Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2022

Floor Speech

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Mr. GROTHMAN. Madam Speaker, I will make some comments on the reauthorization bill. This is one of these big bills that is 268 pages. I don't have time to go through all of the problems with the bill, but I am just going to touch on some highlights, or low lights.

In this area of high inflation, with a bill like this, the first thing I look at is the cost. The cost of this bill--right now, we are spending about $9.9 billion on this topic. Over the next 6 years, they expect it to increase to $16.2 billion. You are looking at a 63 percent increase in spending on this area at a time where we really don't have any money to increase anything. So I want the American public to understand there is a big spending increase here.

Secondly, I will talk about a very important population to me, though a population that is not talked about enough, and that is the fact that we are continuing to allow a provision in law which I think is damaging to people born with different abilities. Right now, they are not able to work at work centers, which is one of these places that sometimes pays under minimum wage, until they are at least 24 years old. We would never tell anybody of other abilities that you are not allowed to work until you are age 24. But by making it--I won't say impossible, but very difficult to work at a work center until age 24, I think you stunt the people's growth.

I was really hoping we would use this opportunity to allow people with different abilities to begin to work at 18 or 19 years old. Anybody who tours these work centers cannot help but be touched by how proud these folks are to work there. I wish they could work there at age 18 instead of 24.

The next thing I will point out is a clear feature of this bill is to dramatically expand Job Corps; in other words, government jobs that are a steppingstone, I guess, if you can't find another job. There has never been a time, I think, in American history in which they are looking for more people to work. So as I go around my district, be it the service industry, agriculture, light manufacturing, they are begging for employees. What is Congress going to do? They are going to go in there and say, no, we are not going to let you work at the local restaurant; we are going to have you work for Job Corps. I think that is a mistake.

The fourth thing I will point out is this obsession with racial biases and gender identity. There is a bill right now that the majority party has that is called the LGBT Data Inclusion Act, in which they expect everybody, I guess, to tell their employer what their sexual preferences are. I have been doing this job in politics for a long time. I have never had a discussion about sexual preferences with any of my employees. I would feel embarrassed to ask them. But this bill clearly implies a world in which when you apply for a job, let's talk about our sexual identity.

The fifth thing I point out is we have a big problem in this country at our southern border. In this bill, in committee, we tried to have E- Verify to apply to all of these jobs; in other words, to make sure that if we are going to have such a program, at least it is American citizens who take advantage of the program. That amendment was shot down in committee.

What does that tell me? It tells me that one more time, along with free medical care, along with Pell grants, the majority party wants to help out people who are coming here who shouldn't be here. E-Verify really should have been part of the bill. I don't think the American public wants another government program designed, at least in part, to benefit people who are here illegally.

Those are some of the greatest hits of the bill.

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