1998CRH7557A JOB CORPS: ONE OF THE MOST WASTEFUL, LEAST EFFECTIVE PROGRAMS IN
no...@house.gov
[Congressional Record: September 10, 1998 (House)]
[Page H7557-H7558]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr10se98-92]
JOB CORPS: ONE OF THE MOST WASTEFUL, LEAST EFFECTIVE PROGRAMS IN
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, in a few days we will be asked to vote for
the annual Labor-HHS appropriations bill. I have voted for this bill
every year because it contains some very good programs. However, one of
its programs has become one of the most wasteful and inefficient in the
entire Federal Government and should either do much, much better or be
abolished. Yet this agency, because on the surface it appears to be one
for young people, seems to believe it should be immune from criticism
and simply get one increase after another.
I am speaking of the Job Corps. Today, it costs over $26,000 per year
per Job Corps student, according to the GAO. We could give each Job
Corps student an allowance of $1,000 a month, send them to some
expensive private school and still save money. If we did, these young
people would probably think they had gone to heaven or hit some type of
lottery. These Job Corps students would probably be shocked if we told
them we were spending $26,000 per year on them, because the people who
get the big bucks out of this are the fat cat contractors and the
bureaucrats who run the program.
Programs like the Job Corps are really, in the end, harmful to young
people, because they just take more money from parents and children and
give it instead to bureaucrats and contractors. And we are not talking
about small change here. This year's proposed appropriation is $1.246
billion, an increase of $61 million over last year, $1.246 billion for
one of the most wasteful, least effective programs in the entire
Federal Government.
According to a 1995 GAO report, the Job Corps is the most expensive
program that the Labor Department administers, spending on average four
times as much per student as the JTPA. In fact, the Workforce and
Career Development Act of 1996, which passed the House by a vote of 345
to 79, included report language calling for five Job Corps centers to
be closed by September 30, 1997, and five more to be closed by
September of 2000.
Yet the number of Job Corps centers has actually gone up since 1996
from 112
[[Page H7558]]
to 118. This is because the Federal bureaucracy really tries in every
way possible to do what it wants regardless of what the majority of the
Congress votes for. This might be all right if the Federal bureaucracy
did not waste so much money, but the taxpayers are really being ripped
off by many Federal programs and especially this wasteful Job Corps
program.
The GAO reported in testimony before the Committee on Government
Reform and Oversight this past July 29 that only 14 percent of program
participants completed the requirements of their vocational training.
An earlier report found that only 4 percent end up in jobs for which
they were trained, unless one does, as the Job Corps has at times done,
and grossly distorts and exaggerates the figures and counts as a
success about any former student who has gotten any type of job.
The GAO found that the Department of Labor considered a student to
have obtained a job which matched their training if a student was
trained as a heavy equipment operator, but got a job as a ticket
seller. The Department of Labor also considered it a match if a student
was trained as an auto mechanic and obtained a job attaching wristbands
to watches.
Mr. Speaker, the Job Corps itself admits that the average length of
stay of a Job Corps student is only 6 months. Mark Wilson of the
Heritage Foundation has pointed out that it costs more to send someone
to the Job Corps for 1 year than to a regular public school for 4
years. It now costs more for a student to go to the Job Corps for 1
year than to go to Yale, Vanderbilt, Emory, and many other of the most
expensive and finest colleges and universities in the Nation.
So I repeat, Mr. Speaker, $26,000 per year per Job Corps student is
simply too much, especially since it is producing such extremely poor
results. As I said a moment ago, we could give each Job Corps student a
$1,000 a month allowance, send them to some expensive private school,
and still save money, and these students would just not believe it. And
yet we are giving this money to fat cat government contractors and
bureaucrats, who are the real beneficiaries of this program.
We should really do something good for the students and the young
people of this country by doing away with the Job Corps program or
cutting back drastically on it. And yet, because there are 118 Job
Corps centers around the country, I know that that cannot be done
unless we start the education process and let people know how poor and
wasteful this program really is. I hope we can at least start the
process of doing that tonight.
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