[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 99 (Thursday, June 13, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3463-S3466]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Workforce Development

  Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I am on the floor again today to talk 
about developing the American workforce. Why? Because it is such a big 
issue back home in Ohio and around the country.
  Pro-growth Federal policies, including tax cuts, have really worked. 
I just had another group of Ohio small businesspeople visiting me 
today, telling me how they have taken those tax savings and used them 
to invest in their workers, invest in machine and technology, helping 
to create more economic growth. It is working.
  The most recent report released by the Commerce Department shows that 
the economy grew by 3.1 percent in the first quarter this year. That is 
significant. By the way, it is about twice what was projected for that 
same quarter prior to tax reform being put into place. So we are doing 
about twice as well as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office 
thought we would be doing at this point.
  Official unemployment is now 3.6 percent. That is tied for the lowest 
in 50 years. We continue to see solid wage growth, including better 
wage growth--which is really exciting for me--among people who are not, 
as I said, supervisory employees; in other words, blue-collar workers, 
a 3.4-percent increase in wages. That is after about a decade and a 
half of flat wages when you take inflation into account. Finally, we 
are seeing a real increase in wages.
  I hear from our small business owners back in Ohio how this is 
working for them, but I also hear something else, which is that they 
are looking for workers.
  The good news is, the economy is growing. There is a demand for 
workers, but that is not the whole story. We are still seeing a lot of 
individuals who are missing out on the benefits of a growing economy, 
not working, and not even looking for work. I have visited dozens of 
factories and businesses

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over the past year, and I keep hearing the same thing: We just don't 
have enough skilled workers to fill all the positions we have in order 
to keep on growing, to keep expanding as a company. Yet, in Ohio and 
elsewhere, we do not have enough working-age adults participating in 
the labor force.
  So how do we solve this problem? How do we bring this together? How 
do we take people off the sidelines and into work? By the way, I am 
told it is over 8 million men right now not working at all; meaning, 
they are not looking for work; they don't show up in the unemployment 
numbers. Labor force economists call this the labor force participation 
rate. It is relatively low. It has fallen in the past decade, meaning 
there are a lot of unemployed Americans not even looking for work, not 
being recorded in those official Department of Labor unemployment 
numbers.
  It is so low that if our labor force participation was simply at its 
normal prerecession level--so go back 10 years and what was normal for 
decades before that. If you just went back to that labor force 
participation rate, our country's unemployment rate would not be 3.6 
percent today. Guess what it would be. More like 8.3 percent. If we had 
an 8.3-percent unemployment number out there, all of us would be 
pulling out our hair thinking, how do we deal with this? How do we get 
more people back to work again? That is essentially what we have.
  Again, of particular concern to me are those who are of working age, 
8 million men, between the ages of 25 and 54, who are not working. We 
need to get these people off the sidelines and back into the workforce, 
where they can have the dignity and self-respect that comes from work 
and where our businesses can have their talents. We need them to have 
our economy continue to grow.
  To achieve this, I think there are a number of challenges we have to 
address. First, we do need to focus on what is called the skills gap. 
This skills gap is essentially a mismatch between the skills in demand 
today and the skills our workers have. This labor force out there that 
is not finding the work doesn't have the skills that are needed to get 
the jobs that are available. It is a widespread issue. It is holding 
back our economy from fulfilling its full potential. In the most recent 
skills gap study from 2018, Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute 
highlighted this skills gap. The study found that it may leave an 
estimated 2.4 million positions unfilled between 2018 and 2028, with a 
potential negative economic impact of $2.5 trillion. This skills gap is 
real, it is hurting our economy, and we have to figure out how to 
address it in more innovative ways.
  One way to address it is to have more robust training for the jobs 
that are going unfilled. Pretty simple. Often, of course, these are 
technical jobs. These are trade jobs, plumbers, welders, nursing 
assistants, IT jobs like coders. Economists call these jobs middle-
skilled jobs. What they mean by that is that typically these are the 
kinds of jobs that don't require a college education, but they do 
require some training after high school. That is what is really missing 
right now. That is where this skills gap can be closed.

  The best known training you have probably heard about for these kinds 
of jobs is called career and technical education, CTE. For those who 
are older, you might think of vocational education. CTE programs are 
doing great work all over the country.
  I have seen this a lot firsthand in Ohio. I am a big fan of career 
and technical education, so I visit our CTE programs--Butler Tech near 
Hamilton, OH, and Max S. Hayes High School in Cleveland, OH.
  I cofounded and cochaired something here in the Senate called the CTE 
Caucus, alongside Senator Tim Kaine. We have meetings here. We have 
conferences here. We try to encourage more career and technical 
education back home. It is important. But the training we need goes 
well beyond these great high school programs. Shorter term technical 
workforce training programs post-high school are another key way to 
help close the skills gap. Think of the many workforce training 
programs that might be offered in your community college. We need to 
encourage more of those.
  We need to be sure that the Federal Government is playing a role here 
to hold up career and technical education generally but also to ensure 
that these training programs are given the same opportunities that we 
give to 2-year and 4-year colleges and universities. One impactful way 
to close that skills gap is through Pell grants.
  Currently, we use Pell grants to help expand access to college-level 
education to Americans. You have to meet the criteria, which is 
basically an income criteria. For lower income families in America, if 
you want to go to a 4-year college or university and you otherwise 
qualify, you can get a Pell grant to do it--not a loan, a grant. That 
is great, but, unbelievably, you can't get that same grant if you want 
to go to a 15-week, 14-week, 13-week, or 12-week training program to 
learn how to be a welder or a coder or a hospital tech. To me, that 
makes no sense.
  Our bipartisan JOBS Act, which I cowrote with Senator Tim Kaine, 
would allow us to use the Pell grant for these shorter term job-
training programs with an industry-recognized credential at the end of 
the process. That is what employers are looking for. That is what these 
people need, young people and mid-career people who are looking for a 
job. Under current law, you are eligible for an associate's or a 
bachelor's degree but not to enroll in a CTE program under 15 weeks. It 
doesn't make any sense, and the JOBS Act would fix that.
  By the way, these kinds of workforce training programs provide 
students with academic and technical skills knowledge and training that 
are necessary today to fill the 21st-century jobs we have. They 
encompass the kinds of high-quality and rigorous job-training programs 
that are easily transferrable to the in-demand jobs we have. Whether it 
is learning HVAC installation, how to operate factory machinery--which, 
by the way, often involves computer skills--or how to be a programmer 
or a coder, these programs teach students the practical, transferable 
skills that keep our economy moving.
  I have seen firsthand how this can work in my home State of Ohio. 
Most recently in May, I had the opportunity to deliver the commencement 
address at two of our community colleges that specialize in these types 
of programs--Sinclair Community College in Dayton and Marion Technical 
College in Marion County. I was happy to go to these graduation 
ceremonies.
  First, both schools were great partners in helping us develop the 
JOBS Act, and these schools are getting it done. They are giving 
students what they need, the tools they need to be able to succeed in 
today's workforce.
  Second, I am always inspired by attending commencements at our 
community colleges. At these two colleges, as an example, I saw 
individuals as young as 15 years old walk across the stage. This one 
young man was getting his associate's degree that he started at a 
career and technical education program in high school before he got his 
driver's license. I also saw individuals as old as 74 years old. I saw 
the whole range. And they weren't just graduating; they were commencing 
a new stage of their lives that will be filled with opportunity because 
they are getting jobs.
  That is why the JOBS Act is so important. It has the potential to 
help thousands more students, like the ones I met at Marion and 
Sinclair, in gaining the skills necessary to be their best and to get a 
job.
  (Mr. YOUNG assumed the Chair.)
  At the same time, we know that addressing the skills gap will not 
fully solve the challenges we face in raising our labor participation 
rates. Another is overcoming the scourge of addiction we have seen in 
Ohio and elsewhere around the country, from both opioids and, more 
recently, crystal meth.
  Opioids, prescription drugs, heroin, and fentanyl have hit us really 
hard in Ohio. I see my colleague from Indiana is here on the floor. He 
sees the same thing. It has torn our families apart. It has devastated 
our communities. It has forced a lot of able-bodied adults out of the 
workforce while they struggle with their addiction.
  We have begun to make some progress on this front. After 8 straight 
years of rising overdose deaths--8 straight years; every year more 
people dying from overdoses, to the point

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where we are losing 72,000 Americans a year--finally, we saw a drop in 
the last year. In Ohio, we had a 21.4-percent decrease based on a study 
that was done by the Centers for Disease Control. This is the last data 
we have from the most recent numbers. We will see. We expect to have 
some new numbers soon for all of 2018. We will see. That is good. A 
21.4-percent decrease is good. The problem is, it started from such a 
high-water mark.
  Frankly, what I am hearing this year, 2019, is that some of these 
overdose rates are increasing in some areas of Ohio. But we have seen 
some progress. Again, according to the studies that have been done, we 
are reducing the overdose deaths, but we still have so many people who 
are addicted, and we still have this issue of how to get them into the 
workforce.
  The bills we have passed here in the Congress, like our CARA 
legislation--the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act--and the 
Cures legislation, have really helped. The STOP Act has helped to try 
to keep this deadly fentanyl, which is the opioid that is killing most 
people, out of our country. There is $3 billion in increased funding 
that has gone out from this Congress over the past few years to deal 
with education, prevention, treatment, longer term recovery, and 
providing Naloxone--this miracle drug--to reverse the effects of an 
overdose. Those are good, and we are making some progress but not 
enough yet--not enough. Our work is far from finished.

  What I see happening in Ohio is that as we are making progress on the 
opioids, we are seeing crystal meth beginning to increase--pure crystal 
meth--methamphetamines coming from Mexico, across the Mexican border, 
into our country. Back in the day, we had meth labs in Ohio, in 
Indiana, and in other States represented in this Chamber. Those meth 
labs are pretty much gone now. People aren't making it in their own 
homes or in communities in Ohio. Instead, they are buying it on the 
street because it is cheaper and more powerful to buy pure crystal 
meth. That is not a good thing. It is a bad thing because it is 
indicating that the crystal meth is spreading.
  By the way, these drugs are causing more law enforcement concerns 
than ever because, like cocaine, this is a stimulant. They call it a 
psychostimulant, which creates more violent crimes and more challenges 
for our law enforcement officials.
  We have to ensure that we continue this downward trend in overdose 
deaths and address the crystal meth issue, which I will be talking 
about more over the next couple weeks, with some ideas on crystal meth.
  Another factor that undermines our efforts to develop our workforce 
is the increasing number of people with a felony record. Having a 
felony record can be a heavy burden to bear when trying to find 
employment. Far too often, we see the downward spiral that occurs when 
inmates are released back into the community without any kind of job 
training, any kind of a way to deal with their mental health or drug 
abuse history or their addiction. So people find themselves out of a 
job and then committing crimes again to get by. This often goes hand in 
hand with the issue of addiction, as so many people are jailed for 
nonviolent drug offenses related to opioids, meth, and other drugs.
  Fortunately, we are making some progress in getting these individuals 
the help and treatment they need, thanks to some actions we have taken 
here at the Federal level as well.
  The Second Chance Act, which was signed into law about a decade ago, 
is helping. I was the coauthor of that back in the House and a coauthor 
again this year for the reauthorization of that legislation. It 
provides Federal grant money to State and local entities to help 
people, when they get out of prison, get their lives back together--
again, provide job training in prison, as they get out of prison; that 
transition--and help them deal with issues they have, including mental 
health and addiction.
  In so many cases, that has been remarkably successful in reducing the 
recidivism rate--the number of people who go back into the system. 
Unfortunately, about two-thirds of those who get out of prison get 
rearrested within 2 or 3 years.
  So there is a great opportunity here, if you use these programs, to 
keep these people out of the system and to get them back on their feet, 
back with their families, and back at work.
  Last week, I was able to see firsthand how groups at the State and 
local level are using some of these Federal resources to create strong 
and effective pipelines to get individuals off the sidelines and back 
into participating in the workforce.
  In Cincinnati, I had the opportunity to attend a graduation in supply 
chain logistics for 11 women incarcerated on nonviolent drug offenses. 
These 11 women now have a skill, a tool, to be able to go out and get a 
job in this 21st-century economy we have. In Cincinnati in particular, 
we have a lot of supply chain jobs that are available. They are excited 
about it.
  I also visited one of the companies where a few of these women are 
going, where they hire a lot of second-chance folks, people who are 
returning citizens. They have had great success. These workers are 
grateful. They show up on time. They are local. We need more companies 
to take that person who has been down on his or her luck, gone through 
a program, and is ready to work. A lot of these women were repeat 
offenders of low-level crimes, and they had circulated in and out of 
prison for years.
  This program is run by the Hamilton County Office of Reentry, which 
in 2010 was established in part from grant money from the Second Chance 
Act we talked about. Again, in coordination with local partners, this 
office of reentry has run programs like this that have given 
incarcerated individuals a chance to reenter society and the tools and 
support they need for gainful employment. That is one of the reasons we 
have the opportunity out there to reduce this problem with so many 
people out of work altogether. There is great potential here to get 
people back to work.
  In May, I attended a roundtable with a number of workforce 
development nonprofits in Northeast Ohio, Cleveland, OH, including the 
Boy and Girls Club, Habitat for Humanity, and Youth Opportunities 
Unlimited.
  Bloom Bakery is an example of an entity that is taking advantage of 
some of these Federal opportunities in the Second Chance Act. Their 
parent, a nonprofit, received a Second Chance Act grant that allowed 
them to help ex-inmates reenter the community. During their time at 
Bloom, individuals have a chance to contribute to the operations of the 
bakery, learn culinary skills, learn how to bake, learn how to deal 
with people, because it is a retail outlet, and also learn how to be 
good in the service industry.
  I had the opportunity to meet a number of these individuals. 
Ashanique Johnson was one person I talked to. She talked about how 
Bloom was really a second chance for her, how she intended to use what 
she was learning there to find long-term success in the culinary field.
  I also met with TreShon Bankhead. TreShon is a participant in another 
program, one of their sister programs that train healthcare 
professionals. He is currently working at University Hospitals as a 
nursing assistant and is pursuing a degree in nursing. It was great to 
see that. Again, it is a second chance for him.
  Meeting them, hearing their life experiences, and seeing what they 
have accomplished underscore the need to continue to provide these 
opportunities so they can get ahead in life and so our economy can have 
them in the workforce.
  Let me conclude by saying that when it comes to our economy, more 
participation is better for everybody. We want more people coming out 
of the sidelines, coming out of the shadows, and getting to work.
  Let's make sure all Americans have the tools they need to go to work 
and to find success. Let's close that skills gap by doing the career 
and technical education programs that we have talked about but also 
providing more help at the Federal level. Rather than the help going to 
just colleges and universities for a degree, let it go to the short-
term training programs so they get a meaningful certificate and can go 
to work right away. Let's help get the JOBS Act passed to be able to do 
that. Let's help individuals overcome their addiction. Let's help 
people stay out of jail and stay with their families and

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get to work. Let's give every single American the opportunity to get 
the tools they need to achieve their God-given potential.
  Thank you.
  I yield back.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.