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Mandatory Veteran Specialist Training Act of 2009

Floor Speech

Date: May 19, 2009
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Veterans


MANDATORY VETERAN SPECIALIST TRAINING ACT OF 2009 -- (House of Representatives - May 19, 2009)

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Mr. BOOZMAN. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, providing first-class employment services to veterans is the most basic way to ensure they can support themselves and their families, and that is why I rise in strong support of H.R. 1088, the Mandatory Veteran Specialist Training Act of 2009. This measure would amend title 38 of the United States Code to provide for a 1-year period for the training of new disabled veterans' outreach program specialists and local veterans' employment representatives by the National Veterans' Employment and Training Services Institute.

H.R. 1088 was introduced by our distinguished colleague, the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity, STEPHANIE HERSETH SANDLIN, on February 13, 2009. Mr. Speaker, I was pleased to work with Ms. Herseth Sandlin in the 109th Congress to begin the process of improving the training levels of State and employment service staff. We did that because there was a significant backlog of untrained staff and we needed to give States adequate time to train their veterans' employment staff that were paid for with Federal funds. Together, we passed legislation to require State employment services to send their disabled veterans' outreach program specialists--or DVOPS--and local veterans' employment representatives through basic job placement training within 3 years.

States have had sufficient time to meet the initial training backlog, and we should now require that employment specialists be trained within a shorter period of time to ensure veterans' employment staff is trained properly and promptly after being hired by the State employment service.

Again, I appreciate Ms. Herseth Sandlin for bringing this forward. I think it's an excellent bill.

Having no other speakers, I want to thank committee Chairman Filner and Ranking Member STEVE BUYER, along with our staffs, and urge my colleagues to support H.R. 1088.

With that, I yield back my time.


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