Nomination of David Jeremiah Barron to be United States Circuit Judge for the First Circuit -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I came to the floor today to take a few minutes and talk about a piece of legislation I have been working on, along with seven of my colleagues from this Chamber and from the House of Representatives. That legislation is called the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. This is a long-overdue bill that will reauthorize and improve the Workforce Investment Act--or WIA, as we call it--which includes dozens of critical workforce development programs in all 50 of our States.

This is an issue I have been working on for more than a decade. For several years now I have been very proud to work here in the Senate to reauthorize WIA, so I am very glad we are finally on a strong bipartisan path to get this done for families and businesses in Washington State and across the country who have been telling me how important effective workforce programs are for them and their communities.

The reason we were able to introduce such a strong bill this morning--and a bill that I think has a real chance to become law--is the incredible bipartisan process we have had over the last few months to reach a compromise between both parties and both Chambers. So I would like to thank each of the Members who helped me introduce the legislation this morning by name: in the House of Representatives, Representative John Kline, Republican from Minnesota; Representative George Miller, Democrat from California; Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican from North Carolina; and Representative Rubén Hinojosa, Democrat from Texas; and here in the Senate, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat from Iowa and the great chairman of our HELP Committee; Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican from Tennessee; and finally my close partner and cohort in this process, who is here with me today, Senator Johnny Isakson from Georgia.

None of us got everything we wanted in the bill we introduced this morning, but all of us got legislation we believe in. It is a bill that will help our workers, and it will help our businesses and the economy for years to come.

I am as strong a supporter of our Federal workforce development program as anyone. I have seen firsthand in my home State of Washington workers who were laid off and who were able to get new training and new skills and new jobs. I have seen many of our Washington State businesses, from aerospace companies to video game design firms, that were able to access workers with the new skills they needed to grow and compete.

But the fact is that we have been relying on Federal workforce development programs that were written in the 1990s, and with millions of new jobs that will require postsecondary education and advanced skills in the coming years, we will fall behind in the world if we do not modernize our workforce development now. We have to make sure that when high-tech jobs of the 21st century are created, Americans are ready to fill them. That is what we have done in this bill. We have doubled down on the programs that work, we have improved the programs that have become outdated, and we have created a workforce system that is more nimble and adaptable and better aligned with what businesses need and more accountable so we can continue to make it better. That is what we were sent here to do--work with our colleagues across the aisle for the American people. We had a House proposal and we had a Senate proposal and we met in the middle.

I can't count how many times Senator Isakson, my Republican colleague, and I have talked about the importance of getting this done. His office happens to be right next door to mine. So whether we were at a committee hearing or on a train to the Capitol, we were always focused on how we could work together and find a path to a deal.

We are not done yet. I am going to be working with my colleagues in the Senate--Democrats and Republicans--to get their support for this compromise, and our colleagues will be doing the same in the House of Representatives.

This is an all-too-rare opportunity for all of us to get behind a strong, bipartisan, bicameral bill that will help our workers and get our economy back on track. I am very proud of the work that went into this.

I yield to my colleague, Senator Isakson. This would not be on the floor today without his tremendous work and his work ethic and his willingness to work across the aisle to get this done. I sincerely thank him.

I yield the floor.

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