Providing for Consideration of H.R. 803, Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. CAPPS. I thank my colleague from California for yielding.

I rise in opposition to the rule and to the underlying bill. At a time when more and more people are starting their own businesses, we should be doing everything we can to encourage entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, current rules make it difficult for Workforce Investment Boards, or WIBs as we call them, to provide entrepreneurial training services or to count the successes of those programs in their outcome measures, the very thing that we ought to be doing through these Workforce Investment Boards. As a result, very few WIBs even offer these programs, depriving aspiring entrepreneurs of valuable resources to help them thrive.

That's why in the last Congress I introduced legislation to fix the guidelines for self-employment training. Our goal would make it easier for Workforce Investment Boards to offer these programs in the local community and expand access to training for aspiring entrepreneurs.

I would like to thank Mr. Tierney, Mr. Hinojosa, and Mr. Miller for including my legislation in their amendment that will be considered tomorrow. Job training and reemployment issues always have been, and always should be, bipartisan. So it's very sad that this rule and the underlying bill have come to the floor under a strictly partisan process and that they will actually harm the very programs that they're designed to support.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

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