Senate Urged to Rewrite Quayle’s Job Training Act

The Bush Administration today proposed rewriting the nation’s major job training program, which was co-authored by Vice President Dan Quayle, to direct most spending to the poor and teen-agers.

It also warned states that their programs will have to be improved to receive federal support.

“For years, the government has been distributing money to youth programs in a fragmented and piecemeal fashion, and sometimes without clear expectations of what these youths should achieve,” Labor Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole told the Senate subcommittee on employment and productivity.

Dole and three Job Training Partnership Act participants who attended the hearing were meeting with President Bush in the afternoon in a session designed to demonstrate the President’s support for the changes.

The amendments would significantly change the job act created by Quayle, then a Republican senator from Indiana, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that was highly touted by Quayle during his campaign for vice president. Dole said the revisions are necessary because of the changing American work force, not because of any major flaws in the program.

“But JTPA can be made even better,” she told the subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over the act. “Funds do not always reach the individuals and areas who need help the most. In some communities it is felt that the program does not always result in good jobs and a higher standard of living.”