Chairman, I urge all of my colleagues to support this important
legislation. As our workforce continues to engage the ever-changing
economy which we are part of, this reauthorization will provide
American workers with the tools they need and deserve to improve their
career opportunities. I recommend final passage of the Job Training
Improvement Act of 2005.
Mr. Chairman, I include for the Record the letter referred to earlier
from Steven J. Law, Deputy Secretary of Labor.

Department of Labor,

Deputy Secretary of Labor,

Washington, DC, March 2, 2005.
Hon. Jon Porter,
House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.
Dear Congressman Porter: I would like to thank you for your
invaluable and effective advocacy of Personal Reemployment
Accounts (PRAs). Like you we believe that PRAs will provide
thousands of Americans seeking reemployment with a new and
more flexible means to seek customized training that leads
quickly to expanded career opportunities.
We are enthusiastic about the launch of PRA demonstration
projects in seven states. We are confident that this
important pilot program will prove the value of PRAs and,
with enactment of your legislation, even more Americans will
have access to PRAs.
We look forward to working with you, Chairman Boehner, and
Chairman McKeon on this innovative plan to help workers in
transition. Thank you again for your leadership on this
initiative.
Sincerely,
Steven J. Law.

Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Washington, D.C. (Ms. Norton).
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I very much appreciate the gentleman
yielding me this time.
Mr. Chairman, there are many problems with this bill. I choose to
focus on the Scott amendment because it involves a matter in what I
think I can safely say is my personal confidence.
I have heard title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act called out here
repeatedly. It was my great privilege to enforce

[[Page H876]]

title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as Chair of the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, and I have an obligation to step forward to
plead with my friends on the other side to make this a bipartisan bill,
because its chances of becoming so at least on this matter should be
great.
In fact, it is such a good idea to have faith-based organizations
involved in the programs of the Federal Government that we have been
doing it for decades with billions of dollars to show for it. There may
be some ways, I will be the first to say, there are some ways in which
this could be strengthened and expanded. But I do not know whose idea
it was to allow religious organizations to discriminate. I do not think
it could possibly have been the idea of the faith-based communities
themselves. I do not believe that churches and synagogues and mosques
are stepping forward to say, Even though we have an extraordinary
ability to hire only our own folks, we want to make sure we use public
dollars to hire only our co-religious partners.
If the language is kept as it is, we will have the first
nullification, the first repeal, of civil rights laws since they were
initially passed 40 years ago. To our credit, we have steadily built
those laws into legislation that came after it, and, yes, into the
Workforce Investment Act. We are required to do that. Title VI requires
us to do that, the 14th amendment requires us to do that. It required
us to do so when the Workforce Investment Act was passed, and it
requires us to do so now.
Essentially what the bill states now is that you can hire only
Lutherans or Muslims with your own money, and you can hire only
Catholics and Jews with the people's money. That is a huge departure
from everything that is built into title VII.
I was Chair of the agency and brought forward religious
discrimination guidelines. We worked very hard to strengthen the law
against religious discrimination and went the extra mile because of the
free exercise clause. Thus, today religious organizations, a church or
synagogue, for example, can do what no union or business can do. It
cannot only use its money to hire its religious members in religious
positions; it can use its own money to hire even their own members in
secular positions. This is the maximum in religious freedom that is
allowed under the Constitution.
Now, if you want to take on public responsibilities, I cannot
understand why anybody would say you would not want to spend that money
in accordance with the public responsibility in each and every respect.
That is how it has always been done. Why the departure now?
If you want public dollars, do so in accordance with public law. That
law requires no discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or religion.
It would be a horrible setback to now come forward and say that you can
in fact discriminate on the basis of religion, of all things. And that
is what you would be doing, because, as everybody knows, race and
religious identity track one another very, very closely.
Today, when black people go to Catholic Charities or to Lutheran
Services they see people of every race and color working there. And do
you know what? I have not heard these organizations and the many other
faith-based organizations complain that in order to serve my African
American community, they sometimes reach out and find black people who
are not Catholic and who are not Lutheran, because they do not ask what
they are.
We have resisted pressures in this House for repeal of affirmative
action, for repeal of goals. Surely we can resist the role back to the
bad old days of religious discrimination and a violation of title VII
of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield 3 minutes to the
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Price), a new member of the committee.
(Mr. PRICE of Georgia asked and was given permission to revise and
extend his remarks.)
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman and the
gentleman from California for allowing me to participate in this
debate.
Mr. Chairman, I am somewhat perplexed and disappointed by the tactics
from the other side. This is serious business, and simply working to
divide our citizens I believe to be counterproductive.
This bill, this bill, will enhance employment; it will increase
employment and job retention, plus increase the overall skill level of
our labor force. Now, the demagoguery that you hear from the other side
on this issue, and, frankly, on every issue, seemingly every issue,
frankly is a disservice to this debate and does a disservice to our
Nation.
This bill gets more resources to the individual needing it. That is a
good thing.
These are very challenging times for many in our workforce. They need
more options for assistance, not a one-size-fits-all model or program.
Streamlining the one-stop career center system is easier for the
client. That is a good thing. It does not harm the Wagner-Peyser money.
There are no lost resources.
Greater flexibility in the delivery of core, intensive, and training
services allows individuals to receive the most appropriate services
specifically for them. That is a good thing. Providing Personal
Reemployment Accounts allows those who are unemployed an opportunity to
use money for those things that are often that final hurdle to getting
a new job, child care, transportation, housing assistance. That is a
good thing. Getting more resources to those most in need when they are
out of school helps those without other opportunities, and that is a
good thing.
Faith-based language in this bill is identical, identical, to four
separate pieces of legislation passed during the Clinton
administration. There is no discrimination on the provision of
services.
With this legislation, we are actively and positively addressing how
the Federal Government, and ultimately how each and every citizen, will
come together and lend a helping hand to those needing that assistance
at a very pivotal time. That is a good thing.
Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this bill and move
forward in helping those needing to return to the workforce. This is a
good thing.
Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from
California (Ms. Woolsey).
(Ms. WOOLSEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her
remarks.)
Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Chairman, once again my colleagues on the other side
of the aisle are claiming they want to help workers in this Nation.
But, as usual, their actions say otherwise.
The newest WIA proposal does nothing more than force workers to
compete with each other for services that they have come to expect and
services they deserve from the WIA system. WIA one-stops provide
important job training services to help those struggling to find work
to get resources they need.
If this bill passes, veterans and unemployed adults will be placed
second to infrastructure costs. Instead of increasing funding in the
bill to address infrastructure needs separately, this bill forces
Governors to choose between workers and updating facilities, all from
the same pot of money. Limiting this pool of funding will deny workers
quality services for reemployment and adult education programs, and
that is just plain and simple true.
This bill also sets up a voucher system that will actually decrease
the amount of services available to job seekers. Those receiving these
new job vouchers will be able to pay for training courses or other job-
searching expenses. That sounds great. But the catch is that once a
worker takes a voucher, they will lose access to Federal job training
programs through WIA for an entire year. Money and services are both
critical for many workers to get back on track, particularly when they
have become unemployed over and over again, and workers who should not
have to make the choice between one or the other are continually faced
with the dilemma.
This bill also changes the way in which the government will evaluate
the success of WIA programs. Now workers will be judged on how they
serve the company they work for rather than on the quality of services
they received under WIA. Since when was WIA focused on big business'
needs rather than the worker's needs?
The worst part of this bill, however, is that it will write
discrimination into the law. At religious institutions receiving WIA
funds, those who share the

[[Page H877]]

same religious philosophies will have an advantage over those applying
for employment that do not subscribe to the same views. Workers can now
lose job opportunities through blatant religious discrimination at
places our tax dollars are funding. This bill turns WIA into a
competitive service provider, rather than an equal opportunity resource
for our Nation's unemployed workers.
This is not the way we can help our Nation's workforce, and I urge my
colleagues to oppose H.R. 27 as it is written.
The CHAIRMAN. The committee will rise informally.
The Speaker pro tempore (Mr. McKeon) assumed the Chair.

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