[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 21 (Thursday, February 2, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1974-S1975]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


               FATHER WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM AND FOCUS: HOPE

  Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, recently the Committee on Labor and Human 
Resources, on which I serve, held 3 days of hearings on reforming the 
Federal Government's system of job training programs.
  Over the course of the hearings, the committee heard testimony from a 
wide array of interested parties: Clients of training programs; experts 
from academia and think tanks; businessmen, organized labor, and the 
General Accounting Office. Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson appeared and 
testified about the laboratory the various States provide, where some 
of the most innovative reform ideas are already at work. In addition, 
Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and OMB Director Alice Rivlin presented 
the administration's perspective on what shape reform of the system 
should take.
  However, this Senator thought the most interesting testimony came 
from the last panel to appear on the hearing's final day. Chairman 
Kassebaum wished to supplement the testimony of the usual array of 
witnesses with perhaps less conventional viewpoints. She selected 
individuals from around the country who have personally been involved 
in starting and administering innovative, community-based training and 
education programs. One of the individuals she invited to participate 
was Father Bill Cunningham, the executive director of the Focus: Hope 
Program in Detroit, MI.
  Focus: Hope and Father Cunningham are certainly not strangers to the 
Labor Committee. Just last September, Father Cunningham appeared before 
the Labor Committee to testify about the Focus: Hope Program and its 
work in educating and training people. It is a testament to his 
dedication and success that Father Cunningham would be invited to 
testify by both Democrats and Republicans when each had control of the 
Labor Committee.
  Mr. President, Focus: Hope is often described as unorthodox in its 
methodology. It is certainly unorthodox in one respect: Unlike the vast 
majority of Federal job training programs, Focus: Hope actually works. 
It produces real and lasting results; of course, that might seem 
unorthodox in this town, which sometimes appears immune to outrage over 
wasted tax dollars and obsolete or ineffectual social programs.
  Let me offer a glimpse of the mindset which makes ``Focus: Hope so 
unique and--I believe--so successful. An article appearing in the March 
1994 issue of ``Ward's Auto World'' noted that father Cunningham saw 
Focus: Hope's mission this way:

       Focus: Hope remains at its core a civil rights 
     organization, but [father Cunningham] cites [their] machinist 
     training effort as simply a new approach. Father Cunningham 
     says of 200 machine shops that hired graduates from the 
     [Focus: Hope] machinists institute, all except two were 
     hiring their first African-American or woman. We could have 
     been suing them, he shrugs.

  Mr. President, while some groups are obsessed with talking about 
expanding opportunities, Father Cunningham's approach is a breath of 
fresh air. He believes the best method for truly empowering people is 
to educate them, teach them a marketable skill, develop in them 
responsibility, motivation, and maturity--not simply to file a lawsuit 
on their behalf.
  For the benefit of any of my colleagues who are not familiar with 
father Cunningham's work, let me offer a few quotes from his testimony:

       I would emphasize advanced job skills representing new 
     technologies, future technologies. In that vein, I would 
     require that defense and commerce play a larger role in 
     establishing national skills priorities * * * We must 
     understand and balance the difference between providing jobs 
     for the people--and everybody's hearts ought to be in
      that--and keep attention on providing capable and skilled 
     persons for job demands. That is an entirely different 
     picture.
       The industry was changing so rapidly that the machinist of 
     1981 was completely inadequate for the machine tools of 1988, 
     the computer and numerically controlled machines. * * * In 
     1993, the state of the art is already catapulting so rapidly 
     in technology that--well, I will just give you one figure. A 
     lathe in 1981 with 3,000 RPM is replaced by Ingersol, by a 
     machining center, with 60,000 RPM.
       The universities are still dealing with the engineering 
     code of 1970. So what we are doing is very expensively 
     putting all these kids through college, getting them 
     engineering degrees, and then when they go to work for Ford 
     Motor Co., they have to spend another 6 years training them.

  Finally, let me highlight one observation that was agreed to by 
everyone on Father Cunningham's panel. Chairman Kassebaum inquired 
about the efficacy of requiring people to obtain employment first 
before receiving a voucher for further job training. It was noted that 
often the most effective training and education programs are those in 
which people both work and go to school either for education or to 
learn a particular skill. On that point, Father Cunningham offered his 
insight based on his work at Focus: Hope:

       I am in total agreement with my colleagues up here. The 
     masters program we 
     [[Page S1975]] have in engineering at Focus: Hope requires a 
     40-hour workweek, and that is not work-study. It is not work-
     study * * *. The work they do and the skills they are 
     developing dictate the knowledge they need to draw down. And 
     if the university cannot provide that knowledge, the 
     university is irrelevant. So the knowledge drawdown 
     assimilates knowledge at, as I said earlier, geometric 
     proportions. So the young people there are learning four and
      five and six times faster than the normal engineering 
     candidate at a major university, simply because they are 
     seeing the relevance of what they are learning in terms of 
     the demands of the workplace.

  Mr. President, judging by the testimony provided to the committee 
during the 3 days of the hearing, Focus: Hope is precisely the type of 
program we should be attempting to replicate around the country. 
However, the lesson is not that the Government should dictate that all 
recipients of Federal dollars exactly mirror Focus: Hope in concept and 
design, but that the Government seek out programs with a proven track 
record of success and a proven base of support in their community or 
region.
  This Senator believes the best method for accomplishing this is to 
get the money into the hands of State and local officials who have a 
better idea as to which programs are working and where our limited 
resources are best utilized, that certainly has been the experience in 
my State of Michigan, where our citizens have had tremendous success 
under the leadership of Gov. John Engler, in forging a statewide 
partnership to enact real reform in such areas as job training and 
welfare.
  Once again, let me congratulate Father Cunningham on his appearance 
before the Senate's Labor and Human Resources Committee and commend him 
for his fine work at Focus: Hope. It is individuals like Father 
Cunningham and organizations like Focus: Hope which have made this 
country great and stand to make a positive difference in our future. We 
would be wise to offer them our assistance and follow their example.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  

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