Dear Acting-Secretary Harris: As you know, the Budget Control Act of 2011 required Congress to enact legislation to achieve deficit reduction levels of at least $1.2 trillion by January 15, 2012. Failure to enact legislation would trigger a sequestration order - automatic, across-the-board spending cuts - to achieve these budgetary deficit-reduction goals. These indiscriminate cuts affect defense... Read more »
THE PROBLEM: In January 2012, President Obama installed three so-called recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board while Congress was not in recess. In the wake of the president’s unprecedented action, efforts to overturn board rulings were initiated in various federal courts on the basis that the board itself was no longer legitimate. In a unanimous decision by the U.S. Court of A... Read more »
This week the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to consider the Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills (SKILLS) Act (H.R. 803), commonsense legislation that will reform the nation’s broken job training system and help put Americans back to work. The following infographic, released today by the House Education and the Workforce Committee, underscores the need for reform and o... Read more »
Courtesy of the Committees on Ways and Means and Education and the Workforce BACKGROUND: Seventeen years ago, a Republican-led Congress worked with President Bill Clinton to fix a broken welfare system. President Clinton rallied the nation to “end welfare as we know it” and his call to action was well founded. Under the old system, 65 percent of families were dependent on welfare for an average of... Read more »
To get the nation’s fiscal house in order, the American people shouldn’t have to choose between higher taxes and indiscriminate budget cuts. Yet that is precisely the false choice President Obama wants the country to make. House Republicans have twice advanced a responsible alternative, one that addresses Washington’s addiction to reckless spending. Instead of across-the-board cuts that will hurt ... Read more »
An infographic released earlier today revealed the confusing state of the nation’s workforce training system. The House Education and the Workforce Committee is taking action to provide taxpayers, employers, and workers with a more effective workforce development system. The Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills (SKILLS) Act eliminates and streamlines dozens of ineffective and dupl... Read more »
President Obama has said the nation’s workforce development system is a "maze of confusing training programs." But words alone can’t describe how convoluted the system has become – the following infographic reveals the true size of the bureaucracy standing between workers and the skills they need to find a job: In total, the federal government administers more than 50 different programs across nin... Read more »
THE PROBLEM: Roughly 12 million Americans are unemployed and searching for work, yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports millions of job openings remain unfilled. One reason for this startling fact is a broken workforce development system. Despite a multi-billion dollar annual taxpayer investment in federal job training programs, employers continue to struggle to find workers with skills neces... Read more »
When President Obama called for expanded access to early childhood education during Tuesday’s State of the Union address, House Committee on Education and the Workforce Chairman John Kline warned, “Before we spend more taxpayer dollars on new programs, we must first review what is and is not working in existing initiatives, such as Head Start.” House and Senate Republicans have raised questions ab... Read more »
As it turns out, President Obama’s controversial plan to rewrite K-12 education law via executive fiat isn’t as popular as the administration thought. A growing number of education leaders and policy experts have recently come forward to express their doubts about the president’s waiver scheme, noting the waivers fail to provide the lasting, meaningful reform our nation’s children deserve: Marc Tu... Read more »
