[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3231-3240]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  JOB TRAINING IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2005

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 126 and rule 
XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House 
on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 27.

                              {time}  1557


                     In the Committee of the Whole

  Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the 
Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill 
(H.R. 27) to enhance the workforce investment system of the Nation by 
strengthening one-stop career centers, providing for more effective 
governance arrangements, promoting access to a more comprehensive array 
of employment, training, and related services, establishing a targeted 
approach to serving youth, and improving performance accountability, 
and for other purposes, with Mr. Terry in the chair.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having 
been read the first time.
  Under the rule, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) and the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) each will control 30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner).
  Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, as we stand here today we continue to see significant 
progress toward greater economic opportunity and prosperity across the 
country. More than 2.7 million new jobs have been created over the last 
17 months, and the unemployment rate has fallen to 5.2 percent, the 
lowest level since September 2001. Our economy is strong and it is 
getting stronger.
  The backbone of a strong economy is a well-trained and highly skilled 
workforce, and it is absolutely critical for workers to have the 
education and skills necessary to adapt to new opportunities and to 
move into higher wages.
  Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed with this view when he 
testified before the Committee on Education and the Workforce last 
year. The chairman said, ``We need to increase our efforts to ensure 
that as many of our citizens as possible have the opportunity to 
capture the benefits of the changing economy. One critical element in 
creating that opportunity is the provision of rigorous education and 
ongoing training to all members of our society.''
  Chairman Greenspan this morning testified before Congress and talked 
about the need to do a better job with our education system and better 
training and retraining of American workers.
  The bill before us, the Job Training Improvement Act, would achieve 
this objective by strengthening the Nation's job training system. In 
1998, Congress established a system of one-stop

[[Page 3232]]

career centers aimed at providing one convenient central location to 
offer job training and related employment services. While these reforms 
have been generally successful, the Workforce Investment Act system is 
still hampered by bureaucracy and duplication that prevents it from 
being as effective as it could be for workers and their families.
  Our bill includes a number of reforms aimed at strengthening our job 
training system and better engaging the business community to improve 
job training services.
  Our bill includes a number of reforms. First, requiring State and 
local workforce investment boards to ensure the job training programs 
reflect the employment needs in local areas. Secondly, allowing 
training for currently employed workers so employees can upgrade their 
skills and avoid layoffs. Third, encouraging the highest caliber 
providers, including community colleges, to offer training through the 
one-stop system, and leveraging other public and private resources to 
increase training and opportunities.
  The bill also includes other important reforms. First, it 
consolidates the three adult WIA training programs, giving States and 
local communities greater flexibility and enabling more job seekers to 
be served with no reduction in services.

                              {time}  1600

  In addition, it targets 70 percent of the youth grant funds to out-
of-school youth, an underserved population that faces significant 
challenges in finding meaningful employment.
  The bill includes a proposal passed by the House last year introduced 
by the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Porter) to create personal 
reemployment accounts of up to $3,000 to help unemployed Americans 
purchase job training and other employment-related services, such as 
child care, transportation services and housing assistance, giving them 
the flexibility they need in order to gain meaningful employment. In 
addition, it includes the President's community college proposal to 
strengthen the partnership between local businesses, community 
colleges, and the local one-stop delivery system.
  Later today, we will consider an amendment from my colleague from 
Virginia to strip the faith-based provisions from this bill, an 
amendment that would deny faith-based providers their rights under the 
historic 1964 Civil Rights Act. When we considered this bill in 
committee, we twice rejected it on a bipartisan basis, and I urge all 
Members to vote against it today. The 1964 Civil Rights Act made clear 
that when faith-based groups hire employees on a religious basis, it 
can exercise the group's civil rights liberties and not discriminate 
under Federal law. In 1987, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld this 
right.
  As my colleagues can see from the chart that I have next to me, 
former President Bill Clinton signed four laws allowing faith-based 
groups to staff on a religious basis when they receive those Federal 
funds. Those four laws are the 1996 welfare reform law; the 1998 
Community Services Block Grant Act; the 2000 Community Renewal Tax 
Relief Act; and the 2000 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services 
Administration Act, all allowing faith-based providers to preserve 
their rights under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
  Our Nation's faith-based institutions have a proven track record in 
meeting the training and counseling needs of our citizens. Why would we 
want to deny them the opportunity to help in Federal job training 
efforts? President Bush repeated this call to empower faith-based 
providers both during his State of the Union address and again 
yesterday. I can think of no better place to start than to protect the 
rights of faith-based groups who are willing to lend a helping hand in 
providing job training and other critical social services to the most 
needy of our citizens.
  I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) for his 
work in putting this bill together, a bill that is supported by a broad 
and diverse coalition of groups, including the U.S. Chamber of 
Commerce, the National Association of Counties, the National 
Association of Workforce Boards, the National Workforce Association, 
the Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom and the Salvation Army, 
amongst others.
  We are part of a dynamic economy that is constantly creating new and 
different types of jobs, so the knowledge and skills of each job seeker 
is absolutely critical in determining their success or failure. If we 
are going to help them succeed, then strengthening our job training 
programs is essential. The bill, I believe, accomplishes that goal.
  Unfortunately, the only plan that my colleagues on the other side 
have put forward to address the needs of American workers is the status 
quo. Their plan fails to reduce duplication and inefficiency, it fails 
to give States and local communities more flexibility, and it fails to 
take advantage of the positive role that faith-based institutions play 
in our communities and the success they have in providing critical 
social services to those most in need.
  Mr. Chairman, the status quo is no plan at all. I ask my colleagues 
to support the underlying bill.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this bill. This bill is 
nearly identical to the WIA bill that passed this House last Congress 
on a near party-line vote. It was a bad bill then, and it remains a bad 
bill now.
  H.R. 27 represents a missed opportunity to ensure that more, not 
less, job training happens for the millions who are unemployed or 
looking to upgrade their skills. This legislation fails to increase the 
amount of actual training services that will be provided to unemployed, 
dislocated, and underemployed workers. Instead, this legislation 
focuses on moving around and changing the bureaucratic elements of WIA 
without focusing on getting more resources to the consumers of these 
programs.
  H.R. 27 is largely the same proposal backed by the administration for 
the past 2 years. Just a few weeks ago, President Bush spoke to 
individuals in Omaha, Nebraska. There he met a woman in her late 50s 
who is a mother of three children. She told him that presently she was 
working three jobs to ensure she could provide for her family. The 
President's response was the following, and I quote exactly: ``Uniquely 
American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that.''
  What insensitivity. Is this the attitude of this administration when 
it comes to the challenges of working adults and families? I think this 
quote from the President speaks for itself. It will go down in history 
with Marie Antoinette's famous quote: ``Let them eat cake.''
  Mr. Chairman, this bill is not going to help this mother of three or 
the millions of Americans seeking job training. This bill is 
objectionable for four primary reasons.
  First, the bill block-grants the adult worker, dislocated worker, and 
employment service program. This effectively repeals the Wagner-Peyser 
Act and the employment service, the national program used to match job 
seekers with employment opportunities. Termination of the employment 
service will translate into higher unemployment and less jobs.
  The elimination of the employment service and Wagner-Peyser marks 
another example of the Republican majority terminating a New Deal 
program. Wagner-Peyser was first enacted in June of 1933 in the first 
term of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It is shameful that we are 
eliminating a 70-year-old program that has helped so many achieve and 
maintain work. In my hometown of Flint, Michigan, we had two parts of 
the unemployment office, one where you applied for the unemployment 
benefits and the other where you went in and were seeking a job and 
they would put the unemployed and an employer together. That would be 
decimated by this bill.
  Second, H.R. 27 allows Governors to siphon off resources currently 
providing veterans, adult learners, and individuals with disabilities 
with critical

[[Page 3233]]

services. Instead of helping vulnerable and needy individuals, these 
resources would fund infrastructure costs of the one-stop centers. Many 
of these individuals have nowhere else to turn to receive help, and 
this bill would exacerbate this problem.
  H.R. 27 requires programs which provide these critical services to 
give up resources, but it also takes away any say over how they are 
allocated or used. They no longer will have a voice on the local 
boards. We should not be taking funds from these programs. These lost 
resources will translate into disruptions and lost opportunities to 
people who presently rely on these services. We should provide a 
separate source of funding for these one-stop centers.
  Third, the bill allows discrimination in hiring based on religion 
with WIA funds. The bill turns back the clock on decades of civil 
rights protections in our job training programs. This is simply wrong. 
Focus Hope in Detroit, Michigan, is one of the best, if not the best, 
job training program in the State of Michigan. Focus Hope was run until 
his death by Father William Cunningham, a classmate of mine in the 
seminary. He trained thousands of people in inner-city Detroit as a 
Catholic priest assigned by his bishop there, and he did not care 
whether those who were training people to run a lathe, to do 
engineering or whatever it was, he did not care whether they were 
Catholic, whether they were Protestant, whether they were Morman, 
Muslim or had no faith at all. All he cared was they knew how to teach 
what they were teaching. That was a very important and effective 
program. He did not need to discriminate to carry out his duties. I 
strongly urge Members to support the Scott amendment today that will be 
offered later during debate to remedy this major shortcoming in this 
legislation.
  Finally, Mr. Chairman, H.R. 27 creates personal reemployment accounts 
which voucherize the job training system and cuts individuals off from 
other training services. The money they do not spend to get a job, they 
can keep and use for any purpose. Workers do not need a bribe to get 
back to work. Research on similar schemes have proven that PRAs are not 
an effective means of providing job training.
  Mr. Chairman, this bill does not respond to the needs of 
underemployed and unemployed individuals. It misses an opportunity to 
improve our job training system. I urge Members to join me in opposing 
passage of this legislation.
  Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the 
gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), the author of the bill, the 
chairman of the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness.
  Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 27 and 
thank the gentleman from Ohio for his leadership in bringing this bill 
to the floor, the Job Training Improvement Act of 2005, which I 
introduced to strengthen and reauthorize the Nation's job training 
system as well as adult education and vocational rehabilitation 
programs. Job training programs must be responsive to the needs of the 
workforce and improving them is critical. In today's knowledge-based 
economy, we need to equip Americans with the skills they need to find a 
new or better job and quickly return to the workforce.
  One of the hallmarks of WIA is that in order to encourage the 
development of comprehensive systems that improve services to both 
employers and job seekers, local services are provided through a one-
stop delivery system. The one-stop centers serve as the front line in 
helping job seekers return to the workforce. At the one-stop centers, 
assistance ranges from core services such as job search and placement 
assistance, access to job listings and an initial assessment of skills 
and needs, to intensive services such as comprehensive assessments and 
case management and, if needed, occupational skills training.
  Over the last 3 years, I have met with local workforce development 
leaders, businesses, the administration, researchers, and others to 
examine how we can improve our Federal job training system. While the 
Workforce Investment Act of 1998 made dramatic reforms to the Nation's 
workforce system, I learned that further refinements were necessary to 
ensure State and local officials have the flexibility they need to 
effectively target resources toward the unique needs of their 
communities.
  The Job Training Improvement Act builds upon WIA to make it more 
demand-driven and flexible while reducing unnecessary duplication and 
inefficiency. H.R. 27 will help strengthen and improve the Nation's 
locally driven, business-led workforce investment system to help States 
and localities ensure workers get the training they need to find good 
jobs.
  For example, the bill streamlines the current WIA funding in order to 
provide more efficient and results-oriented services and programs by 
combining the adult, dislocated, and employment service funding streams 
into one funding stream. This will eliminate duplication in service 
delivery and administrative functions that remain in the system, 
improving services for individuals.
  The bill also ensures the financial contribution of the mandatory 
partners in the one-stop centers while at the same time it increases 
the service integration among the partner programs. This will improve 
access to services through the one-stop delivery system for special 
populations, such as individuals with disabilities.
  In order to ensure greater responsiveness to local area needs and 
strengthen the private sector's role, the bill simplifies the local and 
State governance processes. One-stop partner programs will no longer be 
required to have a seat on the local boards. This will provide for 
greater representation and influence by local business representatives. 
Currently, they are frequently frustrated that they are not able to 
connect with or access resources from the local boards.
  Mr. Chairman, I had a couple of my good friends, constituents in my 
district, that lost their jobs in the defense industry. They came up 
and thanked me for the help they received from WIA. They were able to 
get vouchers. One of them went on to become a school teacher, one a 
worker in the computer industry. This bill works. The new bill that we 
are passing today will make it better, more efficient and help the 
people to really get the services they need so we can continue to have 
the job growth that we have been enjoying the last few months here in 
the country. I support this strongly.
  Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. McDermott).

                              {time}  1615

  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Chairman, the question is when is the Congress 
going to stop letting American businesses and workers down? It is time 
to roll up our sleeves and chart a path to economic freedom. It is time 
to govern.
  Today the Republicans again ask us to consider a bill with provisions 
that will make its mark by missing the mark. It inflates government 
bureaucracy and deflates workers' opportunity. American business needs 
the best, most qualified workers on earth, but this bill does nothing 
to reach that goal.
  Workers, especially the working poor, need a credible realistic road 
to economic freedom. This bill is a dead end. Our workforce is in 
trouble. The ``L.A. Times,'' which I will enter into the Record an 
article from the ``L.A. Times,'' recently reported that the volatility 
of income for the working poor has doubled in recent years. Income 
among the working poor now fluctuates by as much as 50 percent 
annually. One cannot buy a home with a wild fluctuation like that. One 
cannot plan for their children's college education with income swings 
like that, and they are lucky to put food on the table.
  Mr. Chairman, we need to rethink the systems we have in place to help 
workers and employers maximize productivity and profitability. We 
continue to pursue open trade to open our domestic market to foreign 
competition, but we are not employing the same vigor toward pursuing 
the means

[[Page 3234]]

to ensure that our workforce can compete and be the best trained and 
equipped in the world. This issue, investing in our workforce, 
transcends social and economic status.
  I represent the 7th District of Washington, Seattle, where the 
economy is driven by manufacturing as well as by innovation and the 
service industry. Everyone in these industries is competing for their 
jobs against someone overseas. Making the proper investments and 
systems to helping the working poor obtain access to job training and 
education is even more important.
  The so-called Personal Reemployment Accounts compel, compel, 
unemployed workers to take the first job they can get and forego 
current job training opportunities. Instead of economic independence, 
this bill produces economic surrender. We can do better.
  We ought to significantly invest in continuing education training 
programs for people in industries that are challenged by global 
competition. Furthermore, we ought to seriously consider wage 
insurance. This would enable the working poor to move into jobs that 
may begin by paying a little less but have greater opportunities for 
wage growth and economic stability down the road. This bill, even 
without the bad provisions such as Personal Reemployment Accounts and 
the provisions that allow workplace discrimination based on religion, 
does nothing to meet the new challenges that workers and businesses 
that rely on them face in the new global economy.
  The question again, Mr. Chairman, is when will you tell your chairman 
to start taking these responsibilities seriously rather than playing 
politics, as we are here today, putting the same bill before us that we 
have put here before, we know it is not going anywhere, it is a waste 
of time, and it does nothing for the workers? This is not even an 
election year.

              [From the Los Angeles Times, Dec. 12, 2004]

     The Poor Have More Things Today--Including Wild Income Swings

                         (By Peter G. Gosselin)

       ``The poor are not like everyone else,'' social critic 
     Michael Harrington wrote in the 1962 bestseller ``The Other 
     America,'' which helped shape President Johnson's War on 
     Poverty.
       ``They are a different kind of people,'' he declared. 
     ``They think and feel differently; they look upon a different 
     America than the middle class.''
       How then to account for Elvira Rojas?
       The 36-year-old Salvadoran-born dishwasher and her partner, 
     warehouse worker Jose Maldanado, make barely enough to stay 
     above the official poverty line--$18,810 last year for a 
     family of four. But by working two, sometimes three, jobs 
     between them, they are grabbing at middle-class dreams.
       Rojas and Maldanado live in a two-room apartment in 
     Hawthorne but have china settings for 16 tucked in a wooden 
     hutch. Their two young daughters receive health coverage 
     through Medi-Cal but get many of their clothes at Robinsons-
     May.
       The family struggles to meet its monthly bills but has 
     taken on a mountain of credit card debt. They have used 
     plastic to buy a large-screen TV and other luxuries but have 
     also relied on it to cover bare necessities such as rent and 
     emergency-room visits.
       ``That's why I'm really poor even though I work so hard,'' 
     Rojas said with a rueful laugh.
       Some see circumstances like Rojas' as testament to the 
     economic strides that America has made over the last 
     generation, rather than a reflection of its failures.
       ``We've won the War on Poverty,'' asserted Robert Rector, 
     an influential analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a 
     conservative Washington think tank. ``We've basically 
     eliminated widespread material deprivation.''
       But if deprivation is no longer as big a problem, that 
     hardly means all is well. In many ways, Rojas is the new face 
     of the working poor, suffering not so much from a dearth of 
     possessions as from a cavalcade of chaos--pay cuts and 
     eviction notices, car troubles and medical crises--that 
     rattles her finances and nudges her family toward the 
     economic brink.
       In this way, Rojas and millions like her are not--as 
     Harrington described them--fundamentally different from most 
     other Americans; they are remarkably similar.
       Indeed, today's working poor are experiencing an extreme 
     version of the economic turbulence that is rocking families 
     across the income spectrum. And the cause, no matter people's 
     means, is the same: a quarter- century-long shift of economic 
     risk by business and government onto working families.
       Protections that Americans, especially poor ones, once 
     relied on to buffer them from economic setbacks--affordable 
     housing, stable jobs with good benefits, union membership and 
     the backstop of cash welfare--have shriveled or been 
     eliminated. These losses have been only partially offset by 
     an expansion of programs such as the earned-income tax credit 
     for the working poor and publicly provided healthcare.
       For the most part, the poor have been left to cope on their 
     own, scrambling from one fragile employment arrangement to 
     the next, doubling up on housing and borrowing heavily.
       ``Families up and down the income distribution are bearing 
     more economic risk than they did 25 or 30 years ago,'' said 
     Johns Hopkins University economist Robert A. Moffitt. ``But 
     the increase has been especially dramatic among the working 
     poor.''
       As a result, their earnings are jumping around like never 
     before.
       During the early 1970s, the inflation-adjusted incomes of 
     most families in the bottom fifth of the economy bounced up 
     and down no more than 25% a year. By the beginning of this 
     decade, those annual fluctuations had doubled to as much as 
     50%, according to statistics generated by the Los Angeles 
     Times in conjunction with Moffitt and researchers at several 
     other major universities.
       For a family with an income at the 20th percentile--or 
     roughly $23,000 a year in inflation-adjusted terms--that has 
     meant recent annual swings of as much as $12,000. Twenty-five 
     years ago, those swings tended to be no more than $4,300.
       The Times' figures are based on the Panel Study of Income 
     Dynamics, a database funded by the National Science 
     Foundation and run by the University of Michigan. In contrast 
     to most economic indicators, which involve taking random 
     samples of different Americans at different times and 
     comparing the results, the panel study has followed the same 
     5,000 nationally representative families and their offshoots 
     for nearly 40 years.
       In supplementing conventional statistics with the panel-
     study data, the newspaper has sought to explain why Americans 
     in rising numbers report being less financially secure, even 
     as the nation has grown richer overall.
       In a nutshell, The Times has found that behind the upward 
     march of most economic averages are increasingly frequent 
     instances of financial setback and hardship for a large swath 
     of the population. Even those in the top-10 percent bracket--
     making well over $100,000 a year--have seen their incomes 
     grow more volatile and therefore prone to steep dives.
       But for the country's 20 million working-poor families, the 
     findings are particularly sobering: They now run the risk of 
     seeing their incomes slashed by half in any given year. 
     That's almost double the volatility experienced by families 
     in the middle of the economic spectrum, the newspaper's 
     findings show.
       ``The only way to improve your life if you're poor is to be 
     very prudent and make very, very few mistakes like getting 
     fired or splurging and ending up with a lot of debt,'' said 
     Christopher Jencks, a Harvard University authority on 
     poverty. ``Most people aren't that prudent.''


                           Finding a Foothold

       Elvira Rojas headed for the U.S. at age 21 in search of two 
     things that were in short supply in her native EI Salvador: 
     peace and prosperity.
       Combatants in that country's bloody civil war engaged in 
     firefights outside her family's home in Acajutla, and 
     Maldanado had received death threats because of his role as a 
     former military man. In addition, Rojas discovered that the 
     only job she could get with her high school diploma from El 
     Instituto Nacional was at the local fish-packing plant.
       The pair arrived in L.A. in May 1989. She quickly found 
     work cleaning houses with two of Maldanado's aunts. He landed 
     a job at a Hawthorne dry-cleaning plant. Between them, they 
     made about $200 a week.
       But with the average rent on a one-bedroom apartment in the 
     city then running about $600, they could not afford a first 
     foothold in their new country--a place of their own to live. 
     ``I felt bad in the beginning because I had nothing,'' Rojas 
     said. ``I wanted to go home.''
       With nowhere else to turn, they moved in with one of 
     Maldanado's aunts, her five children and four cousins in a 
     two-bedroom house on Firmona Avenue in Hawthorne. They slept 
     on the kitchen floor.
       As the couple began to make more money, they moved into a 
     succession of other apartments. Each was a little larger than 
     the last but still crammed with relatives.
       Rojas and Maldanado had few alternatives. During their 
     first years, they were effectively excluded from Federal rent 
     subsidies or State help because they were illegal immigrants.
       In 1991, the two gained legal status under a program that 
     allowed people fleeing war in their homelands to be counted 
     as refugees. But their new standing was thrown into question 
     in 1994, when California voters approved Proposition 187. The 
     initiative was designed to cut off state assistance to 
     undocumented immigrants, but many legal ones interpreted the 
     measure as a blanket ban aimed at them too.
       Rojas, for one, took no chances; she never applied for 
     housing assistance--or almost

[[Page 3235]]

     any other kind of aid--although it appears from her Social 
     Security records and tax returns that she would have 
     qualified. ``I didn't want to be a burden on the 
     government,'' she explained.
       It's probably just as well. By the mid-1990s, the state and 
     federal governments were winding down most of a six-decade-
     long drive to help poor families meet their housing needs. 
     That effort had begun under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 
     who decried the conditions gripping America. ``I see one-
     third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished,'' he 
     said in 1937.
       In the years that followed, a booming private sector 
     largely solved the food and clothing problems. And a 
     combination of financial market innovations and federal power 
     applied through a battery of agencies--the Veterans 
     Administration, the Federal Housing Administration, Fannie 
     Mae and Freddie Mac--greatly expanded home ownership, 
     especially among the middle class. But that still left what 
     to do for poor families, most of whom could afford only to 
     rent.
       Washington's first answer was to have the government build 
     and run housing projects. Some worked. But many degenerated 
     into vertical ghettos, victimized by disastrous design, 
     racial and economic segregation, drugs and crime.
       In 1974, President Nixon and Congress turned to another 
     solution: the Section 8 program. Instead of putting up 
     buildings itself, the government would subsidize private 
     developers to construct housing and give poor families 
     vouchers to rent apartments in the open market. But developer 
     subsidies produced cost overruns and political scandals in 
     the 1980s and were largely phased out.
       That left only the vouchers, which recently have been cut 
     back. In all, the amount of money that Congress and the 
     president have authorized to be spent on housing assistance 
     has plunged by nearly two-thirds in the last 25 years, from 
     an inflation-adjusted $82 billion in 1978 to $29 billion last 
     year.
       Washington's latest answer has been more laissez-faire: 
     offer tax breaks for the creation of low-income housing but 
     otherwise leave it to the marketplace to decide how much gets 
     built. In hot housing markets such as Southern California's, 
     little has.
       ``We've produced tens of thousands of units recently, but 
     the well's been dry for so long we should have been producing 
     hundreds of thousands,'' said Jan Breidenbach, executive 
     director of the Southern California Assn. of Non-Profit 
     Housing, which represents many of the region's developers of 
     low-income housing.
       In the absence of substantial government help--and with 
     housing prices soaring beyond the reach of even the middle 
     class--most working-poor families have been left to fend for 
     themselves.
       By 1997, Rojas and Maldanado thought they had succeeded in 
     doing that. He was making $5,800 a year at the dry-cleaning 
     plant. She was making more than $12,000 dashing between a 
     part-time job at an airline linen service on Prairie Avenue 
     in Hawthorne and a temporary position with Kelly Services, 
     packing magazines, perfume and shampoo in samplers for 
     direct-market mailings.
       In the fall of that year, the couple, with another of 
     Maldanado's aunts and her children, moved into a white stucco 
     bungalow on Burin Avenue in Inglewood, not far from Los 
     Angeles International Airport.
       Although the house sagged in the middle and had drainage 
     problems, it featured two kitchens and two living rooms, 
     plenty of space for each family. The place cost Rojas and 
     Maldanado $550 a month. That was more than 30% of their 
     earnings, a level the government considers the outer limit of 
     affordable, but it was still something they could bear.
       The bungalow ``felt good because there were not so many of 
     us,'' Rojas said. ``It was the most room I've ever had.'' The 
     following year, the two families celebrated Christmas by 
     stringing sparkling lights along the structure's faded blue 
     eaves and inviting neighbors for a party.


                         Heading West for Work

       Albert Grimes arrived in Los Angeles a few years before 
     Elvira Rojas did, similarly hungry to start over.
       He came from Cleveland, where his family was a pillar of 
     the African American community. His father, ``Big Joe'' 
     Grimes, had returned home from World War II and used the GI 
     Bill to buy a house. He opened a barbershop, founded a youth 
     marching band called B.J.'s Raiders and became a kingmaker of 
     sorts in Cleveland politics.
       Albert's uncle, Walter Dicks, ran the municipal workers 
     union and helped the younger Grimes find a job right out of 
     high school on a city sanitation truck. It paid about 
     $15,000, equal to about $30,000 in today's dollars.
       But Albert was laid off during one of Cleveland's periodic 
     fiscal crises. In 1985, at the age of 29, he left home and 
     headed West. He had no trouble finding work with one of Los 
     Angeles' big employers.
       For most of the postwar era, working Americans could count 
     on big business even more than big government to provide 
     safeguards against economic risk. In a reverse of the current 
     passion for temps, outsourcing and lean workforces, corporate 
     America felt it had a civic duty to offer full-time jobs with 
     good wages and solid benefits, even to those like Grimes with 
     no college education.
       ``Steady, year-round employment is so right from the 
     standpoint of the employer, so right from the standpoint of 
     the workers and so right for the country as a whole . . . 
     that it is hard to see why we manufacturers have not made 
     more progress in its application,'' Procter & Gamble Co. 
     President Richard Deupree told a 1948 audience.
       As the decades passed, Los Angeles became the hub of the 
     nation's aerospace industry; a second home to U.S. 
     automakers, after Detroit; and a major financial center. 
     Among the region's largest employers: Lockheed Corp., 
     McDonnell Douglas Corp., General Motors Corp., Goodyear Tire 
     & Rubber Co., First Interstate Bank and Security Pacific 
     Bank.
       By the late 1970s, the typical L.A. County workplace had 
     nearly 30% more employees than the U.S. average, according to 
     government statistics--a situation that translated into a 
     high level of economic security.
       ``There is a close correlation between firm size, 
     employment stability and generous compensation,'' said UCLA 
     economist Sanford Jacoby, who has written extensively about 
     the new risks that working people face. ``Big firms 
     underwrote the creation of America's--and Southern 
     California's--blue-collar middle class.''
       As for Grimes, he found his way to Sears, Roebuck & Co.'s 
     massive warehouse at Olympic Boulevard and Soto Street, where 
     he was hired as a merchandise handler represented by the 
     Teamsters. He did well for himself there. His Social Security 
     records show that his income rose steadily--from $12,000 in 
     1987 to $20,000 in 1990 (or nearly $28,000 in today's terms). 
     On top of that, his health care was covered.
       But in 1992, Sears stumbled, the result of a failed 
     strategy to sell everything from socks to stocks. Grimes, 
     then on leave with a bad back, soon found himself out of a 
     job.
       It was a particularly bad time to be without work. The 
     combination of recession and steep cuts in defense spending, 
     brought on by the end of the Cold War, walloped Southern 
     California. Unremitting pressure from low-cost foreign 
     producers and wage competition from new immigrants such as 
     Rojas took a severe toll on unskilled workers like Grimes.
       Any chance that he would be rehired by Sears soon 
     evaporated when the company's warehouse and adjacent store 
     were damaged in the L.A. riots. The warehouse was eventually 
     shuttered.
       By the time the region bounced back, the nature of 
     employment had changed. Gone were many of the corporate 
     giants that had delivered a generation of blue-collar 
     security. In their place were tens of thousands of relatively 
     small employers whose job-generating capacity is now 
     regularly praised by the nation's leaders but whose 
     instability, often-low wages and meager benefits are less 
     remarked upon.
       Government figures show that the average size of a 
     workplace shrank by 18% nationally between its late-1970s 
     peak and last year. The slide was even steeper in L.A. 
     County, with the average size of a workplace plunging 50% to 
     10 workers. This trend, according to Jacoby, ``is one of the 
     most important and least appreciated reasons why so many 
     people are having a tough time making a go of it today.''
       For several years, Grimes all but vanished from the regular 
     economy. He, his chronically ill girlfriend and the couple's 
     young son lived off a mix of workers' compensation, 
     disability payments and her welfare checks.
       In 1995, he resurfaced, this time as a security guard and--
     befitting the U.S. economy's free-market transformation--a 
     self-employed entrepreneur. ``I set myself up as a 
     corporation,'' he said proudly.
       With the help of a friend, Grimes persuaded a string of 
     businesses in a run-down neighborhood along Bixel Street near 
     downtown to hire him.
       For three years, he watched over a dental office, a parking 
     garage, a liquor store and a methadone clinic. His earnings 
     climbed from $5,600 when he launched his venture to more than 
     $27,000 two years later. He bought himself a used Pontiac 
     Grand Am, a washer and dryer and a Rent-A-Center living room 
     set.
       Then in 1998, he found out how risky the life of an 
     entrepreneur can be: The city bought up the properties along 
     Bixel Street to make way for the Staples Center.
       The businesses that employed Grimes closed. Demolition 
     crews flattened the buildings and, along with them, Grimes' 
     income. His earnings that year went clear to zero.


                               High Hopes

       As Grimes' world caved in on him once more, Rojas' 
     prospects were looking up.
       She was still shuttling between her jobs at the airline 
     laundry service and as a packer of sundries when one of 
     Maldanado's cousins told her that the dishwashing department 
     at the Wyndham Hotel on Century Boulevard near LAX was hiring 
     for the 4-to-midnight shift.
       The full-time position paid more than $7 an hour and, 
     because the workers were represented by Hotel Employees and 
     Restaurant Employees Local 814, it came with holidays and 
     family health insurance. The latter would prove particularly 
     important when

[[Page 3236]]

     Rojas suffered a miscarriage in 2001, and her health plan 
     picked up the tab for more than $5,000.
       Rojas saw the job as a turning point. Until then, virtually 
     everything she had in her life had belonged to her in-laws. 
     ``If we used dishes,'' she remembered, ``they were theirs. If 
     we watched TV, it was theirs.''
       But all that would change when she went to the Wyndham. ``I 
     knew at that point I would have my own things,'' she said.
       By 1998, as Rojas and Maldanado's income more than doubled 
     to $26,000 ($30,500 in today's dollars), the couple began 
     assembling the pieces of a middle-class life.
       Rojas bought china by Royal Prestige. She purchased a hutch 
     from Levitz Furniture in which to display the dishes. She and 
     Maldanado acquired a couch, a bed and a dining table. They 
     shelled out for two large-screen TVs and signed up for 
     satellite-dish service.
       They bought a 1987 Plymouth Sundance to go with their aging 
     blue Toyota Camry. And they traveled.
       ``We would go to Las Vegas and Disneyland,'' Maldanado 
     recalled. ``We had more money to spend.''
       When the first of the couple's two daughters was born the 
     following year, Rojas was so eager for her to be part of the 
     fabric of America that she resisted entreaties to name her 
     Maria after five of Maldanado's aunts, and instead gave her 
     the name Katherine. She would make a similar choice when 
     their second child was born last May, rejecting Maldanado's 
     suggestion of Elvira in favor of Melane.
       The new job let Rojas dream about owning a house where, she 
     said, ``my daughters can have their own rooms'' and ``maybe 
     one day I can take care of my grandchildren if I have some.''
       Meanwhile, any thought of returning to Central America 
     faded away. ``Here,'' said Rojas, ``my family will go a lot 
     farther than in El Salvador.''
       In the summer of 2000, the Wyndham's owners announced that 
     they were closing the hotel for renovations. Rojas remembers 
     hearing ominous rumblings that more would change than the 
     color of the lobby--something about the parking attendants' 
     jobs being contracted out.
       But she was not worried. To tide her over during the 
     shutdown, Local 814 had steered her to a job at a unionized 
     Burger King at LAX. The fast-food outlet offered a wage-and-
     benefit package almost as good as what she was making at the 
     Wyndham.
       About a year after it had closed, the hotel on Century 
     Boulevard reopened. Only now, the sign outside read 
     ``Radisson.'' The Wyndham name wasn't the only thing that was 
     gone either. So too was the union--part of a broader trend 
     sweeping corporate America for more than two decades. Unions, 
     which represented 17 percent of the nation's private-sector 
     workforce in the early 1980s, counted only 8 percent as 
     members by last year.
       Rojas could have her dishwashing job back. But instead of 
     $8.89 an hour, her top wage at the Wyndham, she said, she'd 
     be pulling down only $7.50 at the Radisson, with no employer-
     paid family health insurance. She signed on anyway and, to 
     make ends meet, kept her job at Burger King as well.
       It was hard running between two jobs again, but the 
     family's income finally seemed to be stabilizing. As it 
     turned out, their financial roller-coaster ride had only just 
     begun.


                           Shrinking Welfare

       For the poor, the most dramatic of all the safety-net cuts 
     that the government has engineered in the last 25 years came 
     in 1996.
       That's when a Republican-controlled Congress passed and 
     President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work 
     Opportunity Reconciliation Act, overhauling the nation's cash 
     welfare system.
       The law sought to push people off the dole and into work. 
     In doing so, it essentially reversed the poverty-fighting 
     strategy that Washington had pursued since the 1960s in which 
     poor Americans were promised a certain minimal standard of 
     living. By last year, the law had reduced the nation's 
     welfare rolls by 3 million families, or one-half, and had 
     sliced inflation--adjusted welfare spending by about $10 
     billion, or one-third.
       These numbers, though, are about all the experts can agree 
     on. Advocates have hailed the measure as a spectacular 
     success, saying it has increased the incomes of many poor 
     people while triggering a steep drop in poverty among black 
     children. Critics have denounced it as a failure, saying that 
     many people are poorer today than they were before the law 
     was changed.
       For its part, Grimes' household has remained largely 
     unaffected by the law's ``work first'' requirements. That's 
     because California has maintained relatively generous 
     benefits and because Grimes' domestic partner, Jacqueline 
     Harvey, has a chronic intestinal disease and is exempt from 
     work requirements. She has thus continued to collect benefits 
     off and on from the state's cash welfare program, CalWORKs. 
     She now receives $583 a month.
       But Grimes, in the meantime, has been staggered by another, 
     lesser-known element of the 1996 act--a significant 
     toughening of child-support enforcement rules. This part of 
     the law built on other efforts undertaken since the 1970s to 
     go after absentee parents and compel them to help finance 
     their kids' upbringings.
       Grimes and Harvey's son, Albert Jr., was born in 1988. Nine 
     years later, when the elder Grimes applied for custody of a 
     nephew, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office 
     sued him for child support for Albert Jr. The D.A. took 
     action even though Grimes, Harvey and their son had always 
     lived together and, they and several relatives say, Grimes 
     always helped raise the boy.
       Nonetheless, Grimes declined to challenge the county, which 
     won a court judgment against him. Grimes said he thought that 
     he had to go along with the support order to obtain custody 
     of his nephew and to ensure that Harvey would continue 
     receiving publicly funded healthcare. It's also unclear 
     whether counting Grimes as a parent in the house would have 
     jeopardized the size of Harvey's welfare checks.
       Whether a mix-up or not, the effect on Grimes' finances has 
     been devastating. California courts not only have imposed 
     high monthly support payments--often unrelated to a parent's 
     ability to comply--but also have added interest at a 10 
     percent annual clip to past-due amounts.
       A recent study commissioned by the state found that past-
     due child-support payments in California have soared to 
     almost $17 billion from $2.5 billion in the last decade. Most 
     of that money, moreover, is earmarked for state coffers--not 
     for the children who need support.
       ``The system was largely about welfare-cost recovery, not 
     helping families,'' said Curtis L. Child, who stepped down 
     recently as head of the state Department of Child Support 
     Services, which was created in 2000 to remove enforcement 
     power from county district attorneys and restructure the 
     system. ``In imposing these huge judgments on fathers, we're 
     confronting these men with an awful choice: Go underground, 
     which is just what child-support enforcement was intended to 
     stop, or let themselves be financially ruined.''
       In August 1997, Grimes was ordered to start sending the 
     county $173 a month in current payments, plus an additional 
     amount for past-due support totaling $4,900. When he fell 
     behind after his Bixel Street business collapsed in 1998, the 
     past-due total began to swell. It now tops $8,000.


                           Plastic Safety Net

       In one great clap, the 9/11 terrorists brought down the 
     twin towers in New York, shattered Americans' sense of 
     security and shoved Elvira Rojas down the economic ladder.
       It took her five days to reach Burger King after the police 
     and military sealed off the airport in the wake of the 
     September 2001 attacks. When she finally was allowed in, 
     Rojas found that her manager had cut her shift to just four 
     hours. Within a couple of weeks, she was laid off.
       Things were little better at the nearly deserted Radisson. 
     Rojas' hours there were reduced to practically nothing.
       Over the next 15 months, Rojas grabbed whatever hours she 
     could get at the hotel and worked a second job ironing 
     clothes at Hermosa Cleaners in Hermosa Beach. It was a tough 
     schedule even before she got pregnant in 2002. And still it 
     was not enough to keep her family's income from sliding 
     almost 20% from its 1998 high to less than $22,000.
       So she and Maldanado turned to what has become one of the 
     few reliable safety nets left for many poor Americans: their 
     credit cards.
       In May 2002, Rojas was rushed to the emergency room at 
     Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center in Hawthorne, where she 
     suffered a second miscarriage. This time, with only minimal 
     health insurance from the hotel, she said she had to put 
     $2,000 of her $4,000 medical bill onto her MasterCard.
       ``I didn't have the money otherwise,'' she said.
       As the credit card industry emerged in the late 1950s and 
     '60s, some expressed concern that even well-provisioned 
     middle-class families would be unable to resist the lure of 
     instant credit. Betty Furness, President Johnson's consumer 
     affairs advisor, warned that credit cards were ``modern 
     traps'' that would turn Americans into ``hopeless addicts.''
       But over the last 25 years, card issuers have not let up in 
     pushing their products. Instead, they have reached out for 
     ever more low-income households.
       Federal Reserve figures show that among families in the 
     bottom fifth of the economy, the percentage of households 
     with credit cards has soared from 11% in the late 1970s to 
     almost 40%. Their average balance on those cards has climbed, 
     in inflation-adjusted terms, from about $825 to more than 
     $2,000.
       Some analysts applaud the greater availability of credit. 
     Gregory Elliehausen, of the Credit Research Center at 
     Georgetown University, said the spread of cards and other 
     kinds of lending was part of a sweeping ``democratization of 
     finance'' that has allowed poor families to operate more 
     efficiently by, for example, buying decent cars to get to 
     work.
       Economists Dirk Krueger of the University of Pennsylvania 
     and Fabrizio Perri, a New

[[Page 3237]]

     York University professor now on sabbatical at the Federal 
     Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, say families of all incomes 
     increasingly rely on loans, rather than on business and 
     government safety nets, in times of trouble. They borrow 
     their way through the bad patches and pay off their debts in 
     flush periods.
       The problem comes when there are no flush periods.
       Some of the items purchased on Rojas' and Maldanado's 
     credit cards can seem frivolous or extravagant--the TVs, for 
     example, or a $150 set of sepia-toned studio photographs of 
     Katherine and her mom dressed in feather boas and gowns. But 
     most of the charges appear to fit the definition of safety-
     net spending.
       Beyond the emergency room charge, there was $130 for a new 
     fuel pump for Rojas' Toyota and $170 to repair the power 
     steering. There was $300 at the start of September to cover 
     rent and a $1,000 cash advance that Rojas said went to help a 
     brother bring his wife to the U.S. from El Salvador.
       Chipping away at what's due on their cards is virtually 
     impossible. That's in large part because the interest the two 
     are charged is about double what a typical middle-class 
     borrower faces. By the time they cover that, there is little 
     left to reduce the balance.
       Although the stated interest on the couple's most heavily 
     used cards, a pair of Direct Merchants Bank MasterCards, 
     ranges from 20.49% to 31.99%, a review of recent bills 
     indicates that they are consistently charged close to the 
     higher amount. (The Minnetonka, Minn., bank recently was 
     ordered by federal regulators to pay $3.2 million in 
     penalties for ``downselling''--offering low pre-approved 
     rates and then moving customers to higher-rate accounts 
     without fully disclosing the switch. It is not clear that 
     this happened to Rojas and Maldanado.)
       Rojas and Maldanado now owe $14,592 on their four credit 
     cards--a burden that financial experts say is appropriate for 
     a household making about $100,000, but not one like theirs.


                             Falling Behind

       In the spring of 2000, two years after Grimes' Bixel Street 
     business failed, he found a job as a security guard five 
     blocks away at Ernst & Young Plaza.
       For a while after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, the 
     building's owners and tenants treated Grimes and his co-
     workers with newfound respect. Managers listened to his 
     suggestions about how to improve safety at the 41-story 
     structure.
       He was promoted to ``lobby ambassador,'' a sort of informal 
     emissary to the building, and then to lobby supervisor. His 
     annual earnings climbed back above $20,000, and he began to 
     imagine himself becoming a director of security.
       ``My goal was to have a facility of my own,'' Grimes said. 
     ``I thought I should have a situation where I'm in control.''
       But for most of the last year, Grimes has been anything but 
     in control.
       In February, after a dispute with their landlord, he and 
     his family were evicted from their apartment on Fedora 
     Street, where they had lived for several years. All that he 
     was able to save from the place were three mattresses, two 
     chairs and a Sony PlayStation.
       By April, he had run through several thousand dollars 
     paying for a $90-a-night motel room while he looked for a new 
     apartment. He and Harvey eventually rented a two-room 
     Hollywood walk-up for $875 a month, or more than 40% of their 
     combined income. Before long, he fell behind again on his 
     court-ordered child-support payments.
       In July, things took another turn for the worse. After a 
     series of clashes with his boss, Grimes was ordered out of 
     the Ernst & Young tower and told he would be reassigned. 
     Instead, he quit. For the time being, he is working for the 
     Service Employees International Union on a campaign to 
     organize security guards in the city's high-rise offices.
       Grimes is determined to recover from the latest round of 
     reverses. He dreams about what his father had--a house, a 
     secure job--and is convinced he'll fare as well someday. 
     ``I'm trying,'' Grimes said, ``to get back to what he had.''


                            Another Eviction

       A month after Grimes was forced out of the Ernst & Young 
     tower, Rojas and her family were evicted from the Burin 
     Avenue bungalow where they had lived for seven years. A 
     developer is preparing to raze the place and put in half-
     million-dollar townhouses.
       It's not clear how long they could have afforded to stay 
     there anyway. A week before they moved, Maldanado was laid 
     off from the dry-cleaning plant to make way, he said, for new 
     immigrants who were willing to work for less. He has since 
     gotten a new job, packing items at a warehouse, for minimum 
     wage.
       The family's new apartment is so small that the bedroom is 
     a single mass of mattresses and cribs. The hutch and couches 
     fill the living room to overflowing. And the cabinets in the 
     kitchenette are so stuffed that Rojas must store her supply 
     of infant formula in her car trunk.
       But the couple has plans--to turn around the slide in their 
     income, to look for a house, to make sure that the girls 
     continue all the way through school. ``I don't want them to 
     be struggling like us,'' Maldanado said.
       Rojas is making other plans as well. Soon after arriving in 
     the U.S., she took out a loan to finance her future at the 
     Inglewood Park Cemetery. She now owns two plots at the 
     cemetery's Mausoleum of the Golden West, and recently signed 
     papers to pay $82.79 a month for the next five years to buy 
     two more. By the time Rojas is finished, she will have spent 
     more than $12,000 in total. But she's convinced it's worth 
     it.
       ``Now if I die, I won't have to worry about my funeral,'' 
     she said. ``I won't leave my family with a financial 
     burden.''
       The Source of the Statistics and How They Were Analyzed
       The Times used the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for its 
     analysis of family income volatility.
       The panel study has followed a nationally representative 
     sample of about 5,000 families and their offshoots for nearly 
     40 years and is the most comprehensive publicly available 
     income and earnings database in the world. It is run by the 
     University of Michigan and principally underwritten by the 
     National Science Foundation. The families' identities are 
     kept confidential.
       The Times employed techniques for gauging income volatility 
     that were developed by economists Robert A. Moffitt of Johns 
     Hopkins University and Peter Gottschalk of Boston College. 
     The Times also consulted with Yale University political 
     scientist Jacob S. Hacker, who has conducted his own analysis 
     of income volatility among households in the panel study and 
     has published results linking it to economic risk.
       The Times employed two Johns Hopkins graduate students, 
     Xiaoguo Hu and Anubha Dhasmana, to help generate the data. 
     Moffitt guided them and advised the newspaper.
       The Times' analysis looked at five-year increments from 
     1970 to 2000 and examined the annual fluctuations in each 
     family's income.
       For example, for a family whose income rose by $5,000 over 
     a five-year span, the paper examined the journey from the 
     lower number to the higher: Did the change occur in steady 
     $1,000 annual increases? Or did the family's income take a 
     big jump in one year and plunge in another?
       The Times' basic finding is that the fluctuations in annual 
     income that individual families have experienced have grown 
     larger over the last three decades.
       Based on the panel-study sample, The Times estimated the 
     annual income swings, up or down, for 68% of all U.S. 
     families--those who did not have the most extreme 
     fluctuations. As a result, the newspaper's conclusions don't 
     rest on cases outside the mainstream: the movie star whose 
     career dries up overnight, say, or the hourly worker who wins 
     the lottery.
       To zero in on working families, The Times focused on men 
     and women 25 to 64 years old whose households had some 
     income. To analyze the working poor, the paper ranked 
     families by their average income during each five-year 
     period. It then concentrated on those in the bottom one-fifth 
     of income earners and especially those right at the 20th 
     percentile.
       The average annual income of panel-study families at the 
     20th percentile is close to the government's official poverty 
     line for a family of four most years.
       The analysis looked at pretax income of all family members 
     from all sources, including workplace earnings; investments; 
     public transfers such as jobless benefits, food stamps and 
     cash welfare; and private transfers such as inheritances.
       All amounts were adjusted for inflation, expressed in 2003 
     dollars.

  Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman 
from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne), a member of the committee.
  Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Chairman, I would like to particularly thank the 
gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) and the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McKeon), subcommittee chairman, for this bill.
  From my perspective this is a good bill. And I think there are 
several points I would like to make. First of all, it consolidates 
programs and creates efficiencies. It gives State and local officials 
more flexibility, which is always important. And the $3,000 
reemployment accounts to purchase needed services to ensure 
reemployment seem to me to be a good idea because ofttimes when a 
person is trying to get back on their feet, they need to have money to 
pay for child care. They need transportation. It allows them to get 
reestablished, and we think this is certainly very helpful. And then it 
also allows faith-based organizations to offer job training service. We 
think this is important.
  I would like to amplify on that just a little bit. Number one, faith-
based organizations often provide services more efficiently than State 
or Federal agencies. The Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, Jewish 
Federation are all extremely efficient and they are very cost 
effective.

[[Page 3238]]

  Secondly, faith-based organizations often go where others will not go 
or do not go. In inner cities, and sometimes our rural areas, we find 
that they are very effective. Faith-based organizations are by law 
allowed to hire employees to provide services which conform to the 
mission of the faith-based organization. This right was affirmed by the 
1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1987 Supreme Court decision, Corporation 
of the Presiding Bishop versus Amos. So we think there is ample legal 
justification for this.
  Number four, faith-based organization employees must often wear many 
hats. For instance, a music director at a church may also work at the 
job training center in the afternoon. A Sunday school superintendent 
may also run a Head Start program at the faith-based organization. So 
it is unreasonable and contrary to establish law to force faith-based 
organizations to hire employees who do not share the faith-based 
organization's mission. We think this makes perfect sense.
  This is a good bill and I urge support for it.
  Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Andrews).
  Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for 
yielding me this time.
  I am opposed to this bill because it reflects a misunderstanding of 
the proper way to build a successful career and a gross 
misinterpretation of our constitutional tradition.
  With respect to its misunderstanding of the best way to build a 
career, I think that these personal retraining accounts, although 
clearly well intentioned, have exactly the wrong effect on an 
unemployed person. The purpose of workforce investment is not to move a 
person from a position of unemployment to a position of employment for 
a while. The purpose of the workforce investment is to move a person 
from dependency to opportunity and eventually to prosperity. The great 
dividing line in the American economy is whether one has 2 years of 
college or not. People with more than 2 years of college tend to have 
stable jobs and high and rising incomes. This bill says to a person who 
is laid off from an industrial industry or some other employer like 
that take the first job that comes along.
  As the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) said, they are 
virtually compelled to do that. The first job is not always the best 
job. But, more importantly, from the public's point of view, it may be 
a temporary job. It will move the person from a period of unemployment 
to a brief period of reemployment to another period of unemployment. 
Our goal should not be temporary employment. Our goal should be 
opportunity and prosperity in the long run.
  With respect to the constitutional misinterpretation, the gentleman 
from Virginia (Mr. Scott) will offer an amendment later in this debate 
that needs to be adopted. We are not opposed to faith-based 
organizations continuing the work they are presently doing in job 
training. They do a great job and they should continue. If the 
gentleman from Virginia's (Mr. Scott) amendment passes, that work will 
not be discontinued. If the gentleman from Virginia's (Mr. Scott) 
amendment passes, here is what will happen: We think that with Federal 
money a religious organization should not be able to say we will not 
hire Catholics to serve meals at a clinic. We think with Federal money, 
an organization should not be able to say we do not hire Jews to do job 
training. We think with Federal money, people should not be able to say 
we do not want evangelical Christians or Muslims or Buddhists doing job 
counseling.
  This country started because we wanted to get away from religious 
persecution and discrimination. It is an abrogation of our 
constitutional traditions to enshrine that in the law, and that is what 
this bill does. The gentleman from Virginia's (Mr. Scott) amendment 
corrects that mistake and it should be adopted.
  Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Regula).
  Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 27, the 
Job Training Improvement Act of 2005. I would like to recognize the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) and the gentleman from California 
(Mr. McKeon) for their leadership and tireless efforts in bringing this 
bill to the House floor.
  Hard-working families in my district who have been laid off rely on 
programs like the One-Stop workforce development system, which helps 
States and communities ensure workers to get the training they need to 
find good jobs. I like to call the One-Stops ``hope centers'' because 
they provide hope to people seeking gainful employment.
  For example, my constituent, Jeff Ring, who after 24 years of 
employment as a steelworker, was laid off. He is a father of three 
children, eight and younger. He came to the One-Stop and enrolled in 
training to become a registered nurse. Just last week he received his 
certification and will begin working at Aultman Hospital and will be 
making nearly 20 percent more than his previous salary.
  In another case, my constituent, Tiffany Birtalan, a single mother 
raising a teenager, she currently works as a waitress making $2.13 an 
hour plus tips. She came to the local One-Stop seeking to change 
careers. Tiffany is now enrolled at a community college and is training 
to be a dental hygienist. Based on current labor market information and 
the high demand for this occupation, she will easily make $25 to $30 
per hour.
  Every day, every day, hard-working people like Jeff and Tiffany walk 
through the doors of One-Stop across the country seeking assistance. We 
must do all we can to streamline unnecessary bureaucracy and strengthen 
allocations so that adequate resources are available to them achieve 
their hopes and dreams.
  Mr. Chairman, this is a good bill, and I would urge my colleagues to 
support H.R. 27.
  Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Hinojosa).
  Mr. HINOJOSA. Mr. Chairman, I rise to engage the gentleman from Ohio 
(Chairman Boehner) of the Committee on Education and the Workforce in a 
colloquy.
  During our full committee consideration of H.R. 27, I offered and 
withdrew an amendment to ensure that data on high school-aged students 
participating in adult education programs is publicly available and 
reported to our committee.
  We already know that 30 percent of our high school students fail to 
earn diplomas with their peers. In the Hispanic community, that figure 
is nearly 50 percent. Many of our adult education providers report that 
high school-aged students are flooding their programs. We cannot 
continue to allow our high school students to slip through the cracks. 
Our first step in shining the light on this issue is to make sure that 
we have accurate and regularly reported data.
  At full committee, the gentleman offered to work with me to ensure 
that these concerns are addressed in the reports that our committee 
received from the Department of Education.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HINOJOSA. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Texas 
for raising this issue. Data on young adults participating in adult 
education programs is important information for our committee as well 
as for the adult education programs and for school districts to keep in 
mind as we work to raise our high school completion rates. And it is my 
understanding that this is information that the Department already 
collects but has not been a focus in program reporting.
  Mr. HINOJOSA. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the chairman is 
correct. The Department already collects this data and would be able to 
highlight this information in its annual report to Congress with very 
little additional work. It is simply a matter of clearly communicating 
to the Department that we would like to see focused information on high 
school-aged students in adult education reported by

[[Page 3239]]

race, ethnicity, language proficiency, and program enrollment.
  I thank the chairman for continuing to work with me and the 
Department to bring this critical information to the forefront.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HINOJOSA. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Chairman, again I want to thank the gentleman for 
his work on this issue. I will continue to work with him and the 
Department to ensure that we have the necessary information to 
carefully monitor the participation of high school-aged students in 
adult education programs.
  Mr. HINOJOSA. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman 
from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) for his comments.
  Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Nevada (Mr. Porter), a member of the committee, vice chairman of the 
subcommittee.
  Mr. PORTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 27, 
the Job Training Improvement Act of 2005, and I certainly applaud the 
gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon) and the gentleman from Ohio 
(Chairman Boehner) for their tireless efforts in bringing this 
important legislation to the floor today.

                              {time}  1630

  As an original cosponsor of this legislation, there are many 
provisions that will increase the ability of our Nation's workers to 
achieve greater stability in our ever-changing workforce. I would like 
to mention one aspect of the bill which I am particularly proud of, the 
inclusion of Personal Reemployment Accounts as an allowable usage of 
funds under the pilot and demonstration projects of the Greater 
Workforce Investment Act.
  PRAs will provide American workers who are seeking employment added 
flexibility to seek the customized training and support services that 
they need and deserve to expand their career opportunities. As my 
community of southern Nevada experienced in the wake of September 11, 
our economy proved to be very vulnerable. As my community rebounded 
from this blow, Nevadans sought help in adjusting to the realities of 
the workforce. Those Nevadans who suffered the woes of unemployment 
sought additional training and support as they sought to increase their 
career opportunities.
  Mr. Chairman, I know that PRAs would have provided my constituents 
with a valuable option in seeking these services. In fact, many 
constituents have told me they are excited to have this opportunity in 
case there is another emergency at some point in time. In fact, one 
young girl, Lucy, wanted to make sure that there was ample education 
dollars available; and I assured her there would be.
  Besides providing for an individualized approach to reemployment, the 
PRAs provide an added bonus. Individuals are able to retain the 
remainder of their account after they return to the workforce. These 
funds can be used for continued training and support.
  As Americans return to work, they continue to face hardships until 
the benefits of employment become manifest. PRAs can help ease this 
transition.
  Mr. Chairman, I will include for the Record a letter from Deputy 
Secretary of Labor Steven Law demonstrating the administration's 
continued support of the PRA program.
  Mr. Chairman, I urge all of my colleagues to support this important 
legislation. As our workforce continues to engage the ever-changing 
economy which we are part of, this reauthorization will provide 
American workers with the tools they need and deserve to improve their 
career opportunities. I recommend final passage of the Job Training 
Improvement Act of 2005.
  Mr. Chairman, I include for the Record the letter referred to earlier 
from Steven J. Law, Deputy Secretary of Labor.

                                              Department of Labor,


                                    Deputy Secretary of Labor,

                                    Washington, DC, March 2, 2005.
     Hon. Jon Porter,
     House of Representatives,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Congressman Porter: I would like to thank you for your 
     invaluable and effective advocacy of Personal Reemployment 
     Accounts (PRAs). Like you we believe that PRAs will provide 
     thousands of Americans seeking reemployment with a new and 
     more flexible means to seek customized training that leads 
     quickly to expanded career opportunities.
       We are enthusiastic about the launch of PRA demonstration 
     projects in seven states. We are confident that this 
     important pilot program will prove the value of PRAs and, 
     with enactment of your legislation, even more Americans will 
     have access to PRAs.
       We look forward to working with you, Chairman Boehner, and 
     Chairman McKeon on this innovative plan to help workers in 
     transition. Thank you again for your leadership on this 
     initiative.
           Sincerely,
                                                    Steven J. Law.

  Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Washington, D.C. (Ms. Norton).
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I very much appreciate the gentleman 
yielding me this time.
  Mr. Chairman, there are many problems with this bill. I choose to 
focus on the Scott amendment because it involves a matter in what I 
think I can safely say is my personal confidence.
  I have heard title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act called out here 
repeatedly. It was my great privilege to enforce title VII of the 1964 
Civil Rights Act as Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity 
Commission, and I have an obligation to step forward to plead with my 
friends on the other side to make this a bipartisan bill, because its 
chances of becoming so at least on this matter should be great.
  In fact, it is such a good idea to have faith-based organizations 
involved in the programs of the Federal Government that we have been 
doing it for decades with billions of dollars to show for it. There may 
be some ways, I will be the first to say, there are some ways in which 
this could be strengthened and expanded. But I do not know whose idea 
it was to allow religious organizations to discriminate. I do not think 
it could possibly have been the idea of the faith-based communities 
themselves. I do not believe that churches and synagogues and mosques 
are stepping forward to say, Even though we have an extraordinary 
ability to hire only our own folks, we want to make sure we use public 
dollars to hire only our co-religious partners.
  If the language is kept as it is, we will have the first 
nullification, the first repeal, of civil rights laws since they were 
initially passed 40 years ago. To our credit, we have steadily built 
those laws into legislation that came after it, and, yes, into the 
Workforce Investment Act. We are required to do that. Title VI requires 
us to do that, the 14th amendment requires us to do that. It required 
us to do so when the Workforce Investment Act was passed, and it 
requires us to do so now.
  Essentially what the bill states now is that you can hire only 
Lutherans or Muslims with your own money, and you can hire only 
Catholics and Jews with the people's money. That is a huge departure 
from everything that is built into title VII.
  I was Chair of the agency and brought forward religious 
discrimination guidelines. We worked very hard to strengthen the law 
against religious discrimination and went the extra mile because of the 
free exercise clause. Thus, today religious organizations, a church or 
synagogue, for example, can do what no union or business can do. It 
cannot only use its money to hire its religious members in religious 
positions; it can use its own money to hire even their own members in 
secular positions. This is the maximum in religious freedom that is 
allowed under the Constitution.
  Now, if you want to take on public responsibilities, I cannot 
understand why anybody would say you would not want to spend that money 
in accordance with the public responsibility in each and every respect. 
That is how it has always been done. Why the departure now?
  If you want public dollars, do so in accordance with public law. That 
law requires no discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or religion. 
It would be a horrible setback to now come forward and say that you can 
in fact discriminate on the basis of religion, of all

[[Page 3240]]

things. And that is what you would be doing, because, as everybody 
knows, race and religious identity track one another very, very 
closely.
  Today, when black people go to Catholic Charities or to Lutheran 
Services they see people of every race and color working there. And do 
you know what? I have not heard these organizations and the many other 
faith-based organizations complain that in order to serve my African 
American community, they sometimes reach out and find black people who 
are not Catholic and who are not Lutheran, because they do not ask what 
they are.
  We have resisted pressures in this House for repeal of affirmative 
action, for repeal of goals. Surely we can resist the role back to the 
bad old days of religious discrimination and a violation of title VII 
of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
  Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Price), a new member of the committee.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman and the 
gentleman from California for allowing me to participate in this 
debate.
  Mr. Chairman, I am somewhat perplexed and disappointed by the tactics 
from the other side. This is serious business, and simply working to 
divide our citizens I believe to be counterproductive.
  This bill, this bill, will enhance employment; it will increase 
employment and job retention, plus increase the overall skill level of 
our labor force. Now, the demagoguery that you hear from the other side 
on this issue, and, frankly, on every issue, seemingly every issue, 
frankly is a disservice to this debate and does a disservice to our 
Nation.
  This bill gets more resources to the individual needing it. That is a 
good thing.
  These are very challenging times for many in our workforce. They need 
more options for assistance, not a one-size-fits-all model or program. 
Streamlining the one-stop career center system is easier for the 
client. That is a good thing. It does not harm the Wagner-Peyser money. 
There are no lost resources.
  Greater flexibility in the delivery of core, intensive, and training 
services allows individuals to receive the most appropriate services 
specifically for them. That is a good thing. Providing Personal 
Reemployment Accounts allows those who are unemployed an opportunity to 
use money for those things that are often that final hurdle to getting 
a new job, child care, transportation, housing assistance. That is a 
good thing. Getting more resources to those most in need when they are 
out of school helps those without other opportunities, and that is a 
good thing.
  Faith-based language in this bill is identical, identical, to four 
separate pieces of legislation passed during the Clinton 
administration. There is no discrimination on the provision of 
services.
  With this legislation, we are actively and positively addressing how 
the Federal Government, and ultimately how each and every citizen, will 
come together and lend a helping hand to those needing that assistance 
at a very pivotal time. That is a good thing.
  Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this bill and move 
forward in helping those needing to return to the workforce. This is a 
good thing.
  Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Woolsey).
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Chairman, once again my colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle are claiming they want to help workers in this Nation. 
But, as usual, their actions say otherwise.
  The newest WIA proposal does nothing more than force workers to 
compete with each other for services that they have come to expect and 
services they deserve from the WIA system. WIA one-stops provide 
important job training services to help those struggling to find work 
to get resources they need.
  If this bill passes, veterans and unemployed adults will be placed 
second to infrastructure costs. Instead of increasing funding in the 
bill to address infrastructure needs separately, this bill forces 
Governors to choose between workers and updating facilities, all from 
the same pot of money. Limiting this pool of funding will deny workers 
quality services for reemployment and adult education programs, and 
that is just plain and simple true.
  This bill also sets up a voucher system that will actually decrease 
the amount of services available to job seekers. Those receiving these 
new job vouchers will be able to pay for training courses or other job-
searching expenses. That sounds great. But the catch is that once a 
worker takes a voucher, they will lose access to Federal job training 
programs through WIA for an entire year. Money and services are both 
critical for many workers to get back on track, particularly when they 
have become unemployed over and over again, and workers who should not 
have to make the choice between one or the other are continually faced 
with the dilemma.
  This bill also changes the way in which the government will evaluate 
the success of WIA programs. Now workers will be judged on how they 
serve the company they work for rather than on the quality of services 
they received under WIA. Since when was WIA focused on big business' 
needs rather than the worker's needs?
  The worst part of this bill, however, is that it will write 
discrimination into the law. At religious institutions receiving WIA 
funds, those who share the same religious philosophies will have an 
advantage over those applying for employment that do not subscribe to 
the same views. Workers can now lose job opportunities through blatant 
religious discrimination at places our tax dollars are funding. This 
bill turns WIA into a competitive service provider, rather than an 
equal opportunity resource for our Nation's unemployed workers.
  This is not the way we can help our Nation's workforce, and I urge my 
colleagues to oppose H.R. 27 as it is written.
  The CHAIRMAN. The committee will rise informally.
  The Speaker pro tempore (Mr. McKeon) assumed the Chair.

                          ____________________