PLATFORM : Adapting Skills
The federal government must make the training of defense workers for consumer-oriented industries a major priority. What Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the Depression and what John F. Kennedy did to meet the Soviet Union’s space-technology successes can and must be done again.
The technology developed by the space program created thousands of new jobs and several new industries.
Defense workers now losing their jobs present the nation with a tremendous opportunity to adapt a skilled work force to new applications.
This is a bipartisan matter that transcends the politics of an election year. Both Congress and the Administration must provide plans and incentives to put unemployed former defense workers into productive, consumer-related jobs.
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