House Education and the Workforce Postsecondary Education Subcommittee Chairman Howard (Buck) McKeon, R-Calif., sometime during the next two weeks plans to introduce a measure to consolidate job training programs, a House aide said today.
McKeon hopes to move the legislation, which will include job training vouchers, through his subcommittee and the full committee by the end of May. The more than 70 federal job training programs "now operate independently of each other," the aide said. "The idea for this bill is to create one, unified system."
House and Senate negotiators late last year passed a similar job training consolidation bill out of conference committee. But the deals cut in the conference committee on issues ranging from local control to job training funding for displaced workers eroded support for the legislation from all sides, leaving it to die in the end-of-session rush. As reported by CongressDaily in February, the strategy of bill proponents this year is to leave out any changes in vocational education.
Some of the fiercest opposition last year came from education interests, who feared they would lose control of federal vocational education funding if it became enmeshed in the overall job training block grant to be administered by state and local officials.
McKeon's bill would consolidate more than 70 job training programs into three block grants: adult education, adult training and vocational rehabilitation for disabled adults. An aide said the bill would give more authority to state and local officials to manage the program. The state allocation formula would be based, in part, on poverty figures, the number of dislocated workers and the number of Pell Grant recipients in the state.
The final details of the bill are still being negotiated with state and local officials, the aide said. In an attempt to give job training a "more consumer-oriented approach," the aide said McKeon's bill would require state and local governments to implement a voucher system for job training, with some exceptions for rural states that may not be effective. President Clinton has said he supports job training vouchers.
"Economically disadvantaged adults" would be eligible for the job training program, the aide said, with a priority given to dislocated workers.
Several of the current job training programs are divided by industry or the cause of how workers lost their jobs. The priority for dislocated workers in the new bill will not make those distinctions. The bill also would make welfare recipients eligible for job training.
Labor interests and administration officials earlier this year expressed concern that if governors are given too much flexibility, they may divert more job training funds to current welfare recipients -- for whom states must find jobs under the new welfare law -- and away from displaced workers looking for retraining.
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