[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 63 (Thursday, May 19, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               PROVIDING A BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR AMERICANS

  (Mr. GEJDENSON asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GEJDENSON. Mr. Speaker, Secretary Reich and the President are to 
be commended for the Reemployment Act of 1994.
  Mr. Speaker, we have been living with a system that was primarily 
focused on unemployment and unemployment compensation, but with the 
changes that are occurring in today's economy in my district and across 
the Nation that is not enough. Many defense workers, who will be laid 
off from their jobs, will not be going back to that same plant or 
facility. A decade ago providing unemployment to bridge a temporary 
loss of work was adequate. Today the system is simply not working. More 
than 2,000,000 people have annually lost their jobs, and more than 75 
percent of those will not go back to the original jobs.
  Mr. Speaker, we need a system that will help train people, sustain 
them through an education and training period, provide support for them 
and their families, and then make sure that at the completion of that 
training they will know where the jobs are, those jobs that will 
continue into the future. Using the data base that the Secretary of 
Labor has designed working with various State and Federal agencies, Mr. 
Speaker, we can help Americans go back to work at jobs that will bring 
them a brighter future.

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