House committees hold training hearings.

Three key House committees held hearings this week to address the findings of a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on federal job training programs. The timing of the hearings – starting the same day that House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) introduced his Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 budget resolution, and just days after the introduction of a controversial “welfare reform” bill – strongly suggests that House Republicans intend to make sweeping structural changes and funding cuts to workforce and other human services programs a key component of their legislative agenda in this Congress. For the workforce field and our allies, this means we must be prepared to continue critical advocacy efforts in support of job training programs beyond the current negotiations around the FY 2011 appropriations process.

The report at the center of the hearings, “Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Government Programs, Save Tax Dollars, and Enhance Revenue,” was released by GAO last month and examined 81 areas of potential duplication and other opportnunities to reduce program costs. With respect to employment and training programs, the report summarized findings from a January GAO study, identifying 47 federally funded programs offered through nine different agencies, and suggesting that forty-four of those programs overlapped with at least one other program by providing at least one similar service to the same population. GAO particularly focused on potential overlap between TANF and the Department of Labor’s Employment Service (ES) and Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Adult programs, finding little evidence of participants receiving duplicative services but recommending that the Departments of Labor (DOL) and Health and Human Services (HHS) work together to encourage states to co-locate services and consolidate administrative structures between these programs to maximize efficiency.

In all three hearings – conducted by the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources, the full Education and the Workforce Committee, and the Labor-HHS Appropriations subcommittee – Republican members stressed that they interpreted the GAO report to support the elimination or consolidation of federal workforce and welfare programs. In his opening remarks, Education and the Workforce committee chair John Kline (R-MN) asserted that “billions of dollars are being squandered on redundant programs” and adding, “we must make a concerted effort to reduce federal spending.  A necessary step in this process is to eliminate and streamline federal programs.” Freshman Larry Buchson (R-IN), also on the Education and the Workforce Committee, added “In my view, it’s not good enough to consolidate programs but [fail to] decrease the size and scope of government. Putting the same number of Washington bureaucrats under different titles without actually eliminating those with duplicative roles doesn’t accomplish anything.”

Workforce experts were permitted to testify during two of the three hearings. The Ways and Means hearing featured testimony from LaDonna Pavetti from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who raised serious concerns about the “Welfare Reform Act of 2011” recently introduced by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), chair of the influential Republican Study Committee, which among other things would cap combined funding for 77 means-tested programs – including Medicaid, Pell Grants, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (formerly Food Stamps), and TANF – at pre-recession FY 2007 levels.

Ray Uhalde of Jobs for the Future testified at the appropriations hearing about the devastating impacts of $3.8 billion in cuts to Department of Labor job training programs proposed under the FY 2011 continuing resolution (H.R. 1) passed by the House in February, pointing out that such reductions would reduce or eliminate services to as many as 8 million job seekers. Uhalde provided a brief overview of research demonstrating the effectiveness of WIA-funded programs, and urged Congress to “use the GAO findings as a guide to achieve system alignment and administrative savings, but not as a rationale for further cuts in program services.”

The coordination of the hearings with recent legislative initiatives makes it clear that the workforce development field faces a long, hard fight in the months ahead. Even if key workforce programs are not eliminated as part of the ongoing negotiations surrounding the FY 2011 appropriations process, workforce advocates must continue to educate lawmakers on the importance of job training and other programs as part of our economic recovery efforts, and join together with allies on the national, state, and local levels to ensure that vital human services programs are not devastated by this Congress.  National Skills Coalition will continue to monitor legislative developments relating to workforce and other critical programs, and provide advocates with updates as new information becomes available.