Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I thank my colleague from Georgia and appreciate his work on this legislation. I know that he and the Senator from Tennessee have been talking about the legislation earlier today. I understand that Senator Alexander talked about some of the work we have done together to try to make sure this legislation does not just reauthorize an existing program but improves that program to give more focus on how to take our Federal worker retraining program to make it work for America's workers at a critical time.

We just learned that the economy, in the first quarter, grew even less than we had thought. I think it now has been readjusted to almost minus 3 percent--minus 2.9 percent growth. We have big problems in terms of our economy getting moving. One of the problems we have is we do not have the trained workers for the 21st century jobs that are out there.

I rise today as the Senate is on the verge of passing this first comprehensive reform of our Nation's primary workforce development programs in about 16 years, to say that I appreciate, again, the fact that Members on both sides of the aisle have worked with me and others to put some reforms into this program to ensure it works better for our workers and for our competitiveness and for our ability to actually get this economy moving again.

We do have this weak economy. And sometimes we are sort of numb to it. We forget that this is not just a typical recovery; it is a very slow recovery. In fact, by measures of growth in economy or unemployment or other measures, it is the weakest economic recovery we have had since the Great Depression. We have become numb to some of the disappointing news.

Almost 20 million Americans are out of work, 317,000 of our friends and neighbors in Ohio are now unemployed, and millions more have given up looking for work. In fact, the number of people who have given up looking for work is growing, so it is a high percentage. As to those who have given up looking for work, you would have to go back 34 years ago, to the 1970s, to find similar numbers of people as a percentage of the workforce.

For men, they say it may go back to the 1940s when we started keeping track of this. So we have problems. We have problems that can be solved in part by closing what is called the skills gap. In other words, there are a whole bunch of jobs that are open, but they cannot be filled because people do not have the skills to take those jobs.

By the way, you do not have to take my word for it. Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas is someone I do not often have an opportunity to quote on the floor of the Senate, but he was at the White House recently. In addition to his work in the music industry, he is also known for his work with kids back in his hometown of Boyle Heights, CA. A lot of that is focused on job training, skills training. During an event at the White House a couple of weeks ago, I saw that he said the following: There are so many jobs in America we can't fill because people aren't brought up to speed with the skill sets that are needed.

Will.i.am is right. The numbers back him up, by the way. Today, 4.5 million jobs remain open and unfilled in America. Yet we have these high levels of unemployment and all of these people who have left the workforce altogether. What is going on? Part of it is that we do not have the skills to be able to fill those jobs.

In Ohio today, if you go to the OhioMeansJobs Web site, you will see 140,000 jobs advertised. Yet we have about 317,000 people out of work. If you look at these jobs, a lot of them require advanced manufacturing skills, information technology skills, and medical and bioscience skills for health care workers. We have to do better in terms of filling that gap so that American workers are able to meet the demands of the 21st century.

There is a skills gap report by the Manufacturing Institute that came out recently. Based on a poll they did, it said that 74 percent of manufacturers are experiencing workforce shortages or skill deficiencies that keep them from expanding their operations and improving productivity. Seventy-four percent say they are looking for better skills to be able to fill those jobs.

We could be doing so much better than we are to close that skills gap. For too many Americans, the only jobs available are those that they do not have the skills and qualifications to be able to fill.

The Federal Government spends a lot of money on this. This is not for lack of funds. The Federal Government spends between $15 and $18 billion a year on these Federal worker retraining programs. As some of you know, there are 47 different programs spread over 9 different departments and agencies. We need to do more to try to consolidate and improve these programs, but in the meanwhile let's do what we can. That is what this legislation does.

The Government Accountability Office or GAO--which looks at all Federal agencies and decides how they are doing, spent a lot of time looking at this. They have said that some of that money--the $18 billion I talked about of our taxpayer money that does provide the funding for these 47 different programs over 9 departments and agencies--they are not working very well. They say 45 of the 47 programs overlapped with at least 1 other program. Only five have conducted an impact study of their efforts since 2004, meaning that the assessments of outcomes or performance you would expect are not being done. Only five have conducted an impact study of their efforts since 2004.

GAO concluded that ``little is known about the effectiveness of most of these programs.'' But actually we do know something about the effectiveness because these millions of unfilled jobs are an indictment of the program. In other words, we should be doing a better job of getting the skills we need to fill these jobs if we are spending $15 to $18 billion of hard-earned taxpayer money on it.

I hear this story all across Ohio, and I know my colleagues hear it across their States. I hear from workers, from businesses, from educators. People are frustrated, and there is good reason for it. I think the way Washington has handled workforce development is simply inefficient. It is not working well. I think it is unfair to employers who have open positions because they cannot find qualified candidates to fill them. It is certainly unfair to taxpayers who send their money to Washington believing that their government will be good stewards of those funds and that we are going to use them effectively for worker retraining, getting the money into the hands of people to train them for jobs that are actually out there. I think it is unfair to, of course, millions of Americans who would like to build a better life for their families and find that the Federal resources allocated to them are not getting the job done.

Because we believe we can do better, this Congress is going to act today. The Senate and the House are working together on this issue, which is good. It is bicameral. It is bipartisan.

I have joined with Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado on what is called the CAREER Act. The CAREER Act is included, in most part, in this legislation. The CAREER Act first calls for a reduction in the wasteful and inefficient overlap in the system.

I am pleased to see that the legislation before us today trims 15 programs from our Nation's workforce development program. I think that is a good start. I also think we can do even more. Understanding that there were a lot of constraints, different points of view, we need to consolidate further, in my view.

Second, we called for an increased focus on helping unemployed workers attain high-quality credentials that give them a leg up in the local job market. I am pleased this bill includes our provisions that require those local boards, the workforce investment boards, to give priority consideration to programs that lead to credentials that are in demand in their local area.

We worked hard to include a provision requiring the State and local boards to provide specific strategies for helping folks attain high-quality credentials. These are industry-recognized credentials that are in demand, that are portable--they can move from State to State--and that help them move up the career leader. That is important because we know that these credentials, based on all the research, are critical to getting people into these jobs.

Third, we call for a new and innovative accountability program in the system called Pay for Success. Currently, the workforce development programs provide funding regardless of performance so long as certain rules are followed and input requirements are met--not output but input. This has resulted in this unaccountability the GAO talked about and many complacent programs that have fallen short. Pay for Success turns this model on its head by linking payments to outcome, to actual performance measures. Job-training service providers who do well will be rewarded under this model. Those who fail to deliver results are going to be held accountable.

I am pleased that again this underlying legislation--the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act--before us today includes these Pay for Success provisions that allow local workforce boards to use their formula to engage in Pay for Success contracts. That is a step in the right direction. I would like to go even further, but I think it is historic and it is very important.

Finally, we call for access to better data to make it less difficult and expensive for State and local officials to assess the effectiveness of their training activities in real time. I am pleased this legislation includes the provisions for a study on how to access better data that can help the system deliver better results for taxpayers and the unemployed. That is part of the CAREER Act.

These four reforms can help change lives and turn around our economy. They are the kinds of reforms that can empower millions of Americans to get the kinds of jobs that do fund retirement, that do buy homes, that do pay for college educations. These reforms are long overdue.

We live in a dynamic and ever-changing economy, no question about it. We have to be sure our workforce is also dynamic and ever-changing to be able to meet the demands. We should not be held back by a workforce development system that has not been reauthorized since 1998. For reference, that is the year Google was first incorporated as a company. So I strongly support the underlying legislation.

Again, I commend my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--I see some of them here today on the floor--for their work. I thank them for working with Senator Michael Bennet and me to incorporate some of the bipartisan CAREER Act provisions.

At a time when the two parties in Washington have been at odds on how to finally get our economy moving again, this is a jobs bill that is win-win. It is a win for everyone, especially those Americans who are still looking for jobs and those businesses that are desperate to fill the skills gap they see.

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