Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of the conference report for H.R. 803, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.

Today, 9.5 million Americans are out of work, despite 4.6 million job openings. As our economy changes, so too will the jobs available, and we will have seen more and more less-skilled workers and jobs being replaced by skills-intensive jobs. We have to make sure our workforce can keep up, or we will lose these jobs to countries that prioritize the development of these skills.

H.R. 803 works to close the skills gap that prevents our workers from securing a job in a number of ways. The bill makes the job training system easier to use, and at one point, there were 40 different jobs training programs in the Federal Government whose missions often overlapped and left jobseekers confused.

This legislation consolidates 15 ineffective or duplicative programs and makes the job of navigating a complicated bureaucracy easier for jobseekers.

We reform workforce training boards to ensure that a majority of board members are from the business community--the job creators who know best what skills they need in their workforce.

Madam Speaker, this legislation is a good first step to helping the unemployed, particularly those who have been out of work for many, many months. I encourage my colleagues to support this conference report and help our friends and neighbors get back to work.

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