Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. FLAKE. Madam President, I am pleased to have the opportunity to offer this amendment today, and I appreciate my colleague, the ranking member of the HELP Committee, working with my office to make this possible.

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act the Senate will vote on today establishes a performance accountability system for adults and youth core programs provided for within it. This bill also establishes sanctions for both States and localities that fail to meet the established accountability measures.

My proposed amendment works to increase accountability in local training programs and one-stop providers.

As the bill currently stands, a Governor can only take corrective action if a local area fails to meet performance accountability measures for 3 years in a row. That is a long period of time. My amendment moves the timeframe that a Governor can get involved in failing programs lacking corrective actions from 3 years to 1 year. I think that makes sense, certainly. Simply put, if training providers and one-stop partners are identified as ``poor performers'' after 1 year, the Governor should be required to remove them from the list of eligible providers. This amendment is simply common sense. Why should poorly performing programs continue to miss performance accountability measures for 3 years in a row before a Governor can get involved and take corrective action?

In addition, under this amendment a Governor could replace a local board if necessary after just 1 year, but that wouldn't be required.

My hope is that if we are going to do these kinds of things--if we are going to provide these funds--States and localities should work together to make these programs as successful and beneficial as possible.

I believe this amendment will provide an additional level of oversight of these programs, and I ask my colleagues to support this amendment.

Shifting now from this specific amendment, I now wish to talk a little bit about the amendment process in general and the position we find ourselves in today in this body.

At their core, amendments offered on the floor serve as an opportunity to not only thoroughly debate an issue. We all know that legislation is often brought to the floor having only had the benefit of input from just a few Members. What amendments do is provide individual Senators the chance to change and often improve legislation. They are a right in this body, not a privilege.

I believe in this fundamental process so strongly that I have supported controversial cloture motions and other motions to proceed on underlying bills even if I did not support that legislation, simply on good-faith assurances that amendments would be offered and that amendment debate would be allowed. Even though I did not support the bill as it stood, I would at least have the opportunity to make it better through an open legislative process. That is how I felt on a number of pieces of legislation that have moved through this body.

Unfortunately, many of these assurances were not met and my fear is this body will continue to pass legislation with little to no amendment consideration.

Since last July, Republicans have only had 11 rollcall votes on amendments, including the 2 we will see today. By comparison, in the other body, House Democrats have had over 160 votes on amendments during that same period--160 for the minority party in the House of Representatives. That is more than 14 times the votes Senate Republicans have had.

As my good friend from Kentucky pointed out earlier, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee has singlehandedly received more amendment votes than all Senate Republicans, given that she has had 15 votes on her amendments since last July in the House of Representatives.

Some who lionize this Chamber--and I am one of those--as the world's most deliberative body often take a dim view to the practices of the House--I am not one of those; but this is supposed to be the more deliberative body with open amendments and open debate--they will cite with trepidation the restrictive and structured approach to debate in the House and, with a shudder, the very fact that the House has the dread Rules Committee that picks and chooses which amendments will be offered. I can tell you from experience, when it comes to the ability to offer amendments, I now long for those days in the House.

During my service in the House, between the 107th and 112th Congresses, I personally offered--this is offered; not filed, but offered on the floor of the House of Representatives--239 amendments. In fact, in the last four Congresses, I offered between 30 and 70 amendments per Congress.

Outside of the sheer volume, one could reasonably chuckle at my amendment batting average since very few of my amendments passed. But I actually had more amendments adopted in the past two Congresses each than we have had rollcall votes on Republican amendments in the Senate since July.

Under both Republican and Democratic leadership in the House, my right to offer amendments, particularly during the appropriations process, was respected. They were respected by both parties, even when I was offering dozens of earmark-limitation amendments that most of my colleagues preferred not see the light of day.

Many of my colleagues here in the Senate served with me in the House. They all remember those times. Nobody wanted to vote on Flake amendments. These earmark-limitation amendments were not popular. They often did not get many votes. But, in fact, in all but one of the 140 earmark-limitation amendments I offered, they failed--all but 1. But I think we can all agree that joining with a small handful of my colleagues to spotlight precisely what was going on in these appropriations bills ultimately aided in the current earmark moratorium that is in force by both Houses. That is a good thing.

While I prefer to have my amendments prevail, that certainly should not be the test for whether I am afforded the ability to offer them.

Unfortunately, in my short time in the Senate, I have filed 85 amendments to improve underlying legislation and to address issues faced by my constituents. It is worth noting that this will be my first amendment that will be voted on by my colleagues.

During last year's NDAA consideration, I filed an amendment that would simply ask DOD to report on OCO spending. The amendment would have required an accounting of OCO funds appropriated during fiscal year 2013 and requested in fiscal year 2014 and would have withheld 10 percent of the budget for the Office of the Secretary of Defense until the report was received. This amendment is not a fundamental policy change; it is simply a reporting requirement that all of us would benefit from.

Last week, I filed 30 amendments to the minibus appropriations bill, but not one is likely to see the light of day. With no disrespect to my colleagues, and having served on the Appropriations Committee in the House myself, I think we can all agree that spending bills benefit from a good scrubbing by this entire body before they move through the legislative process.

For example, one of those amendments would have reduced the USDA Single Family Housing Direct Loan Program from $560 million to $360 million--the same amount as is in the President's budget. I think most of us would be surprised to learn that the Department of Agriculture has a Single Family Housing Direct Loan Program and that we are funding it to the tune of $560 million. The President wants to move that down to $360 million. I agree with the President. We ought to. At least we ought to be allowed to debate it and vote on it.

This is not an outlandish amendment. It would simply reduce funding levels to the President's request and, more importantly, give this body the opportunity to discuss the merits of the program.

I know some of my colleagues will disagree and will ultimately oppose many of these amendments and others if they come to a vote, and that is fine. What is not fine is the fact that we in the U.S. Senate cannot even have that debate.

To be clear, this is not just a Republican concern. A recent article in the Hill mentioned how my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are seemingly just as frustrated with the current amendment process. The article included a quote from a Democratic Senator who said: ``I've never been in a less productive time in my life than I am right now, in the United States Senate.''

So apparently I should count myself lucky to get a rollcall today on this amendment because there are many on the other side of the aisle who have not been afforded the same luxury.

Both Democrats and Republicans are getting shut out of this process, and it is a very dangerous precedent. I urge my colleagues to encourage thoughtful, open debate from here on out. I also encourage support for my commonsense reform to the accountability provisions of this legislation we are debating today.

I yield the floor.

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