[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 119 (Thursday, September 10, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H7557-H7558]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   JOB CORPS: ONE OF THE MOST WASTEFUL, LEAST EFFECTIVE PROGRAMS IN 
                           FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, in a few days we will be asked to vote for 
the annual Labor-HHS appropriations bill. I have voted for this bill 
every year because it contains some very good programs. However, one of 
its programs has become one of the most wasteful and inefficient in the 
entire Federal Government and should either do much, much better or be 
abolished. Yet this agency, because on the surface it appears to be one 
for young people, seems to believe it should be immune from criticism 
and simply get one increase after another.
  I am speaking of the Job Corps. Today, it costs over $26,000 per year 
per Job Corps student, according to the GAO. We could give each Job 
Corps student an allowance of $1,000 a month, send them to some 
expensive private school and still save money. If we did, these young 
people would probably think they had gone to heaven or hit some type of 
lottery. These Job Corps students would probably be shocked if we told 
them we were spending $26,000 per year on them, because the people who 
get the big bucks out of this are the fat cat contractors and the 
bureaucrats who run the program.
  Programs like the Job Corps are really, in the end, harmful to young 
people, because they just take more money from parents and children and 
give it instead to bureaucrats and contractors. And we are not talking 
about small change here. This year's proposed appropriation is $1.246 
billion, an increase of $61 million over last year, $1.246 billion for 
one of the most wasteful, least effective programs in the entire 
Federal Government.
  According to a 1995 GAO report, the Job Corps is the most expensive 
program that the Labor Department administers, spending on average four 
times as much per student as the JTPA. In fact, the Workforce and 
Career Development Act of 1996, which passed the House by a vote of 345 
to 79, included report language calling for five Job Corps centers to 
be closed by September 30, 1997, and five more to be closed by 
September of 2000.
  Yet the number of Job Corps centers has actually gone up since 1996 
from 112

[[Page H7558]]

to 118. This is because the Federal bureaucracy really tries in every 
way possible to do what it wants regardless of what the majority of the 
Congress votes for. This might be all right if the Federal bureaucracy 
did not waste so much money, but the taxpayers are really being ripped 
off by many Federal programs and especially this wasteful Job Corps 
program.
  The GAO reported in testimony before the Committee on Government 
Reform and Oversight this past July 29 that only 14 percent of program 
participants completed the requirements of their vocational training. 
An earlier report found that only 4 percent end up in jobs for which 
they were trained, unless one does, as the Job Corps has at times done, 
and grossly distorts and exaggerates the figures and counts as a 
success about any former student who has gotten any type of job.
  The GAO found that the Department of Labor considered a student to 
have obtained a job which matched their training if a student was 
trained as a heavy equipment operator, but got a job as a ticket 
seller. The Department of Labor also considered it a match if a student 
was trained as an auto mechanic and obtained a job attaching wristbands 
to watches.
  Mr. Speaker, the Job Corps itself admits that the average length of 
stay of a Job Corps student is only 6 months. Mark Wilson of the 
Heritage Foundation has pointed out that it costs more to send someone 
to the Job Corps for 1 year than to a regular public school for 4 
years. It now costs more for a student to go to the Job Corps for 1 
year than to go to Yale, Vanderbilt, Emory, and many other of the most 
expensive and finest colleges and universities in the Nation.
  So I repeat, Mr. Speaker, $26,000 per year per Job Corps student is 
simply too much, especially since it is producing such extremely poor 
results. As I said a moment ago, we could give each Job Corps student a 
$1,000 a month allowance, send them to some expensive private school, 
and still save money, and these students would just not believe it. And 
yet we are giving this money to fat cat government contractors and 
bureaucrats, who are the real beneficiaries of this program.
  We should really do something good for the students and the young 
people of this country by doing away with the Job Corps program or 
cutting back drastically on it. And yet, because there are 118 Job 
Corps centers around the country, I know that that cannot be done 
unless we start the education process and let people know how poor and 
wasteful this program really is. I hope we can at least start the 
process of doing that tonight.

                          ____________________