Accelerating Individuals into the Workforce Act

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 396 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday the Rules Committee met and reported a rule for consideration of a very important measure. The resolution provides for consideration of H.R. 2842, Accelerating Individuals into the Workforce Act.

The rule provides for 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2842 is a commonsense proposal to help transition welfare recipients into steady, paying jobs. Moving welfare recipients into work is a central goal of TANF, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. This bipartisan bill would incentivize employers to hire TANF recipients and help subsidize these new employees' salaries for up to a year to allow them to transition into the workforce.

The policy idea behind H.R. 2842 is simple: under this bill, States can establish partnerships with employers to hire recipients of TANF dollars. Through these partnerships, employers would receive a subsidy of up to 50 percent of the wage for a TANF recipient while the other 50 percent would be paid by the employer.

Beneficiaries would have to meet three requirements: they must be a TANF recipient, they must be unemployed, and they must have an income of 20 percent or less of the Federal poverty level. H.R. 2842 will direct our resources to the neediest individuals and families to help them accelerate these welfare recipients back into the workforce.

Mr. Speaker, President Ronald Reagan once noted: ``We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many people are added.''

The legislation under consideration in today's rule is a fulfillment of that promise. Under H.R. 2842, State and local governments will be able to better utilize their TANF dollars to help move individuals into paying work and eventually help them transition out of the welfare system altogether.

Helping people get back to work is a great deal for the individuals who will be helped under this program, for the employers, for the economy, and for the American people. This bill is, at its core, about helping unemployed Americans get back to work.

Mr. Speaker, we are a nation filled with hardworking people, and I have seen over and over again how badly many of the unemployed want to return to work. Many, if not most, recipients of TANF are in the program not because they want to be, but because they have been forced to be by circumstance. These unemployed Americans want nothing more than to return to the dignity of the workforce as quickly as they are able to do so. This bill will help remove barriers to employment and will incentivize employers to hire current TANF recipients.

Workers re-entering the workforce is a good thing for society. Not only will workers who receive jobs under this program be taken off of welfare rolls, thus ensuring the continued success of that program, but these new workers will be better able to contribute to better lives for themselves, for their families, and for their communities.

Here in Washington, we too often describe policy solutions as being ``commonsense'' or ``win-win,'' but in this case it is absolutely true. H.R. 2842 is a commonsense solution and is a win-win for everyone involved: the workers, the employers, the community, and the country.

That is why this legislation will receive a substantial bipartisan vote tomorrow. Whatever their differences, Republicans and Democrats alike want to put unemployed people back to work. This bill will actually succeed in doing that.

Mr. Speaker, I urge support of the rule and the underlying legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by agreeing with my good friend on many of the points that he made. I was particularly struck by the point he made about the low participation rate in the labor force. That has been a problem that has been with us, quite frankly, for, as he pointed out, several decades, and it is one that has gotten worse.

That is attributable in large part to another point that my friend made, effectively the thing around here we call the skills gap. We have literally millions of jobs available in this country, and employers are ready to hire people but they simply don't have the training.

I couldn't agree more with my good friend that on-the-job training is sometimes the best training. You actually acquire the skill that you need to be successful, and the situation of this legislation will actually, again, offset the cost of that to the employer and, by the way, not add any cost to the taxpayer.

That is something we ought to talk about as well. We are just taking money that we would have been spending anyway, and we are spending it a lot more productively.

Now, my friend is right. This is a new program. This is a new approach. So trying it out for a year, spending $100 million--a lot of money--but obviously we would spend more this way if we would know this would be successful. But I can't help but think it will be successful.

It is important to note that this bill is actually, again, exceptionally bipartisan. I was struck, as I hope my friend was, yesterday when we were in Rules Committee considering this legislation. We are used to seeing the members of the Ways and Means Committee come up and sort of fight in front of us. Instead, they actually came up arm in arm with a bipartisan proposal that they had agreed to that, again, is an excellent, excellent work.

It is exactly the way that Congress should work, quite frankly: find common ground and advance commonsense solutions that make life better for the American people. In this case, at least, I think we have succeeded in doing that.

It is also important to note that the rule authorizes the consideration of H.R. 2353, the so-called Perkins grant program. The Perkins grant is something we are pretty familiar with in Oklahoma. This is Federal money that moves into career tech systems that helps actually, again, workers acquire the necessary skills to be productive, quite often, again, working with the employer who has already got the jobs available. We then train the worker at a career tech system partly funded with Federal dollars, and that person is assured the job the day they walk out.

I suspect that bill, like this bill, when it finally reaches the floor will also have substantial bipartisan support. I want to pledge to my good friend that we are going to continue to work together on things like this. I don't think anybody disagrees about putting Americans back to work. Workers would rather be at work than, frankly, just receiving government assistance and not able to go work. So this bill does that.

I want to urge support of the rule and, again, the underlying legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Decades of experience tell us that the most effective antipoverty program is a job, and this bill helps low-income Americans earn success through the dignity of work.

States actually, as my good friends on the other side know, spend very little of their TANF funding on moving people into jobs. Today, half of all TANF recipients are neither working nor preparing for work. This bill ensures that money only goes to those who are working, providing individuals with paychecks in lieu of benefit checks, a key tenet in welfare reform.

This pilot only provides funding for one fiscal year, repurposing money that has already been appropriated and, frankly, using it in a better way than it was originally appropriated to achieve.

The bill requires that States report on outcome measures and provide high-quality evaluations so that Congress can make appropriate decisions after we have actually seen the results yielded by the program.

And finally, as we have been pointing out, but I think around here it is always worth pointing out multiple times, where actually CBO estimates the bill has no cost. So we are actually doing something good without increasing expenditures for the taxpayers, and, indeed, we are probably in the process of creating new taxpayers, people who can contribute to the wealth and the activity and the prosperity of the country; and people, honestly, who want to contribute to the wealth and the activity; and employers who want to provide people with an opportunity to improve themselves and become more productive.

So it is a good bill all the way around, and, again, I will be urging the passage of the rule and the underlying legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we have been having such a wonderful bipartisan moment here. My good friend from Oregon, and appropriately, wants to change the tenor a little bit.

Let me begin by actually congratulating my good friend from Oregon because he is a serious legislator and does serious things, and I am probably going to find myself on the same side with him on the issue of air traffic controllers where I think his points have been very well made.

On this particular piece of legislation, I must admit, I have not had the opportunity. I don't sit on my friend's committee to actually read it, but I suspect the committee hasn't picked it up and dealt with it either.

And just from a process standpoint, I think the appropriate thing to do would be for the committee to actually review it. It could be amended in committee, as indeed this bill was, and then we would have the opportunity to consider it on the floor. But to bring it to the floor immediately, to me, is premature, legislatively.

I also want to take issue, on the record, with my friends of the President of the United States in terms of job creation. I suspect President Trump, in his private life, has created more jobs than just about anybody in the Congress of the United States, and I think he has laid forward some incredibly important proposals to continue and build on his personal record, now that he is President of the United States.

One of those proposals, as my friends are surely aware, because I think they largely agree with it, is to enhance the apprenticeship program announcement he made recently. Another one that my friends may not be quite so much in agreement with, he has laid out his principles for tax reform.

The greatest engine for job growth is never going to be the Federal Government. It is going to always be the private sector. And if we could, as the President has suggested, cut corporate tax rates, incentivize the return of profit, something where perhaps we can work together, that are stranded overseas, bring them back here and invest in America, I think we would create a lot more jobs a lot more quickly and in a lot more sustainable fashion than we would do through additional public spending.

Finally, I think we ought to give the President a little bit of credit for emphasizing and bringing home American jobs, something that actually began once he was President-elect. We saw it in Indiana with Carrier air-conditioning. We have seen it in other cases where he has promoted the sale of American arms in the Middle East where we have got substantial things.

So I think this is a President who actually gets up each and every day and thinks profoundly about what can we do to create an overall ecosystem, an environment, if you will, that will incentivize private investment, private employment, American jobs, and bringing American companies back to this country.

I think he is actually off to an exceptionally good start in those areas, and I look forward to working with him on that. I suspect we will see a tax proposal on this floor in the not-too-distant future-- our friends on Ways and Means are working on it now--that will mirror many of the principles that the President laid out in his initial draft discussion of what he thinks we ought to do.

And that one change, changing the Tax Code, I think, will do more than

all the programs that we would work on, many of them worthy programs, many of them things, I think, where the Federal Government does have a role.

I will agree with my friend from Florida, I am disturbed about some of the cuts in training programs. I have seen those programs work and work well, and I suspect the President will find out, as other Presidents have found out--we used to routinely praise President Obama's budget on the floor. It never got very many votes. I don't think it ever got any Democratic votes--that, you know, Presidents propose, as they should, that is their prerogative, they run the executive branch, but, at the end of the day, it is Congress that makes the final funding decisions.

I happen to know a little bit about those programs because they come through my subcommittee on appropriations, and I want to assure my friends they are not going to disappear. And we may have to make some tough choices, as you always have to do, in appropriated dollars, but on many of the programs that I know my friend cares about and has championed in his distinguished career, they are going to be protected, and we are going to try and work in a bipartisan fashion in those areas and keep those things going.

But, at the end of the day, I think the President's record on job creation will be outstanding, and I think the actions that he has taken in the opening part of his administration are a testament to how seriously he takes the challenge of making sure that every American has a decent job, a job that pays a good wage, a job that will provide for his or her family, and a job that will give them an opportunity to live a life of dignity and prosperity, something we want every American to have a chance at.

So with that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by addressing a couple of points that my friend made. There will be places we agree; there will be places we disagree. I think too often around here we talk about how nothing gets done when this has actually been an extraordinarily productive period in terms of passing legislation. We are going to have differences on some of that legislation, there is no question. There is a reason why God created a Democratic Party and a Republican Party, and it probably wasn't to always agree all the time, but it was to challenge one another and try to work together when they could or define alternative paths when they felt they must, and let the American people make the decision.

Fortunately, we are blessed to live in a country where they get to make that decision on a regular basis like clockwork. They have been making some decisions recently. I think the President has had a pretty good run in special elections. We are pretty pleased with the decisions they have been making. But at some point they will change their mind-- they always do--and they will decide somebody else has a better way.

I think in the interim we ought to stress occasionally so the American people know when we do work together. I actually was home after we managed to pass healthcare through this particular body, and that bill moved through multiple committees, had multiple amendments, lots of negotiation. Obviously it is in the Senate now. I think that process will start over there. But the day before we passed it, actually, we came together in a really quite remarkable way. We passed an omnibus spending bill of over $1 trillion. That bill had worked through the Appropriations Committee of each House, 12 different bills put together to fund the Federal Government. That particular bill gave us the largest increase in defense spending in about a decade, the largest increase in border security money in about a decade. It gave us a substantial increase in money at the National Institutes of Health and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, areas that Democrats and Republicans alike have been working together on and feel very strongly about.

That bill also broke the one-to-one relationship--pretty artificial relationship, in my view--that President Obama had laid down that, if you increase defense spending, you have to automatically increase domestic spending whether you need to or not or whether you can afford to or not.

Frankly, that bill actually passed with a majority of my friends on the Democratic side in both the House and the Senate and a majority of Republicans in the House and the Senate voting for the same bill and Donald Trump signing the bill.

Now, when I go home and I explain that to people, they look at me with a blank stare. It is like: What? That really happened? One trillion dollars with all those different elements in there and a majority of Democrats voted for it and a majority of Republicans voted for it and Donald Trump signed it?

I say: Yeah.

They are amazed. They have never heard about it. They have never seen it. I think that is because sometimes we present a false narrative of constant conflict. There is certainly plenty of conflict here. Look, I have some sympathy with the minority. Having been in the minority myself, you always feel shut out. But this is an occasion--this legislation, and, frankly, that spending bill--when my friends certainly weren't shut out. They participated, and they participated vigorously, and they contributed in the process.

I am with my friend. We need to do more of that. As a matter of fact, I think you will see it is happening right now. If you go to the Defense Committee, they are working on their authorization bill. That committee is the most bipartisan committee probably in Congress. Every time they report something out on an authorization--I think they have 63 or 64 members, something like that--the vote is always like 60 to 3. They have clearly put aside their partisan differences to work together.

In this bill, we have done exactly the same thing. So while we are going to have some points where we disagree, we are going to have some opportunities to agree and come together. And I pledge to my friend I will continue to work with him to try and see that we find more of them.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I want to encourage all of the Members, obviously, to support the rule, but I am sure my good friends on the other side probably won't accept the invitation. That is okay. This is a process vote and they have got other matters they want on the floor, and I certainly understand that they will be opposing our rule and trying to offer an alternative.

But when the matter counts, when the actual legislation reaches the floor, I think H.R. 2842 will draw broad bipartisan support. This House is taking steps to help workers leave welfare rolls and return to the workforce. Under this bill, employers will be incentivized to hire TANF recipients and will help bring the unemployed up into the workforce and the economy.

This bill is a commonsense bipartisan solution that will benefit everyone: the workers, the employers, the community, the economy, and the Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I want to applaud my colleagues on the other side of the aisle for their work on this important piece of legislation. I think if we can get it through this House and we get it through the Senate, I am sure that Mr. Trump will be more than happy to sign it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from Oklahoma for yielding to me the customary 30 minutes for debate.

This measure is a bipartisan bill that will help Americans receiving support from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families find good- paying jobs.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 6 million job openings in our country. That is the highest level recorded since we started tracking this data, yet the share of Americans participating in the workforce is at a four-decade low. Clearly, there are underlying issues

that need to be addressed to get more people plugged into the workforce.

For people looking for jobs, TANF serves as a lifeline. TANF is administered by the Department of Health and Human Services and is designed to help in-need families achieve self-sufficiency. Under the program, States receive block grants to design and operate their own programs to fulfill the goals of the TANF program.

It is important to note that States are at risk of financial penalty if TANF participants receive more than a year of education or if States have more than 30 percent of the State TANF caseload in education and training programs. Due to these limits, States have largely abandoned efforts to promote or support work in their TANF programs. This is important to understand because one of the most effective ways to get more people employed is through employer-driven on-the-job training.

Research has shown that, properly structured, these programs result in better and more stable employment, especially for individuals who are otherwise unlikely to find work.

Although the measure we are debating today does not address this issue, this bill will help tip the scale back toward job-training programs. H.R. 2842 establishes demonstration projects that combine work, training, and support for hard-to-employ TANF recipients.

This bill provides a onetime appropriation of $100 million to subsidize these programs. After the 12-month period, States are going to be required to report to Congress on the effectiveness of subsidizing wages in moving individuals receiving TANF into full-time jobs.

Since we are talking about jobs, we need to recognize that we as an institution have not provided the necessary resources to get people back to work. If you were to ask any Member of this body to outline his or her top priorities, I guarantee you that job creation would be mentioned every single time. We all agree on the need, but from there, the conversation stops. There are lots of proposals in Congress to create jobs, but we have been unable to pass a large-scale, bipartisan bill for quite some time. This really needs to change.

Given the legislation we are debating today, it is interesting to me that President Donald John Trump's budget proposal cut workforce training programs by 39 percent. Rather than present a jobs bill, he has presented a plan that would actually stop helping people looking for jobs. That, in my judgment, is penny-wise and pound-foolish. In bringing forward this legislation, I think it is being made clear that this body does not share that approach, but we need to do more than a single, targeted bill.

Five months into the Trump administration, Republican leadership still has not put forward a single large-scale piece of legislation to create good-paying jobs or raise the wages of hardworking Americans, but its leadership has rejected Democratic proposals out of hand.

We should be working every day on creating jobs and raising wages for everyone everywhere in America. But instead of focusing on job creation, Donald John Trump's budget request would destroy approximately 1.4 million jobs.

His budget would eviscerate billions of dollars from critical job- creating investments in infrastructure and innovation, dismantle skills training programs like the one we are discussing here today, ransack education benefits, and leave our country in a weakened state. Instead of bringing jobs back to communities that have fallen on hard times, the budget walks away from them.

So, Mr. Speaker, I will leave it at this. The underlying measure we are debating today is a good step forward. But one step is not nearly enough. We need to do more, not less, to strengthen our communities and help working families.

Just as I urge Donald John Trump to move past the campaign rhetoric and get serious, I also urge this body to lead with more bipartisan measures that will provide for necessary resources for those who need them most.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. DelBene), who is a distinguished member of the Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

President Donald John Trump campaigned on the promise of job creation; however, his budget paints a very different picture. It cuts job training programs by 39 percent, and its radical spending cuts would lead to massive job losses.

In this body, we talk a lot about jobs, but we are 6 months into this Congress and have failed to pass any major job creation bills. While the bipartisan legislation before us today is, indeed, as my good friend points out, a step in the right direction, we can and we must do more.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I am happy to say that I have an amendment in my hand that will generate thousands of American jobs. If we defeat the previous question, I am going to offer an amendment to the rule to bring up Representative DeFazio's bipartisan bill, H.R. 2510, the Water Quality Protection and Job Creation Act. This bill will create thousands of new American jobs through increased investment in our Nation's wastewater infrastructure. Here is a chance to take today's momentum a step further and consider Mr. DeFazio's bill in addition to the bipartisan TANF bill.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), my very good friend, the distinguished ranking member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee who will discuss our proposal.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I first want to address my good friend about the previous question and the fact that it has not gone through the process. I will just remind him that the chatter in Washington today is about a healthcare measure that hasn't gone through the process, at least to the extent that most of us would all want.

I also have great respect for my good friend from Oklahoma, and I know he will see and get a chance to talk with President Donald John Trump. I am not likely to.

But I would ask him to tell him when he sees him for me that I came here in 1993, and there were 14,000 bridges in need of repair in America, and last year the statistics from the society that does that analysis showed that there are 54,000 bridges in need of repair in this country. The point that I wish to make is that we need a serious substantial infrastructure measure.

Mr. Speaker, we talk a lot about jobs in this Chamber. I was at a forum on Saturday, and someone mentioned: My governor's mantra is ``jobs, jobs, jobs.'' And that person said: Well, he must mean that you have to have three jobs in order to get by.

I am glad that we are here today considering a bill that will help Americans in search of work to find a good-paying position that will help them support themselves and their families. We have a lot of issues facing us, and this bipartisan legislation is just one tiny step forward in the right direction. I hope this measure translates into more bipartisan bills.

Too often, from healthcare reform, tax reform--footnote right there. My friend mentions that we will likely see a tax reform measure sometime soon. I hope that it doesn't revert to trickle down. We have seen trickle down. It did not work, and I hope we don't do that again.

We have an opportunity on other issues, and in many respects the majority has shut out the minority from the process, just like what has happened until today, at least, in the other body with reference to healthcare.

The bills we have debated and even passed are projected to eliminate millions of jobs. Even as we talk about job creation, my friends across the aisle too frequently turn around and champion measures that would do just the opposite. There is so much room for cooperation in this area, yet time and time again we are kept out of the process, and the results speak for themselves. For the sake of our country, this needs to change.

Even though this is a bipartisan bill, it also serves as an example of what I mean. I was disappointed that my Republican colleagues in the Rules Committee blocked yesterday six germane amendments to this bill. It is a sympton of the closed process. When we prevent germane amendments from even being debated by the House, it does us all a disservice, yet my friends across the aisle do it again and again.

Mr. Speaker, I will close with this: President Obama is credited for creating 11.3 million jobs in our country. The economy added jobs for 75 straight months, and very fortunately that carryover for the last 5 months has continued.

While President Donald John Trump makes untenable pledge after pledge, I watched every word of his speech last night in Iowa, and all I heard was platitudes. I didn't hear anything about substance. And it seemed like a road test for some new ideas. He makes these untenable pledges, including a very humble promise to be--and I quote him--``the greatest jobs producer that God ever created.''

The record is clear, the Democratic Party is, has been, and will be the party of job creation, and is ready to work with my Republican colleagues to continue significant job creation in this country.

So I will ask my friends across the aisle, let us continue the trend of the past few years and work together to produce bipartisan measures that will benefit the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on H.R. 2842.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support to talk about H.R. 2842, the Accelerating Individuals into the Workforce Act.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 6 million job openings, the highest level since the government started tracking the data in the year 2000. At the same time, the share of Americans participating in the workforce is near a four-decade low.

Moving welfare recipients into employment is a central goal of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, or TANF. Yet only half of all TANF recipients receiving cash assistance are working or preparing for work.

Some TANF recipients have a difficult time transitioning from welfare into a job, so these types of on-the-job work experiences aid in the transition. The same goes for employers who may be reluctant to hire welfare recipients with limited work experience or other barriers to working.

So the question is: How can we bridge the gap? How do we connect out- of-work Americans with all of the employers who want and need to fill job openings?

H.R. 2842, sponsored by Congressman Curbelo of Florida and Congressman Davis of Illinois, encourages employers to work with State and local agencies to hire TANF recipients. States would only be able to use this money to provide benefits to those who are working, providing paychecks in lieu of benefit checks, a key tenet to welfare reform.

Employers would take the lead by partnering with State and local agencies to hire TANF recipients, providing recipients with highly valued work experience and on-the-job training, including apprenticeships.

Earn-and-learn models help people become familiar with the workplace, gain needed skills, and earn a wage.

The bill reserves up to $100 million for 1 year from the TANF Contingency Fund, which has already been extended through the end of fiscal year 2018 to subsidize up to 50 percent of a TANF recipient's wage for no more than 12 months.

Fifteen percent of the funds would be set aside for career pathway programs, which combine work, training, and other supports to help individuals enter the workforce and move up the economic ladder.

Finally, high-quality evaluations would be used to determine whether these public-private partnerships were effective in helping welfare recipients move into jobs and retain work.

There is broad support from the employer community for helping low- skilled Americans gain on-the-job experience, and there is plenty of support here and across the country for tying government assistance to work or work preparation for those who are able-bodied.

Decades of experience tells us the most effective anti-poverty program is a job. It is helping low-income Americans earn success through the dignity of work.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to stand with Mr. Curbelo in supporting this bill today, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Curbelo), the lead sponsor of the bill.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the efforts here today of my colleague from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis) and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Curbelo) working together focusing on solutions.

Mr. Chairman, we know that, this day and age, it is very easy to identify the problems and the challenges that our country faces. It is a little more difficult to come up with the solutions and bring people together. I appreciate the efforts of both sides coming together today.

I truly believe that the solutions to our challenges are out in the communities where needy families live, and we know we have many needy families across our country for various reasons. America is a big country. And when you look at the challenges that individuals might face economically, I hope that we can come together as Americans to focus on growing our economy, growing opportunity, hoping that we see, as our number one responsibility, the need to provide for opportunity in the future.

We can't set certain and determine certain outcomes, but we can certainly measure the outcomes from our efforts here in Washington. That is why this bill, very importantly, requires States to report on outcomes through this program. We know that we need to provide more flexibility for States. This does exactly that, and, even more so, with communities.

As we do get the feedback from the States, I hope that we will heed their advice because they are the folks who are more in touch with the needs of their various communities around their jurisdictions, all 50 States.

Mr. Chairman, they are experts, and I hope that we can work together with them here, on both sides of the aisle, in Washington, but also all across America with very diverse needs for needy families.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I am prepared to close if there are no more speakers. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate Mr. Curbelo and Mr. Davis for their leadership on this issue, and then colleagues from both sides coming together in a bipartisan way so that we can help more Americans get back to work.

This bill requires high-quality evaluations to determine whether these public-private partnerships are effective in helping welfare recipients move into jobs. These evidence-based results will be used to inform future policy decisions to reform our welfare system, similar to the approach taken in the mid-1990s.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on these important issues so more Americans can earn a wage and feel the dignity of work.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment, although I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I support this amendment. It requires States to coordinate efforts under this bill with other Federal programs designed to help low-income individuals obtain the necessary skills to enter employment and climb the economic ladder.

Our Federal welfare system is large, fragmented, and growing in cost. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimates that we currently operate over 80 programs that provide food, housing, healthcare, job training, education, energy assistance, and cash to low-income Americans. Reducing bureaucracy and streamlining a State's administration of employment and training services to low-income Americans is a step in the right direction.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment as well as supporting the underlying bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, again, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment as well as the underlying bill.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment, although I am not opposed.

Mr. Chairman, I support this amendment. This amendment provides further information to ensure we have high-quality evaluations requiring States to measure how many recipients entered employment in the same field they received on-the-job training. The more we know about how these programs work and their return on our investments is important when we make decisions down the road.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support the amendment as well as the underlying bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I thank Mr. Davidson for his efforts.

Mr. Chairman, I support this amendment. I hope that we can evaluate all of the programs that we have, coordinate among them, learn more about their effectiveness, and ultimately respect folks in need and do all we can that is appropriate to help lift themselves out of poverty.

Mr. Chairman, I support this amendment.

This amendment simply requires that the high-quality evaluations include measurements or how many recipients participated in an apprentice or career pathway program, and any credentials earned along the way.

Earn-and-learn models--those where an individual is getting on-the- job experience, earning a wage, and learning new occupational skills-- are one of the best types of workforce development models the government can support. Apprenticeships, in particular, provide a combination of occupational on-the-job training and related instruction, helping to improve worker training and address critical skill gaps that align with the needs of industry.

We know that the best way out of poverty is through work, and apprenticeships provide a pathway to obtaining a successful career.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment as well as the underlying bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment, although I am not opposed.

Mr. Chairman, I support this amendment.

The first hearing I held as chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources was on the geography of poverty. People often think of poverty only as they see it in cities, not realizing poverty today is more common than ever in suburban and even rural areas.

People also underestimate poverty in rural and remote areas, not knowing the rates of poverty in these areas have, for decades, been higher than in urban areas.

This amendment ensures the Secretary takes into account rural areas and Indian Tribes when making recommendations on how to address employment-related challenges.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment as well as support the underlying bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and the underlying bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman and both my colleagues, though I respectfully disagree that this Congress has placed any priority on helping get people out of poverty. Indeed, when it comes to poverty in America, this Congress has largely been silent. I think the Congress itself is impoverished when it comes to ideas about how to lift people up into the middle class.

We talk here so much about the middle class, and appropriately so, but there are millions of people out there who are struggling to just climb up that first or second rung of the economic ladder and work themselves into the middle class, and this Congress is doing little, constructively, to assist them.

The need for real and meaningful change is particularly evident in my home State of Texas, where the State legislature has been so incredibly indifferent to this problem. There, one out of every four children is below the poverty level, and over one-third of all Texans live in the shadow of poverty, meaning that their income is less than twice the poverty threshold. The Corporation for Enterprise Development ranked Texas near the bottom among all States on key measures related to financial security.

Now, here is what today's bipartisan bill does to respond to that, and it is really a story of the number one.

Of the several Republican proposals that were originally advanced by now-Speaker Paul Ryan two years ago, some introduced by Republican colleagues and some containing good ideas, this is the one last bill standing.

With the notable exception of a budget that is devastating to opportunities for poor Americans, this is the one and only bill on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, previously known as welfare, that Republicans will even permit us to discuss on the floor of this House.

This one very modest bill does not add one new dollar to address the challenges that those who want to rise from welfare to work need. It simply segregates $100 million from an existing fund for one year.

Now, get this: the fund from which they are segregating the $100 million from, Donald Trump is seeking to abolish the entire fund so that no moneys for this proposal will be available after one year.

This bill gives the States no new flexibility, and no new authority. It does not authorize them to do anything that they cannot do today. Indeed, some States--and I think my colleague from Illinois referenced one of these--are already finding ways to, in appropriate situations, subsidize employment.

What this bill does is to say that on this particular $100 million fund, as long as it lasts, until President Trump eliminates it entirely, that the States must use the money in a particular way. In other words, it seeks to restrict the States who receive these moneys to require them to use it for one particular way to assist those who are in poverty.

It is also significant that the Trump budget cuts are so far-reaching in trying to undermine efforts to raise people out of poverty, and for those who are not able-bodied, to provide them the support that they need. This bill deals with a little less than one-half of one percent of the Trump budget cuts.

I believe, sincerely, that we need a better approach, that we have ideas on both sides of the aisle that are being blocked by a determination to not address root causes of poverty.

First, we should support initiatives that strike at the early seeds of poverty, like the Home Visiting Program that will expire in a mere three months, which helps to improve opportunities for at-risk children and helps their parents be the parents they want to be; and certainly, early childhood education is a key part of that.

Second, we should increase efforts to help people gain the skills they need to secure jobs through which they can support their families at a living wage, and that is the challenge here. Sure, some employers will love to have taxpayers subsidize their workforce, pay part of the wages that they would otherwise have to pay, and sometimes this is a valuable support, particularly for people that are reentering our society after incarceration and other groups of particularly hard-to- place employees. But for many folks, the big question is, when the subsidy ends, when the taxpayer stops paying, will there be a job there? Is there a job ladder that will allow that person to work themselves up, or are they essentially participating in minimum wage employment that will not support their family and will not provide them a future?

There are in-demand skills-training programs that do work and do offer an alternative, but they are not free. They take an investment. An example is Project QUEST in San Antonio.

Mr. Chairman, Project QUEST has an 86 percent job placement rate for its graduates, who boost their incomes, on average, from $10,000 a year before entering the program to $40,000 a year.

I know there are similar programs in other parts of the country that do the same. They are not subsidized employment, but they are working with poor people to get the skills that they need for an in-demand job and working with local employers to find out what types of jobs are most needed. In many parts of America, our economy is being held back by a lack of qualified workers.

Then, one of the areas that is so important to all parents, but particularly to single moms that are in poverty, is childcare. President Trump is proposing not one, but three cuts to childcare, cutting out hundreds of millions of dollars of support to childcare, which stands in the way of many individuals from working their way out of poverty.

I believe that we need to be working together to try to find genuine solutions and that working together is not just here in this House, in Congress, because the big problem here is that, when we voted in 1996-- and I voted for it, for moving from welfare to work--we expected the States to be partners in that effort. Today, as much as we talk about work and getting from welfare to work, exactly 8 cents out of every dollar being spent on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program--8 cents--goes to work supports. And not very much more than that goes to childcare, and President Trump, of course, wants to reduce that.

It is only by having a comprehensive program that is really focused on the roots of poverty and assisting those

who would help themselves that the promise of that welfare law can become effective.

Unfortunately, while we did change fundamentally and end welfare as we know it, it became welfare for Republican Governors who wanted to use these Federal moneys not to assist the poor, but to assist their States fill various budget gaps. We have a great example of where block grants fail. I hope we can find ways to succeed.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I strongly support H.R. 2842, the Accelerating Individuals into the Workforce Act, which is better known as TANF.

This important bill modernizes the TANF Contingency Fund to promote effective job training programs, such as subsidized jobs, career pathways, and apprenticeship programs. Research is clear. Subsidized employment, career pathways, and apprenticeship programs successfully engage people in employment, especially those who have been unsuccessful in finding paid employment through their efforts.

Further research on past TANF subsidized employment programs document that these initiatives increase employment and earnings both while individuals worked in a subsidized job as well as after the program ended. Also, studies show that States operated these programs that provided tremendous benefit at very reasonable cost.

Many States used the TANF Emergency Funds to establish effective subsidized employment programs. Using these TANF Emergency Funds in Illinois, former Governor Pat Quinn implemented the very successful Put Illinois to Work program that directly created over 26,000 jobs, helping close to 5,000 employees in Illinois. Nationally, the TANF Emergency Funds created 260,000 jobs.

Good subsidized employment programs have three characteristics that make them an attractive part of TANF: they are able to increase employment quickly; they help some of the individuals who face the greatest challenges enter the workforce and stay there; and, when funded on a large scale, they can help boost local economies. For these reasons, Democrats have proposed subsidized employment within TANF for years.

My friend and colleague from Wisconsin, Gwen Moore, initially proposed allowing subsidized employment in TANF via her RISE Act many years ago. I embraced her idea in my Responsible Fatherhood bill, and I am pleased to join with Representative Curbelo on this effort.

If we are truly committed to helping families work their way out of poverty, we will need to do much more to strengthen TANF. We will need to ensure that States actually spend TANF money on TANF recipients. We need to improve access to education and training, critical changes that both Republican and Democratic witnesses have emphasized over and over again. We need to improve childcare so parents can actually go to work.

This bill is a good bill. It makes a small, positive step forward on our path to more comprehensive improvements to TANF. I strongly support it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett), who has worked on these issues for many, many terms and many years.

I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore), a fierce advocate for low- income people.

Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I want to, first of all, commend Mr. Curbelo for his leadership on this issue, and I certainly agree with him that we have found enough common ground to be here this morning with a bill that we can pass, but I also agree with my friend from Texas (Mr. Doggett), that there are many shortcomings to helping individuals actually realize the potential that they have to move beyond poverty to sustainable employment so that they can have a level of living and a level of expectation which gives them the energy that they need to keep moving forward.

There are some improvements that we certainly need to make. We can allow greater education and training. Every time witnesses come before us, they always tell us that, no matter whether they are billed as Republican or Democrat, or with no political stripe. We should improve TANF for kinship caregivers. We should remove the lifetime ban on felony drug convictions. Just imagine, that these individuals will never ever have the opportunity to experience the benefits of this program, or of this effort.

We should remove the 60-month time limit during recessions, and we should remove the ban to assist unwed teen parents and other youth who are displaced.

So clearly, we do have agreement this morning, and I am delighted to be a part of it, but I certainly hope that my colleagues will look at those unmet needs that the legislation does not cover.

I urge its support, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would further strengthen the protections against displacement of current employees. I think it is a goal that we all share to make sure that this bill expands employment, rather than just changing who is employed.

I plan to support the gentlewoman's amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would require States to collect and report information on whether participants were receiving income-related assistance like health insurance; child care assistance; school lunch; or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits; rental subsidies; or perhaps even the earned income tax credit.

The information the amendment requests is not relevant to what we are trying to learn from these demonstration projects, which is whether different approaches improve earnings and employment. Asking for it is an invasion of the privacy of the individuals, with no research benefit.

Collecting this information also seems burdensome for States, and would likely require them to ask participating employers to ask their employees inappropriate personal questions that they would not ask of any other employee.

Most importantly, I am concerned that requiring States to collect information on these important work supports would make some States think that they are supposed to discourage participants from accessing these supports.

Both research and common sense clearly tell us that access to supports like child care assistance, healthcare, and wage supplements that pay for transportation and other work expenses make it more likely that individuals will succeed in work. We should do nothing that might discourage States from providing these supports to help workers succeed. We should do nothing that might cause individuals to not make use of what is available to them.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.