WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate voted 95-3 this afternoon to reduce the number of federal job training programs and give states greater flexibility to implement them, among other reforms.
Sens. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., were at the center of House-Senate negotiations on the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which is expected to pass the House easily as well. It axes 15 job training programs but allows the funding for them to grow in line with an overall budget agreement negotiated last year.
Duplicative and ineffective job training programs have become a classic talking point against big government. Isakson said the bill was the result of lengthy negotiations, as it combined a Senate bill that would have killed six job training programs with a House bill that would have eliminated 35. He said Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler is "ecstatic" about the flexibility it gives states to implement the training programs it prefers and to move money around. Said Isakson:
"I think it proves that the Senate and the government is capable -- if it's willing to spend the time -- is capable of doing the reform that's necessary. ... Those are huge reforms. They are reforms where we got a 100 percent vote in the Democratic conference and a 95 percent vote in the Republican conference. When people took a look at it, there was no reason not to be for it."
The bill has its critics -- the conservative Heritage Foundation says it does not go far enough and props up ineffective programs -- and Isakson said he wished it had cleared out more of the job training program kudzu. He was pleased to be in the middle of another bipartisan accomplishment, but he laments the overall state of the Senate, as the yearly appropriations process has ground to a halt in a dispute over amendments:
"I've been lucky this year. I've been able to do flood insurance and the [job training] bill, and I'm proud of both of them. I just wish we were doing a lot more stuff, the big stuff like appropriations and foreign policy and Iraq and Syria -- and the IRS."
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