Chance to Compete Act of 2024

Floor Speech

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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, hiring people based on their unique individual skills is something I have promoted all my life. It is precisely why I introduced the Chance to Compete Act.

As the largest employer in the Nation with almost 2.2 million employees, it is time for the Federal Government to base its hiring on verifiable skills instead of degrees or self-evaluation.

People should be hired on their ability to do the job. This is a commonsense idea that the private sector figured out a long time ago. It is easy to see that current Federal hiring practices are broken.

These hiring practices rely on how many degrees one has and on self- evaluations that allow candidates to grossly inflate their own qualifications. They can claim to be experts on a particular subject, but they are not being evaluated by an objective standard.

Hardworking American taxpayers are the ones who are forced to pay for employees who cannot properly perform their own jobs. I have even seen this play out recently while my office has been dealing with FEMA and other Federal agencies in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

Fortunately, there is a better way.

The Chance to Compete Act allows the Federal Government to retain subject matter experts, those who know what it takes to do a job, who design and administer skills-based assessments to job seekers. This is designed to identify candidates who have the professional wherewithal to complete a job.

These assessments also weed out those applicants who merely claim to be experts and have the right degree on paper. The Trump administration recognized this issue with an executive order in 2020 by directing agencies to identify qualified applicants to hire people based on objective standards, such as structured interviews, knowledge, or writing tests.

It is good that the Congress will codify this effort by passing this law and the Trump administration will be able to implement it. The Federal Government owes it to taxpayers to hire people based on their ability to do the job. The House recognized this when it passed the House version of the Chance to Compete Act in January of 2023 in a vote of 422 to 2.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to pass this carefully crafted Senate compromised version, S. 59, today.

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